Toward Extinction To Ward Off Extinction

Toward Extinction To Ward Off Extinction took place earlier this month in Lille. We heard fascinating talks by Ursula Heise, Jesse Oak Taylor and Nicholas Royle, who was accompanied by a Thomas Hardy poem, a Lawrence short story and a talking mole, who was articulately angry about a lot of things. There were fine papers from all over the planet and we saw two powerful films directed by Sylvère Petit, Ani-Maux (2017, Les Films d'Ici Méditerranée) and Les Assoiffés (2014, C-P Productions). My talk thought about the effects of fear, our capacity for reading and how that capacity might be supported and extended by various art forms, especially painting. My focus was on Titian's Death of Actaeon.