Episode 10: Nothing is true, Everything is alive (Prologue: Symbiogenesis)
Some organisms —such as lichens, scobys, or slime molds— perform fascinating symbiotic ways of being in the world. They operate through forms of relational nourishment, guided by sensibility and sensation. Furthermore, they experiment with distributed organisation, working through decentralized spatial intelligence and incessant bacterial activity. Potentially immortal, these organisms navigate thick temporalities, in which care and death are mutually reconfigured.
Symbiosis is simply the shared life of different organisms in physical contact with each other; it is a process of long-term physical associations of nourishment, care and mutual dependencies. Nothing is true, everything is alive is a curatorial research project that departs from a series of feminists readings of science and biology, to trace and enable the epistemological, sensory and aesthetic paradigms they reconfigure. This chapter focuses on the work of Lynn Margulis who stated that the true force of evolution is not competition amongst individual animals, but the incorporation of and entanglement with other organisms, throughout the work of bacteria.
– extract from curatorial text by Julia Morandeira
Made with the support of Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) through the Programme for the Internationalisation of Spanish Culture (PICE) under the Mobility grants and the Danish Arts Foundations.
WORKS
Carlos Fernández-Pello
Tombstones are not flat
Installation with video, printed textiles, aluminium structure
Carlos Monleón
Gastriculation
Jute and silicon rope, blown glass, silver leaf, water kefir grains
Carlos Monleón
To eat is human, to digest is divine
Wet plaster, netting, polyester resin, clay amphorae, molten glass
Carlos Monleón
Gravity is food
Techni-clay, wild yeasts, flower arrangements
Carlos Monleón
Life would, if it could, take all of the sun’s energy and turn it into itself
Wet plaster, netting, polyester resin, slip cast clay, residual wine
All works 2018
CONVERSATION FERMENTATION
Fermentation and its manifold processes — an informal exchange and gathering on feminism, cooking and food practices, the microbiological…
On 21 July 2018 the exhibition was concluded with a conversation coordinated by curators Ida Bencke (co-founder of the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology and co-editor of Fermenting Feminism) and Julia Morandeira (director of escuelita CA2M-Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid), featuring:
· Joshua Evans – PhD student at the University of Oxford researching the flavour and evolution of microbes in novel fermentation practices;
· Adam Bencard (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen) – a researcher and curator who has worked extensively on the history and philosophy of microbiome research, including co-curating the experimental exhibition Mind the Gut.
· David Zilber, Head of Fermentation at NOMA.