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Moss Berke, For a Future(s) Against Progress: Bog-Time and the Troubling of Ecological Grief, Kunstlicht 45, no. 3/4

17 February 2025

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Kunstlicht is an academic journal for visual culture.
Buy “The Swamp Potential” in our shop now!✨

ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 📝 For a

ARTICLE FROM OUR SWAMP POTENTIAL ISSUE 📝

For a Future(s) Against Progress: Bog-Time and the Troubling of Ecological Grief.
By Moss Berke.

“For a Future(s) Against Progress: Bog-time and the Troubling of Ecological Grief presents a re-reading of the phenomenon of ecological grief as informed by the melancholic temporalities embodied in boglands. Providing an ecologically-generative reframing of melancholia that brings forward its disruptive potential, boglands offer an alternative to capitalist chrononormativity, referred to in this article as “bog-time.” This is a heterogenous temporality where the past and present combine and intertwine to co-constitute futures. This article argues that by thinking from the example of boglands, we may be able to approach the widespread phenomenon of ecological grief, and recognise it for its potential to disrupt the supposed ongoingness of capitalist temporalities by demonstrating that the dead are necessary players in the crafting of more equitable futures. While ecological grief is presently recognised in most scholarship for expanding the boundaries of what is a grievable subject, this article contends that if learning from the bog, ecological grief can also trouble the temporal constrictions left implied in current theorisations of ecological grief. Resisting a narrow vision of the future, boglands demonstrate that time itself is cumulative in nature, and that conviviality with the dead is a necessary project in the time of mass death and destruction that has come to define the Anthropocene.”

You can now access this article for free on our website. To read the rest of the articles, you can order tijdschrift Kunstlicht online through the link in our bio! 💡

🌟LAUNCH EVENT | Tijdschrift Kunstlicht warmly w

🌟LAUNCH EVENT | Tijdschrift Kunstlicht warmly welcomes you to the launch event of our issue on ‘Reverberant Ecologies: On the Relational Impact of Sonic Practices, hosted at the Niuewe Instituut’s Research Centre (Rotterdam NL), on the evening of Thursday 13th March at 19:00-21:00

The event will centre around the question: “What does it mean for human and non-human entities to be ecologically and communally linked through sounds?” and will bring together contributors from both Kunstlicht and ‘Through Sounds, a project initiated by researcher Federica Notari at Nieuwe Institut. Invited speakers include Gabriel Paiuk, Nele Moller, Martina Raponi, and Colette Aliman.

We hope to see you there for an engaging and vibrant evening🌿. The event is free but please RSVP via the link in our bio as there are limited spots!

photo: Angelina Nonaj and Benni Cappini, Untitled For Now,
2023

#kunstlicht #academicjournal

Kunstlicht spotted at @athenaeumboekhandel ✨✨

Kunstlicht spotted at @athenaeumboekhandel ✨✨

Stop in Athenaeum to browse an incredible selection of books and take a peek at our latest issue THE SWAMP POTENTIAL, guest edited by @robbieschweiger and @suzievanstaaveren 🌱

“Going beyond the swamp’s ecological potential as carbon sinks and buffer zones between land and water in times of climate crisis, this issue of Kunstlicht positions swamps as entities, spaces, and communities where complexity, interspecies interdependence, and relationality take precedence over human domination and productivity. Contributions to this issue under-
score the swamp’s potential as a disruptive, polychronic space, resisting linear time and capitalist notions of progress. They explore how swamps preserve mythologies and provide material evidence that past and present, life and death are interconnected, and offer alternative ways of grieving and co-existing. Swamps, as spaces where many worlds fit, invite us to rethink our relationship with the environment, embracing uncertainty and doubt as generative forces for transformative thought.”

Get your issue through the link in our bio!

