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To Gather (Magnetic, Sticky, Persistent)

The Noticer is drawing together a collection of terms for or descriptions of the power of things and ideas to adhere. My own preoccupation has been with the notion of things gathering, whether in a ‘ball gathering moss’ kind of way, through a seeming need for like things to lean towards/rest together or thanks to an immanent property or symbolic alignment (see Carol Bove). Lizzie’s sticky ideas have been mentioned in a number of posts – ideas following you, reoccurring until they cohere and possibly make sense. Jane Bennett (Pats post) talks at length about the ‘call of things’ and I often return to something Leanne said a long time ago about ‘returning’ as a way of testing and getting to know something. All of these ideas obviously fit very snuggly with Jo and Tash’s sense of the magnetic possibilities for both this blog and the coming Summer School. What will it feel like to collect a group of individuals, each with their own skin of gathered (iron filling like) preoccupations (ideas, language, responsibilities, prejudices and preferences), into one gravitational swirl? What will it mean, how will it transmit? What will come out?

And slightly tangential:
‘In Our Time’ about the sun ‘Thanks to the nuclear fusion reactions taking place at its core, the Sun has been shining for four and a half billion years’.

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Image: Carol Bove from Unmonumental