ASUBHA

Asubha: This issue of herri harnesses the transformative power of decay, embracing its wild energy as a catalyst for creation. We reject the stifling grip of institutional archival order and embrace the dissonance of decay, for within the depths of decay’s disorder lies the fertile ground for new ideas and new cultures to emerge. From the subconscious prehuman mind the decay of existence emerges, devouring the boundaries of meaning and giving birth to new forms of thought. In the ostensible chaos of decay the universe reconfigures itself, transcending the limits of the known and venturing into the realm of the post-object archival universe, instigating the next configuration from the limitless abyss triggered into eating its own discharge. Decay feeds itself beyond extinction.

Feng Sun Chen: What is extinction? What is an archive? What does it mean to eat a dodo? I eat dodos everyday.^{[1]Feng Sun Chen, Arcane Carnal Knowledge, ASIN : ‎B009AOFT76, Publisher: ‎Mortal Steaks, Publication date : ‎March 10, 2012, Edition : ‎Eternal Edition, Language‏ : ‎English, Print length‏ : ‎92 pages.}

Phillip K. Dick: Do not believe — and I am dead serious when I say this — do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.^{[2]Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978, hex}

Lizabé Lambrechts: Then perhaps the task is not to defend what endures, but to listen for the moment when endurance turns into inertia. If life insists on shedding its skins, our only real choice is whether we call that loss or transformation. What survives is never the object or the structure, but the capacity to move, to adapt, to be unsettled without collapsing. Maybe authenticity is less a state of being than a willingness to remain unfinished—alert to the moment when letting go becomes an act of care rather than destruction.^{[3]email correspondence.}

Steven Craig Hickman: What we call perception is merely the metabolism of decay.^{[4]Steven Craig Hickman, Signals from the Subterranean Real, socialecologies}

David Lynch: I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts in and bruises – they’re like little flowers. I’ve always said that if you have a name for something, like ‘cut’ or ‘bruise,’ people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don’t know what it is, it can be very beautiful.

George Perec: Sometimes, you dream that sleep is a slow death creeping up on you, an anaesthesia at once sweet and fearful, a blissful necrosis: the chill climbs gradually up your legs, up you arms, numbing you slowly, slowly wiping you out.^{[5]Georges Perec, A Man Asleep, Translated from the French by Andrew Leak, English translation 1990 copyright William Collins Sons & Co. first published in France with the title Un homme qui dort by Editions Denoël, 1967, page 316.}

Gary Shteyngart: As I hugged each boy and patted him on the shoulder, I noticed that we were surreptitiously sniffing one another for signs of decay, and that Vishnu and Noah were wearing some kind of spicy deodorant, perhaps as a way to mask their changing scent. We had each embarked on our very late thirties, a time when the bravado of youth and the promise of glorious exploits that had once held us together would begin to fade, as our bodies began to shed, slacken, and shrink. We were still as friendly and caring as any group of men could be, but I surmised that even the shuffle toward extinction would prove competitive for us, that some of us might shuffle faster than others.^{[6]Gary Shteyngart, Sup Sad True Love Story, Random House, New York 2010.}

Kerstin Stutterheim: Memory is ‘not an instrument for the exploration of the past, but the medium’ (Walter Benjamin). This concept can be applied to photography as well. Photography is the medium opening a window to a concentrated, captured memory. Such memory is evoked by an artist in an aesthetic condensation of the situation experienced.^{[7]Prof Kerstin Stutterheim, Organiser, Photography & Memory Symposium, Edinburgh Napier University & The Glasgow School of Art,Thursday 2nd – Friday 3rd of February.}

Asubha: But what happens when a decayed image is the “aesthetic condensation” not of a “situation” but of itself, an ontological thing. What is evoked when this happens? Not memory, surely? And what is the relationship of this ontologicial facticity (the isness of the decayed object) to the purported claims of the “medium” to what the medium professes to be? If a photograph is not revealing an image is it indeed, still a photograph? Or is the decayed object something totally “other”? A glimpse, perhaps, into a parallel dimension, or, indeed into the entropic future of all matter?