✨Kunstlicht spotted at Rijksmuseum Research Libr

✨Kunstlicht spotted at Rijksmuseum Research Library✨

Stop in for a cozy break from the winter weather to check out Reverberant Ecologies: On the Relational Impact of Sonic Practices, guest edited by Manuela Zammit, or our other Kunstlicht issues. ❄️

This issue explores the interconnectedness and interdependence that make up ecological systems and social formations through the affordances of sound and sonic practices. It is an exploration into the far and diverse reach of sound and sonic waves, materialising as a force of nature, a meditative encounter, an alchemical reaction, or an interspecies conversation.

Get your own copy through the shop link in our bio, and check our out latest issue: THE SWAMP POTENTIAL 🌱

NEW ISSUE 🌱 NEW ISSUE 🌬️ Just in time for

NEW ISSUE 🌱 NEW ISSUE 🌬️

Just in time for the holidays! Our second issue of 2024, The Swamp Potential, with guest editors @robbieschweiger and @suzievanstaaveren is out now!

“Going beyond the swamp’s ecological potential as carbon sinks and buffer zones between land and water in times of climate crisis, this issue of Kunstlicht positions swamps as entities, spaces, and communities where complexity, interspecies interdependence, and relationality take precedence over human domination and productivity. Contributions to this issue under-
score the swamp’s potential as a disruptive, polychronic space, resisting linear time and capitalist notions of progress. They explore how swamps preserve mythologies and provide material evidence that past and present, life and death are interconnected, and offer alternative ways of grieving and co-existing. Swamps, as spaces where many worlds fit, invite us to rethink our relationship with the environment, embracing uncertainty and doubt as generative forces for transformative thought.”

Get your issue through the link in our bio!

Come find us this Sunday 24 November at DRUK 2024

Come find us this Sunday 24 November at DRUK 2024 book fair at @paradisoadam ! ✨

Doors open at 12:00 until 16:00

We are very excited and honoured to be amongst all these great publishers. The annual book fair hosts more than 100 Dutch and Belgian exhibitors and has talks throughout the day.

Don’t miss it and get your tickets (€3,5) on the Paradiso website!

REMINDER: Call for Papers 📝⁠ ⁠ ONLINE CURAT

REMINDER: Call for Papers 📝⁠
⁠
ONLINE CURATING, Kunstlicht Vol. 46, no. 1-2⁠
⁠
We are excited to present our open call for the first issue of 2025 called ‘Online Curating’ guest edited by dr. Annet Dekker.⁠
⁠
Deadline: 5 September 2024⁠
Published: April 2025⁠
⁠
Online curating challenges traditional models and methods for presenting, accessing and distributing art in relation to the use of space (from white cubes to online spaces) and collaboration (from the expert curator or artist to technology and users). Whereas online exhibitions were perhaps something of a novelty at the time, in the last fifteen years online exhibitions are participating in a wider info-technical development that has and is impacting multiple areas of society and culture, and thus they have become relevant and of interest to people far beyond the various insider circles. In the ongoing exploration of aesthetics, space, time and narrative are frequently discussed topics in exhibition design and curating, in which the relationality and processuality are often emphasised. How is this conceptual triangle shaped in the web?⁠
⁠
We seek contributions that investigate the interdependency of curatorial praxis and the socio-technical space of the web. Subsequently, we are looking for analyses of how the diversification of curating practices impacts the value and experience of exhibitions. How does this affect the traditional authority of institutions and their curatorial agency? How might it influence the historical relevance or cultural memory of online exhibitions? Finally, we are particularly interested in contributions that explore how conventional institutions are developing new ways of sharing curatorial authority, with users and technology, thereby empowering users to produce new content and value.⁠
⁠
Read the full Call for Papers via the link in our bio!⁠
⁠
Image: https://www.neddam.info/madja-edelsteinxgomez – Madja Edelstein-Gomez, The Recombinants, 2017-20.

