Elae Moss

Elæ Moss (b. Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, 1979) is a multimodal artist-researcher, curator, and facilitator designing speculative human, institutional and ecological systems through the iteration of open source strategies for social and structural change.

Moss’s work invites the public to engage with what the artist terms “Speculative Solidarities,” employing adaptive, site-specific analog and digital media, research, performance, sound, archive and organizational design driven strategic possibilities for emergent human and post-human ecofutures. Their frameworks for considering and reconditioning human neuro-somatic, interpersonal and interspecies infrastructures offer protocols for preparing our bodies and systems for the coming crises and those already underway. Recent projects include: Pedagogy and Public Action, the Year One: SEED LAB and HUB open source scaleable project protocols, Publication and Public Action, the APRIORI Field Station at STWST/Ars Electronica, the Speculative Resilience Radical Practice Library for Bushwick Open Studios and the Anarchist Bookfair at Judson Church, How to Human: Disruptor Mechanism Protocol for the Segal Center’s Performing Knowledge Festival, Building Interpersonal Infrastructures at SOHO20, and Collaborative Precarity Bodyhackingwith storm budwig and Cory Tamler for the Exponential Festival. Recent curatorial projects include Liz Liguori: Light of Hand at La Mama Galleria, [Move Semantics]: Rules of Unfolding at EFA Project Space, and the ongoing 2022 “Year-Book: Autonomous Mechanics Radical Field Cohort,” for Liminal Lab. Publications include Vestiges, Big Echo, Tagvverk, Matters of Feminist Practice, The Transgender Narratives Anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, and many more. Books include: Ground, Blood Altas, Overview Effect, Sweet and Low: Indefinite Singular, Bodies of Work (in collaboration with painter Georgia Elrod), and The Precarity Bodyhacking Work-Book and Guide.

Moss is the developer / founder of The Operating System / Liminal Lab, as well as for its Open Resource Archive, Hub, and Project Protocol. They are an Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute, where they are currently serving as coordinator of the First Year Architecture Writing Program in 2023. They are also currently a Fellow with the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College.

BA, Sociology-Anthropology / Studio Art, Interpretation Theory Concentration, Swarthmore College. Thesis: “Measure Twice :: A Case for Socio-Spatial Practice.” Senior Solo Shows: “re/presentation and re/production,” at the Kaori Gallery, 2000, “Urban interMEDIAry” at the List Gallery, 2001.

Study at the University of Parma and Paolo Toschi Art Institute in Italian Studies and traditional interior and decorative arts, 1999.

MUP, Master in Urban Design, CCNY School of Architecture. Thesis : “Two if By Sea :: A Water-Based Solution for Sunset Park, Brooklyn.”

Coursework complete towards PhD, Cultural Anthropology (with American Studies Concentration), The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Public Action Teaching Fellow / MFA Candidate, Bennington College / CAPA (Center for the Institute of Public Action, 2022-24. Ongoing public exhibitions / programs: “Publication as Public Action,” “Pedagogy as Public Action,” “YEAR ONE: Seed Lab,” “YEAR ONE: Hub,” “Future Histories / Speculative Sites.”

For a more complete list of publications, including multimedia resources downloadable files please see: https://onlywhatican.net/media/

For information about my interdisciplinary, public projects and practice visit: https://onlywhatican.net/practice/

Public pedagogy, workshops, lectures and other materials can be found here: https://onlywhatican.net/facilitation/

PUBLICATIONS in BOOKS and ANTHOLOGIES include:

