HERD/Atmospherics

🌬️ HERD / Atmospherics

A session presented by the Institute for Contemporary Critical Thought

This gathering is part of an ongoing intellectual series centred on the concept of the HERD — hosted by Kari Lancaster, Marsha Rosengarten, and Nele Jensen. Across its sessions, the series reimagines the herd through multiple lenses: as Species, The Masses, Atmospherics, Population, Kin, and beyond.

💨 About This Session

Molly McPhee and Nerea Calvillo Gonzalez lead this particular gathering, which frames the herd as fundamentally atmospheric — a collective condition shaped by diffusions, suffusions, putrefactions, and pollutions that bind bodies together through shared exposure.

Rather than a social or biological formation, the herd here is understood as an environmental and affective phenomenon — governed, composed, and disrupted by air itself.

🔍 Key Themes Explored

• 🌫️ How perceptions of toxicity and miasma shape collective infrastructures
• 🤝 The material formation of collectivity through atmospheric management
• 🧪 Sensing herd de/compositions via co-exposures and shared permeability
• ⚖️ Air as both a medium of discipline and harm, and a site of protective logic
• 🏳️‍🌈 The queer politics of pollution and decay as generative forces of resistance
• 🌱 Contested coexistence and the emergence of new forms of collective life

📚 Pre-Reading

Participants will receive preparatory readings in advance to support thoughtful engagement with the session's themes.

🎟️ Secure your spot here