VISUAL CONTRIBUTION FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES

VISUAL CONTRIBUTION FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE ⁠
⁠
Scores for Human Body - Mountain Body Transmutation⁠
By Abigail Agius⁠
⁠
"How can I transcend the membranes which divide my body from the body of the landscape?⁠
⁠
Part essay, part visual contribution, Scores for Human Body — Mountain Body Transmutation explores the research behind Ma’ Muntanja, a sound installation performed at the Steintheater Hellbrunn — a disused quarry and stone theatre — in the heart of the Salzkammergut Alpine mountains in 2022. ⁠
⁠
In search of fluid physicalities, transmutation, transcendence, and possibilities for becoming otherwise, Scores for Human Body — Mountain Body Transmutation offers a set of three text scores (exercises or attempts) towards deepening understanding, closeness, and intimacy between the human and the mountain."⁠
⁠
You can order tijdschrift Kunstlicht online via the link in our bio!⁠
⁠
Image: ⁠
⁠

ARTICLE FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE⁠
⁠
Deaf Reasonance: Percussing Aurality. ⁠
By Martina Raponi.⁠
⁠
"This text aims to percuss a notion of aurality that accounts for bodies that, in order to interact with their environment, do not rely on speech or audible sound but rather on the expanded vibrational continuum of the sonic, in concert with other sensorial affordances. I claim that when considering the history of reason in relation to otology, Deaf culture and Deaf reason ought to be discussed. Thinking through Veit Erlmann’s Reason and Resonance in order to deconstruct the idea of distant rationality, and considering the Deaf practices of musicking and sounding by artist Christine Sun Kim, I illuminate lesser-known understandings of ways of sensing and making sense. I follow how the artist’s reappropriation of sound speaks to a wider concern and need: of amplifying the reverberating potential of Deaf practices."⁠
⁠
You can order tijdschrift Kunstlicht online via the link in our bio!⁠

REMINDER: Call for Papers 📝 ONLINE CURATING, K

REMINDER: Call for Papers 📝

ONLINE CURATING, Kunstlicht Vol. 46, no. 1-2

We are excited to present our open call for the first issue of 2025 called ‘Online Curating’ guest edited by dr. Annet Dekker.

Deadline: 5 September 2024
Published: April 2025

Online curating challenges traditional models and methods for presenting, accessing and distributing art in relation to the use of space (from white cubes to online spaces) and collaboration (from the expert curator or artist to technology and users). Whereas online exhibitions were perhaps something of a novelty at the time, in the last fifteen years online exhibitions are participating in a wider info-technical development that has and is impacting multiple areas of society and culture, and thus they have become relevant and of interest to people far beyond the various insider circles. In the ongoing exploration of aesthetics, space, time and narrative are frequently discussed topics in exhibition design and curating, in which the relationality and processuality are often emphasised. How is this conceptual triangle shaped in the web?

We seek contributions that investigate the interdependency of curatorial praxis and the socio-technical space of the web. Subsequently, we are looking for analyses of how the diversification of curating practices impacts the value and experience of exhibitions. How does this affect the traditional authority of institutions and their curatorial agency? How might it influence the historical relevance or cultural memory of online exhibitions? Finally, we are particularly interested in contributions that explore how conventional institutions are developing new ways of sharing curatorial authority, with users and technology, thereby empowering users to produce new content and value.

Read the full Call for Papers via the link in our bio!

Image: https://artport.whitney.org/commissions/the-next-biennial/ – UBERMORGEN, Leonardo Impett, Joasia Krysa, The Next Biennial Should Be Curated by a Machine, 2021.

ARTICLE FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE⁠
⁠
Amplified Abstractions: Automated Subservience, Ubiquitous Control, and the Potentials of Sonic Practice.⁠
By Taufan ter Weel.⁠
⁠
"Ubiquitous computing transforms and complicates how we engage with the environment with which we reciprocally produce subjectivity and make sense of life. With regard to the workings of present-day machines and machinic assemblages, and through the work of French thinkers Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Gilbert Simondon, this article discusses three sound installations made by the author in relation to the physical principles and philosophical concepts of modulation and transduction. It argues that modulation and transduction are inherently relational as these physical principles tend not to presuppose the existence of fully formed entities that pre-exist relations but rather imply an intermediate zone – a continuous process of becoming or individuation. The installations explore the reciprocal relationship between bodies, machines, and associated environments by means of transduction circuits and modulation links which allow experimenting with relational operations in a continuous process."⁠
⁠
You can order tijdschrift Kunstlicht online via the link in our bio!⁠
⁠
Image: Taufan ter Weel, Modulation and Transduction Beyond Control, Deleuze and Guattari Studies conference, Faculty of Media and Communications, Belgrade, 2023. Photos by Đorđe Bulajić.

