Atoms and Worms (ontologies of fragments)

This chapter investigates the ontologies of fragments of photography from a number of different, but colliding, perspectives. Beginning with the Romantic fragments of Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, Lucretius’s atoms and the worms of Marx and Vonnegut. This seemingly random array of thoughts and thinkers concretises a multiplicity as a direct expression of the concepts put into play. With different ontological amalgams emerging from the range of multiples to hand, it becomes important to take account of not only of the complexity of creativity at work, but also the apparently accidental events that are developed here. To investigate these concepts, this chapter turns to the philosophies of Simondon, Whitehead and Malabou.

The impact of this upon photography generated at the confluence of human and nonhuman actors is examined in two areas. First, in the deliberate disruption of a phone camera app’s software, as shown in Bonamy Devas’s ‘Photo Tai Chi’ project. Second, in the unintended disruption of Jinkyun Ahn’s photos of his family, which were only partially recovered after being accidentally deleted.

In concluding, this chapter seeks not to offer final, well-delineated, ontologically complete creations and to wonder in which ways can we ensure that any act of creation doesn’t completely exhaust its possibilities in its manifestation: this chapter included.

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