Subterranean choreographies: ruin and silicon

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between body, book and technical infrastructure through the notion of “subterranean choreography.” Its points of departure are my text Choreography for climatic anxieties (Caesar, 2026) and SUBTERRÂNIA/SUBTERRÂNIA 2 by Hélio Oiticica (1969), articulated with a reflection on heat, weight, gravity and materiality as constitutive dimensions of knowledge. The analysis brings together the printed book and the digital device, understanding both as provisional reorganizations of terrestrial matter – cellulose, minerals, silicon – embedded in historical regimes of extraction and climatic control. In dialogue with contemporary debates on infrastructure, ecology and technology, the article argues that reading and digital use are situated bodily practices dependent on specific thermal, energetic and geopolitical conditions. The text uses falling as writing style, and, rather than a metaphor of failure, falling is conceived as an aesthetic and political operator that displaces the modern verticality of knowledge toward an attention to the subsoil. By linking art, materiality and technology, the text proposes to understand knowledge as infrastructural and gravitational practice.