After Fukushima: The equivalence of catastrophes - Iterating Grace
Reading Group organized with Marta Colombo

"After Fukushima is a text written by Jean-Luc Nancy in 2014 that deals with the ethical legacy of Fukushima disaster of 2011. It highlights the imperative to see after in the sense of beyond: how what has happened in Fukushima should not be considered separable from its technological, economic and political implications, but should be caught in the complexity of interdependent systems.

Iterating Grace is an ironic text with a curious origin: in June 2015, some prominent figures in tech media discovered a package in the mail. Inside there was a slim anonymous book recounting the biographical tale of Koons Crooks, a programmer whose religious devotion to the tweets of the Silicon Valley elite leads him to a tragic demise.

Both texts are a reflection on the consequences of the symbiosis and interconnection between technologies and nature, and an exploration of the human role in this dynamic. How do they illustrate the need to think that it is we who are arriving, or who are leaving? How do they show the significance of engaging with the present for the sake of understanding the ‘equivalence’ of capitalist civilization and its repercussions? Can we, eventually, confront with the dissemination of ‘equivalence’ in a world that is contaminated by the financial and monetary ethos?"