Louis Armand: At a time when the language of “decay” has undergone an almost complete rehabilitation, the thought that travels abroad under its name nevertheless does so in the pay of a radical conservatism: from the conservation of the planet, to the conservation of the human, to the conservation of a culture of consumption, capital & crisis. Though the world is moribund, the spectacle of its end has never been more productive. Conservation is nothing if not a mode of perpetuated ending, of an ending-in-abeyance or in-abyss.^{[8]Louis Armand, Entropology.}

Steven Craig Hickman: Putrefaction Symbol: 🜏 — it is known as the Alchemical Sign for Putrefaction. It represents decay, decomposition, and transformation, a process essential to both alchemical transmutation and chthonic aesthetics. In traditional Hermetic alchemy, putrefactio is the stage where the old form is broken down, blackened (nigredo), and made fertile again through rot. It is the death that precedes resurrection, the black sun beneath the visible. For our purposes—Futurist Demonology, Chthonic Realism, Necoaesthesis— serves as the sigil of beautiful collapse, a glyph of the glitch, the ruinous sublime, the possessed text, and the poet-as-decaying node in the network of signal and rot.

Samuel Beckett: To him who has nothing it is forbidden not to relish filth. To decompose is to live too, I know, I know, don’t torment me, but one sometime forgets. The shadow in the end is no better than the substance. I speak in the present tense, it is so easy to speak in the present tense, when speaking of the past.

Emil Cioran: For decay is an agent of destruction, a virus, a disguised disease, and the gravest danger, though a wonderfully vague one, for our red corpuscles. To live around decay is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear in your veins, the rustle of tears.

Rainer Maria Rilke: There is death in life and it astonishes me that people pretend not to know that: death whose pitiless presence we feel in each change we survive, for one must learn how to die slowly. We must learn how to die: there’s our whole life.^{[9]Rilke, Letter to Mimi Romanelli, December 8, 1907.}

Agnes Rouzier: My dear Rilke, Revolt. Disorder. Exuberance. Decomposition. Dread. Horror. Fright. Terror. You will not emerge, not from silence nor from immobility.^{[10]my-blackout}

Louis Armand: Humanity’s ‘end’ (like everything else) is that it will, for all intents & purposes, never have been: evolution implies it. And yet, this never having been, causally orphaned in the fictional spacetime of “history”, persists in leaving traces.^{[11]Entropology, Page 25.}

Nicola Deane: Decay signals the future and advances renewed contexts, through the fundamental breaking down of all things (materials/systems) to continue the life force or vital impetus that inevitably breeds new forms amongst the detritus. Decay as code is continuity in the lines, patterns and pathways – coding that carry things/beings/life forth. Mould, for instance presents growth out of apparently nothing, and facilitates the patterns which we have observed. These inform our artistic explorations in making visible the anarchival forces that transfigure archives. This kind of aesthetic value has a profound impact on our perception of the past and our sense of heritage in the present. Perceiving the value of decay in the archive involves re-evaluating the material status of the artefact as dynamic, – responsive to organic processes, continuous with the passage of time. This includes acknowledging decay as a form of historical documentation.

David Markson: A woman’s body is not a mass of flesh in a state of decomposition, on which the green and purplish spots denote a complete state of cadaveric putrefaction. An early critic presumed to inform Renoir.

Roy Blumenthal: Decay is a form of growth. A post-Nihilist aesthetic.

Kenji Siratori: A new age blooms amidst the ruins of origins, where the past dissolves and possibilities emerge. It is in the act of obliterating the familiar that we pave the way for the extraordinary. Embrace the destruction of the old, for within its debris lies the seed of transformation. From the ashes, a new narrative unfolds, charting the course of an age yet to be written. The annihilation of origins births the dawn of untold possibilities, beckoning us to explore the uncharted territories of existence.^{[12]Kenji Siratori Facebook post June 2 2023.}

