#discussion Series #art in #conflict

belonging, #loss and the #language of art

#Gessnerallee Zurich
10. 6 2026, 17.30 – 19.00 CEST
#zurich & #Online

with #VidaRucli (#architecture, Cultural Practitioner, #RobidaCollective), and #FazilOnYu (#dancer #choreographer #activist and #Performance artist)

#Human #landuse has significantly influenced natural landscapes over the past millennium. Nevertheless, I. S. Martins et al. (2022) note that while this has resulted in a #loss of #pristine #natural #ecosystems, #ecosystemdiversity actually #increased, at least until the mid-20th century.

© #StefanFWirth 2026

Please donate to support my science writing: https://ko-fi.com/sfwirth

Reference
I. S. Martins et al. (2022) https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16335

#Illustrations
©S.F.Wirth, #AI assisted

FRENCH FACES LOSS, SPEAKS OF GRIEF'S GRIP

Actress Dawn French speaks about the deep sadness after her father's death and how she dealt with it.

#DawnFrench, #Grief, #Bereavement, #MentalHealth, #Loss

https://newsletter.tf/dawn-french-grief-father-death-personal-mourning/

Dawn French spoke recently about feeling 'dripping with grief' after her father passed away. This shows how people deal with loss differently.

#DawnFrench, #Grief, #Bereavement, #MentalHealth, #Loss
https://newsletter.tf/dawn-french-grief-father-death-personal-mourning/

"There are a number of reasons why I'm not a communist. The first of them is that I'm not against the idea of private business, as long as it does not oppose people's human rights and the interests of society. Business is legitimate as long as it treats the rest of society decently."

- Richard Stallman

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-kol.html

#özgüryazılım #libresoftware #açıkkaynak #opensource #özgürveaçıkkaynaklıyazılım #libreandopensourcesoftware #öaky #loss #anticom #anticommunistaction #komümizmkarşıtı #anticommunist #komünizmkarşıtlığı #anticommunism

Melancholia and creativity

From Mari Ruti’s Reinventing the Soul loc 3851:

…creativity as a tangible outpouring of psychic energy can take place only at the moment when melancholia is transcended. This instance of transcendence does not have to be—and rarely is—permanent, yet it is absolutely necessary for the subject’s ability to mobilize its inner resources in such a way as to be able to translate melancholia into meaning; the melancholy subject may reside at the threshold of innovation, but it is the very essence of melancholia to block and inhibit the subject’s access to its innovative capacities as long as it is incapable of finding its way out of the labyrinth of its melancholy investments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4orCW0rKuAo

From Mari Ruti’s Reinventing the Soul loc 3424:

We will discover that insofar as melancholia activates the subject’s fantasy of being able to reunite with lost objects, it quite effectively bars the subject’s access to the signifier. In this sense, the melancholy subject is by definition a subject of silence. In Lacanian terms, melancholia represents a victory of the subject’s fantasmatic fixations over its sublimatory capacity to redirect desire along more rewarding lines. It represents a triumph of the imaginary over the symbolic, of fantasy over the signifier, of sadness over narrativization.

From Mari Ruti’s Reinventing the Soul loc 3454:

Melancholia therefore provides the subject an indirect means of sheltering objects that it considers so precious that their loss seems inconceivable. Such objects, which often take on a larger-than-life meaning and magnificence, demand the individual’s loyalty so intensely that disavowal becomes impossible; if the subject finds it difficult to relinquish its ties to a lost object, it is because psychic energy has been invested in this object so forcefully—with such ferocious fixity—that giving it up seems to threaten the subject’s very sense of self.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jMEvF6hcrA