In an era shaped by digital mediation, algorithmic governance, productivity culture, and political polarization, the body increasingly becomes regulated, optimized, surveilled, and aestheticized. Instinct — once understood as embodied knowledge — is often suppressed, commodified, or redirected.

Refuse #4 explores the tension between rational systems and embodied intelligence. How do we reclaim instinct in a world driven by metrics and visibility? How does the body resist, remember, and respond beyond language?

Through collaborations with artists, designers, writers, and journalists, this issue investigates themes such as vulnerability and power, ritual and technology, desire and discipline, craft and impulse.

“Body and Instinct” positions the body not as object, but as site of knowledge, resistance, and transformation.