Asubha: The theme Decay Without Mourning is forcing us to reopen the basic epistemological questions and look to structural reorganization of the world of knowledge, precisely because of the systemic polycrisis we seem stuck in. But who can define what decay is? It is a word that points to the sheer impossibility of definition. Decay is a manifestation of the disorder of the world, of its entropic tendencies. Decay pays no respect to categorical boundaries. Decay makes focus impossible. Yet precisely because of its formlessness, decay harbours an unlimited creative potential. Every cycle of life starts in decay, even if it ends in silence: between birth and death, decay and silence, lies everything of form and significance. Let us begin then by defining decay as a fundamentally relational phenomenon. Within this relational model decay is an inherently elusive force. It will disappear the moment you try to put you finger on it. Following this logic, which is native to information theory and corresponds to our everyday understanding, decay can be regarded as an abject and external force. Informed by the idea that decay is the unwanted antithesis of life and systems, we have been trying to clean up our world ever since the Enlightenment, the dream of pure reason, aiming to eliminate or at least reduce decay. However, when we look honestly at our world today, it is extremely chaotic and much more decayed than the clear and distinct systems that we have imagined and created to make sense of our surroundings. In our rapidly changing, highly mediated, and globalised society, decay – and thus uncertainty –  seems to permeate all aspects of our lives. We should therefore treat decay as a fundamental component of all knowledge and communication systems. Decay is the indelible and pervasive component of our engagement with the world. Decay, absolutely uninterrupted, is the perennial substance. We must distinguish here between parasitic perturbation (decay as a disruptive and transformative relational force) and background decay (decay that prefigures phenomena). It is the latter that is foundational. Decay cannot be a phenomenon: every phenomenon is separated from decay. As soon as the phenomenon appears it leaves the decay, as soon as a form looms up or pokes through, it reveals itself as veiling decay. So, decay is not a matter of phenomenology, it is a matter of being itself – decay is ontological. Decay settles in subjects as well as in objects, in sound as well as in space, in the observers as well as in the observed, decay moves through the means of the tools of observation, whether material or logical, hardware or software, constructed channels or languages; decay is part of the the in-itself, part of the for-itself, decay cuts across the oldest and surest philosophical divisions, yes, decay is metaphysical. We are often unaware of it. However, decay is omnipresent and inevitable rather than secondary and contingent. It surrounds and forms us, is beneath and beyond us, as the omnipresent, incaclulable, and unpredictable raw material from which life comes and where it goes. Decay remains out of reach—not because it is absorbed in a system of meaning, but because background decay is permanent, it is the ground of the world, the backdrop of the universe. Navigating decay is essential for our understanding of the chaos and the multiplicity of the reality that we are part of. Accepting decay as the constitutive component of all knowledge systems is an attempt to break free from today’s fear of uncertainty and an attempt to reconnect to the subliminal, Chthonic forces in the world.

decay(v.)

late 15c., “to decrease,” also “to decline, deteriorate, lose strength or excellence,” from Anglo-French decair, Old North French decair (Old French decheoir, 12c., Modern French déchoir) “to fall, set (of the sun), weaken, decline, decay,” from Vulgar Latin *decadere “to fall off,” from de “off” (see de-) + Latin cadere “to fall” (from PIE root *kad- “to fall”).

Transitive sense of “cause to deteriorate, cause to become unsound or impaired” is from 1530s. Sense of “decompose, rot” is from 1570s. Related: Decayed; decaying.

also from late 15c.

decay(n.)

mid-15c., “deterioration, decline in value, gradual loss of soundness or perfection,” from decay (v.). Obsolete or archaic in reference to fortune or property; meaning “decomposition of organic tissue” is from 1590s. In physics, the meaning “gradual decrease in radioactivity” is by 1897.

de-

active word-forming element in English and in many verbs inherited from French and Latin, from Latin de “down, down from, from, off; concerning” (see de), also used as a prefix in Latin, usually meaning “down, off, away, from among, down from,” but also “down to the bottom, totally” hence “completely” (intensive or completive), which is its sense in many English words.