ARTICLE FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE 📝

ARTICLE FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE 📝

Vibrations Through the Page: (Soma)tic Rituals in Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration by CAConrad.
By Luka Hattuma.

“Considering vibration as a process of becoming through collective reverberations, this article explores the materialisations of sonic vibrations through the process of writing, and the ways in which they resonate in contemporary poetic ecologies. By engaging with the theoretic work of Vinciane Despret, Donna Haraway and Brandon LaBelle, I argue that CAConrad’s poetry collection Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (2021) has paralinguistic features that invite readers to pay attention to the tonal cues in and around the page. These features ultimately link our bodies with the reverberant ecologies in which we live. More specifically, I aim to highlight the interconnected aspects of the collection’s layered sonic architecture, which features fragmentary poetic utterances of extinct nonhuman animals, both in form and in content, and in syntax and semantics. By reverberating with the linguistic and paralinguistic spaces of resistance created by CAConrad this article is an invitation to reconsider how we listen to and through the (poetic) ecologies that we are part of.”

You can order tijdschrift Kunstlicht online via the link in our bio!

Image 1: “72 Corona Transmutations” Book: Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration. Author: CA Conrad. Year: 2021. Page: 98.
Image 2: “72 Corona Transmutations” Book: Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration. Author: CA Conrad. Year: 2021. Page: 75.
Image 3: “72 Corona Transmutations” Book: Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration. Author: CA Conrad. Year: 2021. Page: 92.

POEM FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE 🖤 To

POEM FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE 🖤

To record a death
By Chanelle Dupuis

Chanelle Dupuis is a fourth year PhD student at Brown University in the department of French and Francophone studies. Her research focus is the senses, and she is interested in multisensory descriptions in literature. She is a poet from Québec, Canada, who finds inspiration in the environment and social fabric of her home village.

"In the poem “To record a death,” I think about dying, grief, and the world around us. I specifically consider the sounds of death: the noises that we associate with the final breath. Likewise, I contemplate the spaces in which we die and the spaces in which we are missed, noting the way an environment misses and longs for a deceased individual, the way the water and ground seem to whisper the name of a lost one. My poem represents the echoes of the body in the world around us, the way a soul reaches into depths beyond the self, putting into focus the sounds of death during the Covid-19 pandemic. What did it mean for families to hear death when the streets and stores outside remained empty? What does dying mean in a world on pause, on hold? How is the environment moving when the world seems to hold still? This poem is about my father, who died of an unexpected stroke during the pandemic when I was only 23 years old. I grew up in a little house by a lake in a small village in Québec, Canada, and the mentions of the natural environment record this space. I attempt to bring to life the noises of this small village while thinking about how to remember the sounds of death. This sonic reflection on the end of a world has us interrogate the sounds that we remember. What leaves and lakes will remember us when we are gone? What will our own death sound like? Will anyone relate to the noises we leave behind?"

Read this beautiful poem and so much more in our newest issue Reverberant Ecologies.

You can order tijdschrift Kunstlicht online via the link in our bio!

Call for Papers 📝 ONLINE CURATING, Kunstlicht

Call for Papers 📝

ONLINE CURATING, Kunstlicht Vol. 46, no. 1-2

We are excited to present our open call for the first issue of 2025 called ‘Online Curating’ guest edited by dr. Annet Dekker.

Deadline: 5 September 2024
Published: April 2025

Online curating challenges traditional models and methods for presenting, accessing and distributing art in relation to the use of space (from white cubes to online spaces) and collaboration (from the expert curator or artist to technology and users). Whereas online exhibitions were perhaps something of a novelty at the time, in the last fifteen years online exhibitions are participating in a wider info-technical development that has and is impacting multiple areas of society and culture, and thus they have become relevant and of interest to people far beyond the various insider circles. In the ongoing exploration of aesthetics, space, time and narrative are frequently discussed topics in exhibition design and curating, in which the relationality and processuality are often emphasised. How is this conceptual triangle shaped in the web?

