Tuesday, April 10th, 2018, 7PM
Je suis biomasse
HEAD – Genève, Boulevard Helvétique 9, 1205 Geneva, seminar room CCC, salle 27, 2nd floor
Biomass is primarily vegetal: wood, and crops (corn, sugar cane), and alcohol-based biofuels (ethanol) derived from plants. But, along with vegetation and on par with it, the term comprehends organic garbage and landfill gases (methane), animal manure and human sewage. What all these have in common is that, akin to conventional fossil fuels, they are expected to burn so as to supply energy, even if, in contrast to coal, oil, and natural gas, they are classified as renewable resources, springing up from a limitless stockpile. The fate prepared for all lifeforms, to be biomass is to be reduced to disorganised organic stuff. It is also to go up in smoke on the pyre of energy production. Je suis biomasse is a deindividuating speech act that identifies with a vanishing life, with life’s vanishing into dumped massiveness.