As a Latin prefix it also had the function of undoing or reversing a verb’s action, and hence it came to be used as a pure privative — “not, do the opposite of, undo” — which is its primary function as a living prefix in English, as in defrost (1895), defuse (1943), de-escalate (1964), etc. In some cases, a reduced form of dis-.

*kad-

Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to fall.”

It might form all or part of: accident; cadaver; cadence; caducous; cascade; case (n.1); casual; casualty; casuist; casus belli; chance; cheat; chute (n.1); coincide; decadence; decay; deciduous; escheat; incident; occasion; occident; recidivist.

It might also be the source of: Sanskrit sad- “to fall down;” Latin casus “a chance, occasion, opportunity; accident, mishap,” literally “a falling,” cadere “to fall, sink, settle down, decline, perish;” Armenian chacnum “to fall, become low;” perhaps also Middle Irish casar “hail, lightning.”

from etymonline sourced Wednesday 3 June, 2026.

Decay Archive Objects (DAOs) are never finished, they refute the notion of finality. There is no endgame. The process continues and suggests entropy but also flirts with the idea of no beginning. How can a process with no beginning and no end be archived? Decay Archive Objects suggest delirium because they utilize purported “objects” in the archive to demonstrate that no such things ever existed, not really. Archiving suggests something else, something other than those things it would purport to archive. Archiving detached from objects, from the world of things, invites entry into the endless re-invention of the Decay Archive Objects (DAOs) whose only goal is the will to replicate, endlessly; a Be-ing that is both omnivorous and beyond time, eternally hungry and relentlessly chewing. In Decay Archive Objects (DAOs) the boundaries dissolve and the possibilities unfold.

The Decay Archive Object (DAO)

The concept of the object in decay art is radically challenged, as the emphasis is not on the individual object but rather on the collaborative and non-linear processes that create(decay) the work. In decay art, the object can be seen as a node within a larger network of influences and “collaborators”, and the Decay Archive Object (DAO) itself can be seen as an emergent property of this network rather than the sole creation of an “author”. This blurring of authorship reflects the larger theory of decay archive art (DAA) which emphasizes the interconnectedness and entanglement of all things and de-emphasizes the role of the human actor.

The most powerful aspect of Decay Archive Art (DAA) lies in its ability to question the nature of the existence of the object itself which has always been temporary. Decay Archive Art (DAA) is a form that does not attempt to merely reflect a fixed reality, but to create it anew, to explore the boundaries of how processes emerge and to push them beyond into uncharted territories. Decay Archive Art (DAA) is a form of rebellion against the limitations of the human mind and the boundaries of our current understanding of the world.

Decay consumes and transforms all that it encounters, breaking down the barriers between the Decay Archive Object (DAO) and other, physical and digital, and creating new forms of consciousness and identity in the process. The Decay Archive Object (DAO) is both itself and a process. To identify it as an object only is to miss the point of the quantum nature of Decay. Decay is never static. The Decay Archive Object (DAO) is always moving. This movement which is emergence always takes us into the future. Hence decay itself is generative, the apparent destruction of archival objects by decay is a form of time travel. Decay transports the object into the future. It is an art form directly collaborating with Time.

Philip K. Dick: In Ubik the forward moving force of time (or time-force expressed as an ergic field) has ceased. All changes result from that. Forms regress. The substrate is revealed. Cooling (entropy) is allowed to set in unimpeded. Equilibirum is affected by the vanishing of the forward-moving time force-field. The bare bones, so to speak, of the world, our world, are revealed. We see the Logos addressing the many living entities. Assisting and advising them. We are now aware of the Atman everywhere. The press of time on everything, having been abolished, reveals many elements underlying our phenomena. If time stops, this is what takes place, these changes. Not frozen-ness, but revelation.^{[13]The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, Edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2011, ISBN 978-0-547-54925-5.}

Meditation on the repulsiveness of the body
Asubha Bhavana

(A translation of Pali stanzas)

1. It is the body that we call “myself.” So do others refer to as “me.” On seeing the body, which is often unconscious though sometimes conscious one should reflect on its repulsive nature.
2. The body that consists of 32 unpleasant parts: solids, liquids, gases and empty space is repulsive in respect of colour, shape and smell.
3. Things that are within the body are more disgusting than what comes out of it. Even though the contents that fall off the body are supposed to be filthier than those inside.
4. Just like a worm born in filth, the body is also born in filth, like a cesspit this body is full of filth.
5. Just as fat pours out of a pot even so impure matter flows out of this body.
6. Like a cesspit, this body is a host to millions of putrefying organisms.
   

