THE THING 40th BIRTTHDAY
The thing is a living organism that can replicate everything, wonder and nightmare, something that is everything and nothing at the same time or maybe it does, maybe it has an original form and I wonder what it will be like.
But that which copies the thing, does it know that is part of the thing, that the thing inhabits it? This means that our memories, the matrix that we call ourselves, can be bitten, swallowed and then recomposed. The Thing triggers our fear of losing identity, whatever is that makes us “unique”. But it’s precisely because it deals with that from the cellular point of view, the individuals within the individuals, the parts, the parts that make life live, that The Thing can mess our conception of self forever, are we in a part of us? For The Thing yes, maybe only for it.
The problem of the limit or the unlimited, of infinite reproduction that makes The Thing move and gives it purpose. What will happen when the Thing assimilates everything? Will everything go on as usual with no organism to oppose it, when all meiosis and mitosis is part of The Thing? To ponder about the limit we offer Science, which can do little in the face of brute force and the subterfuge of a being that does not discriminate the differences between the bodies but rather everything becomes power, ecumenical, mixed.
For me, the aesthetic value of The Thing lies precisely in how The Thing is capable of blurring the edges of individuals, turning them into pure biomass or soft information, but at the same time is capable of producing SOMETHING, a multiplicity of things that send us into endless terror, or a doppelganger that casts suspicion in all directions.
For all this I want to wish The Thing a very happy 40th birthday! I love you very much!
