On August 7, 1999, Tom McCarthy founded the International Necronautical
Society (INS) with a public presentation of the Founding Manifesto, a
touchstone that would inform the organization's proceedings for years to
come. Composed of official committee members and illicit "agents," the
INS harks back to early twentieth-century avant-gardes, producing
declarations, reports, public hearings, broadcasts, and research
documents, as well as orchestrating more covert media infiltrations, all
governed by the objective, set out in the Founding Manifesto, of
mapping, entering, and occupying the space of death through literature,
philosophy, culture, and technology.
The Mattering of Matter is a collection of INS documents produced
between 1999 and 2010. This edited selection of texts reflects the INS's
development, through both internal bureaucratic changes and its
ever-growing repertoire of references, all of which work towards their
ultimate goal of constructing a necronautical "craft" with which to
propound and escalate the overall INS project.