X E N O Editorial

COLLAPSING STRUCTURES

Being Towards Death, Mike Corrao (Crop Circle Press, 2025)

Patricio Uribe (@e.d.o.o.m)

PDF: https://xeno.cl/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/collapsing-structures.pdf

Six abstract figures. Named.

Yr wounds [sic] open like a window

Where i’m thrashing

In the garden’s sepulchers

Opening of the text. Opening of the body: wound. Openings that correspond to closures, but asymmetrical closures, in which the openings are embedded.

I see the structure

The complex of structures

AN ARKITEKTUR OF UNEARTHLY DIMENSION

Substructure subsumed in superstructure. But not a unitary structure: a structure not of objects, but of equivalences.

37 human femurs

OR-

A mesh of artifacts 

FLOATING

Determine operations between infrastructure and superstructure. Determine equivalencies.

Inside the wound

Nothing works [HAHA]

When you thrash /

You thrash at nothing

When you cry /

Yr account stays empty

Another structure is defined: opening of labor, closing of capital. The relationship between opening and closing is defined: extraction.

Translate money into pain /

Translate pain into property /

Pain: general equivalent. Economic infrastructure: opening of labor, extraction of value, closure of capital as appropriation. Biological infrastructure: opening of life (body), extraction of flesh, closure of death (butchery) as availability. Linguistic infrastructure: opening of speech, extraction of the text, closure of language as symbolic order. Equivalence: value = flesh = text = pain.

This structure /

[cont.] is difficult to depict

It doesn’t seem to reach up

-or down,

But towards itself

Recursion: the structure looping back on itself. Recursive extraction. Repetition of equivalence. Superstructure of pain.

INT.

the entrance to a sanguine chamber

The gore hardens / in-

to fixtures

Ornamenting the walls

w/ a baroque

Arrangement of spikes

Entrance to the infrastructure. Exit from the superstructure. Motifs of the six abstract figures repeating, composing, deforming. Initial condition. The moment of exploitation arrives.

Open yr wounds

We are inside the wound

Open yr wound

[…] & look

Where it has yet to seal,

embed yr teeth

Draw the language /

[cont.] from its blood

&speakspeakspeak[…]

The structure of figures disappears. The structure of black blocks appears. Barely any space for text. Or no space at all, overwritten in white. The sacrifice begins. Text drowned out. It continues. Sentences. It continues. Fragments. It continues. It ends. The figures return. But they are not the same. Multiplied and deformed until unrecognizable.

WHEN YOU LOOK-

into the mirror

[…]

Yr image has changed [!]

Yr body is outlined /

[cont.] by a baroque arrange-

-ment of spirals, spikes,

all dried from blood

The extraction process has ended.

A GLYPH ITSELF INTO YR PALM

The glyph figure appears, the result of the extraction process.

The shape of the glyph resembles /

[cont.] a rorschach test

Resembles a mirror vibrating

Yr gaze / affixed

TO ITS SURFACE

Think-

-ing of the gut beneath

Churning iits /

[cont.] perpetual stews

Projection of what is extracted in the infrastructure towards the superstructure: value = flesh = text = pain → commodity.

PROJECTED INTO YR FLAIL CHEST

AN IMAGE OF THE WOUND

Glyph: image of pain, image of equivalence, image of extraction. Available. Tradable.

I open the wound / I close the wound […]

Repetition of the cycle. Opening, extraction, projection, closure. Subsumption of the superstructure over the infrastructure. Closure.

If you will not

pay

Then the GARDEN will take /

[cont.] up its own

residence

Within

you

Pull its sigils

deeper

Become

further

entombed

Repetition of the cycle. Deepening of the cycle. Opening even more, extracting even more, projecting even more, closing even more. Absolute closure.

You are a bomb in my stomach

Tumescent, yellowing

Too cowardly to detonate

Limit of the cycle. Imminence of collapse. Indefinite postponement of collapse.

BACK TO CALM

ATTUNES TO THE AMBIANCE OF THE LANDSCAPE

Postponed collapse. But the image of the extraction of the infrastructure is at the same time the image of the destruction of the superstructure.

The building sayss-

You cannot historicize my behaviours bb

I understand servitude

I am an image of destruction

The commodity-glyph as an image of deferred collapse, extraction of the infrastructure that is nothing more than the extraction from itself of the superstructure. Self-destruction. A second death, not as a negation of the death that is the superstructure, but as a deepening of death, an irretrievable zero toward which the production of units is directed as projections of extraction.

And yet it cannot stop repeating itself.

In this landscape of budding death-threats

Our icon dances [!]