Laughing As We Die : Cordially Yours, Al; Alphonso Lingis No Longer at the Threshold ….

Our dear Alphonso Lingis taught us to embrace objects as sacred; he reminded us how to challenge modernity's pernicious indoctrination-the temporal and spiritual flattening of our capacity to fully inhabit real life. This sacred imagines a paradigm shift, an invitation to difference in contrast with the conversion implied in capitalist-persuasion technologies and behavioural engineering. Con-spiring with Lingis through my photographic performances, I explore the fertility of such precarious manifestations to generate new life through unexpected alliances-a polytopia of creative collaborations with synergistically non-human ecosystems. Fluctuations of improvisation, a mutual commitment to enter unfamiliar territory, give us permission to be acutely vulnerable-a willingness to collectively step into the unknown. Such promiscuous crossings underscore the interlocking mechanisms among multiple infrastructures that enable both collusion (perpetuating apathy and its concomitant loss of agency) and emancipation (allowing creativity and connectivity to flourish).