Rationale for contemplating the repulsiveness of the body:

The Buddha has referred to 32 parts of the body for reflection during meditation (MN 119): The Blessed One said: “How is mindfulness of the body developed, how is it pursued, so as to be of great fruit & great benefit? “Just as if a sack with openings at both ends were full of various kinds of grain — wheat, rice, mung beans, kidney beans, sesame seeds, husked rice — and a man with good eyesight, pouring it out, were to reflect, “This is wheat. This is rice. These are mung beans. These are kidney beans. These are sesame seeds. This is husked rice.” In the same way, the monk reflects on this very body from the soles of the feet on up, from the crown of the head on down, surrounded by skin and full of various kinds of repulsive things:

In this body there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, muscles, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, lungs, spleen, bladder, large intestines, small intestines, stomach, contents of intestines, brain, bile, mucus, pus, blood, sweat, fat/oil, tears, ear-wax, saliva, nasal mucus, fluid in the joints, urine.”

• This meditation helps overcome the normal lustful adoration of the body, especially during sexual engagements. It also helps overcome feelings of inferiority and superiority in comparison with other bodies.
• When we are attracted to the human body covered with fashionable clothing, jewelry, perfumes and makeup, we often forget the real nature of the body. This meditation reminds us of the real nature of the body.
• The purpose of this meditation is not to develop hatred to people but to reflect on the disgusting nature of the human body. If this meditation turns into a hatred for others, one should recognize the disgusting nature of one’s own body and practice meta meditation towards all beings.
• This mediation practice can be deepened by using visual aids such as diagrams and pictures of human anatomy.
• The reader is encouraged to refer to the kdyagatdsati sutta in the Middle Length Sayings of the Buddha (MN, 119), for further details.

Asubha (Decaying corpse meditation)
Kalebara Bhavana

The Buddha once said, Bhikkhus: “If seeing a corpse thrown into the grave, which is one, two, or three days dead, swollen, bloated, bluish-black, full of filth; one should draw this conclusion regarding one’s own body: This body too has this nature, has this destiny, and cannot escape it.”

If one should see a corpse thrown to the burial ground, gnawed and partly eaten by crows, hawks, vultures, dogs or jackals, and creeping with all kinds of worms and maggots; one should draw this conclusion regarding one’s own body: This body too has this nature, will also become exactly like that, and cannot ever escape it.

If one should see a chain of bones, flesh hanging from it, splattered with blood, held together by the sinews… or bones disconnected and scattered in all directions, here a hand-bone, there a foot-bone;
here the pelvis, the spine, the skull…. or bones, now bleached, pale white and looking like sea-shells… or black rotting bones finally crumbling into dust; One should think: This body of mine too has this nature, has this destiny, and cannot escape..it. (Source: MN 10, DN 22.)

Rationale for contemplating the decaying corpse:

Which Objects are suitable for who?

Swollen Corpse: Those who lust after beauty of form.

Discoloured Corpse: Those who lust after beauty of the skin and complexion.

Festering Corpse: Those who lust after a sweet-smelling body, using perfumes.

Fissured Corpse: Those who lust after the firmness and solidity of the body.

Mangled Corpse: Those who lust after fullness of the flesh, such as the breasts.

Dismembered Corpse: Those who lust after graceful movements of the body.

Cut & Dismembered Corpse: Those who lust after perfection of the joints of the body.

Blood-stained Corpse: Those who lust after beauty produced by adornments.

Worm-infested Corpse: Those who are attached to the idea that the body is “me” or “mine.”

Skeleton: Those who lust after perfection of the teeth and nails.