PERIPHERAL OSMOSIS

Digging a pit, jama, in era of perpetual decay, when something is constantly falling into it, is a Sisyphean task. But we are getting used to it; after all, it has almost become folklore lately.

Nothing, and thus not even this pit, can be thought about without context – without a connection to the environment in which everything forms an inseparable whole, an overlapping arrangement. Situations, organisms, human behavior, in fact, everything exists in its form precisely when there is an environment in which these phenomena appear and manifest – as if by themselves.

If the environment creates extreme phenomena, its center often collapses under its weight, and its edges, the peripheries, begin to absorb properties from other environments more strongly, thus changing their qualities, nature, and character.

This phenomenon could be aptly named – let’s call it peripheral osmosis. We often observe it in human-created environments as well. We refer to it as a pressure towards change. It is a set of practices that challenge, provoke, criticize, deconstruct, recombine, reformulate, shift, dislocate, threaten, or reject local (central) standards, typically emerging from below.

Our environment is JAMA.

It is already mixing nicely within it. It is almost boiling, also from below, from a well-fertilized cultural substrate, on a spectrum ranging from simple effortfulness to local legends to artistic peripheries.

At JAMA 78, we will explore the substrate where it all ripens and bubbles. Džumelec will take us on a thought expedition to one of the Štiavnica’s many pits, while Robo Švarc will guide us through a historical introduction to civil resistance and the “DIY revolution”. We will celebrate ordinary inventiveness, both in art and in the kitchen – Dominik Hlinka will connect us with rural fantasy, and Dávid Koronczi with culinary magic. We will explore just intonation from non-European peripheries at the concerts of Catherine Lamb and EnsembleSpectrum.

From living rooms and secondhand bookstores, (pop)cultural peripheries will arrive at JAMA: fandom and community creation – in a lecture by Ján Kralovič on sci-fi fanzines in Czechoslovakia, which shaped past visions of humanity about the possibilities of future humankinds.

We will map local and global mythology. Kasha Potrohosh is already preparing spells and superstitions coded for the needs of late capitalism. We will also get to know the mythical seven women who either drowned in a tailings pond, died from a lightning strike, or perished in some other way. All depends on whom you ask.