• “Languaging a Future for Lovepersons: Speculative Strategies Towards Radical Trans/cendence,” in the Transgender Narratives Anthology, 2021. [download pdf]
• “Troubling (Dis)embodied Practice and Pedagogy in Bioprecarious Times : Operations Towards a Radical Recentering,” limited edition chapbook in Urgent Possibilities: Writing on Feminist Practices and Emergent Pegagogies, Eohippus Labs, 2020. [download pdf]
• Sweet and Low: Indefinite Singular, writings and experiments, The Trouble With Bartleby / The Operating System & Liminal Lab, March 2020.
• “And I in the middle-ground found: Documentation as Self-hack, Sigil, and Blueprint,” in Matters of Feminist Practice, inaugural print issue; Belladonna*, February 2020. [download pdf]
• “Terminations : One,” excerpted for Choice Words: Writers on Abortion anthology, edited by Annie Finch. (Haymarket Books, 2020). Full online publication as part of the ‘Lifting the Burden of Shame‘ series, April 2018.
• Collaborative Precarity Bodyhacking Work-Book and Resource Guide, with Cory Tamler and storm budwig. The Operating System, 2019. [In conjunction with workshops for budwig’s “Resistance Fantasies” residency, as part of the Exponential Festival, Target Margin Theatre. Brooklyn NY January 2019.]
• “In Memory of Feasible Grace,” Panthalassa Pamphlet from Tea & Tattered Pages Press, 2018.    [This para-academic long poem / footnote diptych was inspired by the work of Paolo Soleri, and is part of my ongoing work around a/evolution.] [download pdf]
• “In Theory,” in Resist Much / Obey Little : Inaugural Poems to the Resistance, 2017.
• “movements,” (excerpts) in The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, Brooklyn Poets / Brooklyn Arts Press, 2017.
• Ground and Blood Atlas, both collections of works from 2007-2012, The Trouble With Bartleby. Originally published as limited edition handmade chapbooks, 2012. These reissued editions, 2017.
• “BIG BANG THEORY,” in The Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, 2011.

PUBLICATIONS in JOURNALS and MAGAZINES include:

• “sèkpexën” – in the No, Dear “Water” issue, 2022. 
• “Heteroglossolalia / Forked Tongues in Criptime,” from Up I’m a Chair, Down I’m a Stair, in Vestiges_05: Lacunae, memory as a morgue, from Black Sun Lit, 2020.
• “Nonlinear Alchemical Disruptor Mechanisms :: Tripartite Spellwork and Documenting Presence :: Disruptor Mechanisms Field Protocol,” in Tagvverk Temp Editions 02: What Got Left in the Future, 2020. [full pdf at Tagvverk]
• “Speculative Resilience Field Practices / #documentingpresence Field Notes” – in Guest Poetry Journal, No. 7, ed. by Susana Gardner
• a [*dyeu-] – in Poems from muses / positive magnets #6
• “elegy for the almost gone / termination codon,” in Big Echo
• “wəˈTHaoŏt,wəˈTHout,””Therianthropy,” and “Quinta Essentia” in the Philadelphia Supplement vol. 2
• “FATAL RUN_TIME ERROR,” in No, Dear; Issue 21, “States.”
• “Editorial: Radical Open Access and the Future of Libraries :: In the face of enforced scarcity, a case for open access: taking distribution into our own hands,” In Boog City 120
• “Dis-/ease Control: [Central]**” in CDC Poetry Project
• “market value,” part of Yes Poetry’s #metoo series
• excerpts from “Body Oddy Oddy” in LIVE MAG #14

• “sèkpexën” – in the No, Dear “Water” issue, 2022. 
• “Heteroglossolalia / Forked Tongues in Criptime,” from Up I’m a Chair, Down I’m a Stair, in Vestiges_05: Lacunae, memory as a morgue, from Black Sun Lit, 2020.
• “Nonlinear Alchemical Disruptor Mechanisms :: Tripartite Spellwork and Documenting Presence :: Disruptor Mechanisms Field Protocol,” in Tagvverk Temp Editions 02: What Got Left in the Future, 2020. [full pdf at Tagvverk]
• “Speculative Resilience Field Practices / #documentingpresence Field Notes” – in Guest Poetry Journal, No. 7, ed. by Susana Gardner
• a [*dyeu-] – in Poems from muses / positive magnets #6
• “elegy for the almost gone / termination codon,” in Big Echo
• “wəˈTHaoŏt,wəˈTHout,””Therianthropy,” and “Quinta Essentia” in the Philadelphia Supplement vol. 2
• “FATAL RUN_TIME ERROR,” in No, Dear; Issue 21, “States.”
• “Editorial: Radical Open Access and the Future of Libraries :: In the face of enforced scarcity, a case for open access: taking distribution into our own hands,” In Boog City 120
• “Dis-/ease Control: [Central]**” in CDC Poetry Project
• “market value,” part of Yes Poetry’s #metoo series
• excerpts from “Body Oddy Oddy” in LIVE MAG #14