We seek contributions that investigate the interdependency of curatorial praxis and the socio-technical space of the web. Subsequently, we are looking for analyses of how the diversification of curating practices impacts the value and experience of exhibitions. How does this affect the traditional authority of institutions and their curatorial agency? How might it influence the historical relevance or cultural memory of online exhibitions? Finally, we are particularly interested in contributions that explore how conventional institutions are developing new ways of sharing curatorial authority, with users and technology, thereby empowering users to produce new content and value.

Read the full Call for Papers via the link in our bio!

Image: https://distant.gallery – Yehwan Song, From Here to There, 2022.

ARTICLE FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE 🎧

ARTICLE FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE 🎧

Murmuring Matter, Sonic Attunement, Rhythmic Relationalities: Exercises in Listening to the Cosmos.
By Bruno Alves de Almeida, Giulia Bellinetti.
@brunoalvesalmeida & @giuliabellinetti

"This paper delves into the transformative potential of sound and sonic practices as tools for attuning to and comprehending the agency and murmurings of various material, viral, vegetal, animal, and atmospheric entities. Departing from Isabelle Stengers' cosmopolitical proposal, this essay advocates for a re-evaluation of power dynamics in political arenas by engaging with the diverse murmurings of what Stengers defines as the "cosmos” — the unknown constituted by multiple, divergent worlds.

The paper is grounded on the analysis of artistic contributions to the event Murmuring Matter: On the Cosmopolitics of Materials, held at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2023. The event proposed a collective exploration of the materials, bodies, river, forest, and cityscapes of Maastricht and beyond, through sound experiments, listening exercises, and sonic immersions. We explore the potential of such sonic practices as effective responses to Stengers' proposal by attuning to and illuminating positions that often go unnoticed, thus prompting a reconsideration of humanity's connections with the environment."

You can order tijdschrift Kunstlicht online via the link in our bio!

Image 1: Daniel Lie, We are not the center of the universe - attempts at other-than-human protagonisms, part of Murmuring Matter. On the Cosmopolitics of Materials 2023, courtesy Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
Image 2: Dorien de Wit, Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano, Maud van den Beuken, Wim Peumans, MaasMosaMeuseMoûzeMaosMûce. A river choreography, part of Murmuring Matter. On the Cosmopolitics of Materials, 2023, courtesy Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
Image 3: Zahra Malkani, A Ubiquitous Witness, part of Murmuring Matter. On the Cosmopolitics of Material, 2023, courtesy Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE

FREE ARTICLE FROM OUR REVERBERANT ECOLOGIES ISSUE 🐳
By @tessel_j

“Throughout history, whales have been made into resources for technological progress. The hunt for whales pushed imperial frontiers, as whale blubber was transformed into oil that lubricated the machinery at sugar plantations and burned in the first streetlights of Enlightenment-era London. In the twentieth century cetacean communication became the subject of military sonar research, helping submarines “see.” Recently, another form of making whales knowable builds on developments in bioacoustics and AI: Project CETI uses machine learning to “decode” whale languages, for if we understand them, we will protect them better. From a postcolonial perspective, however, understanding and translation have not led to protection, but to domination.

In light of underwater noise pollution, rising ocean temperatures and the near extinction of whales, I turn to the work of Mexican artist Ariel Guzik to explore what options for decolonial interspecies communication emerge. Guzik builds stringed instruments that, when lowered into the deep, respond to the voices of cetaceans. His work draws attention to their sound-centred world and to the possibility of more-than-human aesthetic experience. It is decidedly unscientific, rather asking what arises once we let go of the will to knowledge and thus, power.”

Read this article through the link in our bio!

