What is an iPhone, really? It’s circuits, metal, glass, battery, microphone, magnets, more. But it’s also a portal to our social lives, a vehicle for our emotional life, a tether to work, love, and sex. It can be surprising how little we tend to actually deeply think about our phones as objects. When was the last time you cleaned your phone? Asked yourself what was happening inside of it? Felt its weight in your hand, without looking at its screen? For most people in NYC, the phone frequently ceases to be an object and instead is an extension of ourselves. Entire lives are lived through it – economically, socially, even sexually. It not only informs but shapes how we think, communicate, and connect. From being the first thing we look to when we wake up to the source of a late-night scroll, a smartphone bookends our days.

In July, Chimeras Collective wrapped up a five-session class called Becoming Cyborg, taught in Prospect Park (and in Park Slope, weather necessitating). Our practice tends to orient us towards the ecological, which usually conjures up imagery of meadows and forests, dirt and bugs. Yet we believe that we exist within an ecology of technology, that we are an ecology of technology. To truly live well in 21st century New York City, we have to consider how our being is wrapped up in a tangled mess of wires, devices, wifi networks, AI chatbots, and countless other technologies. To do otherwise is to conjure up an artificial separation between nature and culture, a separation we seek to compost in our practice.

Autumn is on the horizon! We love this time of year, as it feels very chimeric. Transformations abound as humans and nonhumans alike adapt to changing conditions and prepare for the winter. And while we love these months for the cozy sweaters, fall foliage, and seasonal cheer, we also love it for its messy and frantic energy. Spare us the sanitized anthropocentric narrative of a Christian Girl Autumn. Instead, we’re burying our own nuts for winter, becoming creatures and cyborgs and spending our days poking around in trash piles and abandoned lots. Call it Chimeric Girl Autumn (in a chic gender neutral kind of way). Hope you’ll join us!

This fall, we’re continuing our explorations of the chimeric borderlands within us and within our city, with two classes and a series of gatherings. More info below!

Join us! As NYC changes, so do each of us. Explore these changes in yourself and in your home as we think with these four nonhuman neighbors:

A rat scurries across your path as you walk out of the subway station at night. A cockroach emerges from underneath your bathroom sink when you go to brush your teeth. A flock of pigeons descend upon your cracked-open window.

Did you feel yourself squirm when you read these statements? Did your eyebrows rise, your nose wrinkle, your stomach churn?

In June, Chimeras Collective wrapped up a seminar at the Strother School of Radical Attention, CREATURES, in which we asked these exact questions. By studying rats, pigeons, and cockroaches, we explored how disgust colors our relationship to urban creatures. Attention, here, allows us to examine why we tend to be disgusted by urban pests — and whether we can turn said disgust into fascination.

Mythology is full of monsters. Grotesque beasts, monstrous spirits, giant creatures wreaking havoc on the humble folk trying to make their life on the land. It seems humans of disparate origins share some inherent preoccupation with such monsters. One such was described by Homer in the Iliad: "she was of divine stock not of men, in the fore part a lion, in the hinder a serpent, and in the midst a goat, breathing forth in terrible wise the might of blazing fire." Thus, the chimera was born (or, at least, described). Like many of our mythological monsters, she is a vulgar being, forged of some unnatural union between creatures that should never intermix. Or so we might think.

In the millenia since the birth of the chimera, the term has taken on new meanings, across mythology, literature, and biology to more abstractly describe a hybrid creature. But it still retains some of the mysticism of its origins – the fire-breathing lion/serpent/goat conjured to strike fear into the hearts of men. A term rich with layered meanings, the chimera always hints and something deeper to be excavated. How does the chimera come to be? In what ways do its distinctive parts work together? And why is our primary reaction to the chimera so often disgust or horror?

We’re growing the Chimeras Collective, motivated by these questions. We believe that exploring mythology – the stories we tell ourselves during a particular time period – goes hand in hand with exploring science – the ways we answer questions about how meaning is made and molded – and exploring embodiment – how understanding happens through the sensory body instead of the mind. Somewhere within the triangulation of science, art, and technology, our chimeric spaces ask: Can science be embodied? Can wonder be a practice? Can creatures be collaborators?