Image 1: Ariel Guzik, Interview, 2010, ink on paper, courtesy of Ariel Guzik.
Image 2: Ariel Guzik, Holoturian capsule on its first expedition, 2018, San Juan de la Costa, Baja California Sur, photograph by Raúl González.
Image 3: Ariel Guzik, Cetacean Calligraphy, 2014, ink on paper, courtesy of Ariel Guzik.

NEW ISSUE NEW ISSUE NEW ISSUE 💌 Our newest a

NEW ISSUE NEW ISSUE NEW ISSUE 💌

Our newest and biggest issue to date Reverberant Ecologies: On the Relational Impact of Sonic Practices guest edited by Manuela Zammit @mannyzammy is out now!

This issue explores the interconnectedness and interdependence that make up ecological systems and social formations through the affordances of sound and sonic practices. It is an exploration into the far and diverse reach of sound and sonic waves, materialising as a force of nature, a meditative encounter, an alchemical reaction, or an interspecies conversation.

Get your copy through the shop link in our bio!

Journal design by @risowiso @studiocorinevanderwal
Cover by Angelina Nonaj @fru_tto

NEW ESSAY 🍄 GALA’S GOLDEN TRIANGLE; TRUST, D

NEW ESSAY 🍄

GALA’S GOLDEN TRIANGLE; TRUST, DIVERSITY AND FLEXIBILITY
By Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez @myceliumasmethodology

"It all started a bit over ten years ago. It was the summer of 2012. A so-called golden summer for London, the city where I had just based myself. It was the summer of promise; the word Brexit did not exist in our vocabularies yet, the Olympics were on their way and Boris Johnson was still just a silly blond Mayor. I wasted away many of these golden afternoons in a small room in the back of a theatre in Shepherds Bush, the former offices of Julie’s Bicycle, writing a funding application for the European Commission. The proposal was to realise an ambitious project called The Green Art Lab Alliance, coordinated by TransArtists (now TransArtists l DutchCulture). I remember it well because I was buzzing with excitement. The proposal was for a network that would facilitate a number of seminars, workshops and residencies for artists and cultural organisations. To grow a support structure for those who were keen to reduce their environmental footprint and to start engaging artistically with the topic of sustainability. We called it a ‘knowledge alliance.’ ..."

Read the full essay in our issue Between the Standing and the Inclined. ✨

@greenartlaballiance

📸 Image courtesy of Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez.

NEW ARTICLE 💛 WHO IS GOING TO HOLD THE BABY? B

NEW ARTICLE 💛

WHO IS GOING TO HOLD THE BABY?
By Irena Borić

This text looks into the work Unease, Anxiety (2016) by artist Tanja Dabo that tackles the existential crisis the artist experienced after having a baby. This text analyses this work and creates a dialogue in order to pinpoint neurological spots at the intersection of making art and taking care of the child. The text ponders upon possible conditions that would provide support, both mat erial and relat ional, in order t o balance the roles of a mother and a working artist. What makes this balance between life and art so difficult to achieve, and how is this struggle represented within art practices? By exploring relational aspects of collective care, the text attempts to imagine a space where holding the baby does not exclude doing art.

📸 MATERNAL FANTASIES, Tell Me How to Disappear (2018), film still, photographic print, copyright MATERNAL FANTASIES.

Get your copy through the link in our bio! ✨

NEW INTERVIEW 🥖🍞 ONE WHO EATS BREAD WITH AN

NEW INTERVIEW 🥖🍞

ONE WHO EATS BREAD WITH ANOTHER: A Conversation On Companionship
By Eléonore Pano-Zavaroni @eleonorePanoZavaroni & Kathrin Wolkowicz @kathrin_wolkowicz

Sharing the love for bread, cooking and relational processes, Eléonore Pano-Zavaroni and Kathrin Wolkowicz converse about the multiple dimensions of bread and its echoes in their artistic practices. This conversation is a walk, touching on conceptions of yeasty and other ecosystems.

Order your copy now through the link in our bio! ✨

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© Authors and Stichting Kunstlicht, Amsterdam 2025 redactie [at] tijdschriftkunstlicht.nl | Blogus by Themeansar.

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