Nonhuman Subjectivities
The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome
François-Joseph
Lapointe, Saa Spačal with Mirjan vagelj
and Anil Podgornik , Tarsh Bates , Joana Ricou
Performance
- 1000 Handshakes: 3 February, 7-10PM during the opening of transmediale,
House of World Cultures (more information)
Opening of the exhibition: 26 February, 2016, 8PM
Artists' Talk: 28 February, 2016, 3PM
Berlin Science Hack Day Stammtisch: 23 March, 7PM (more
information)
Scientist and artist talk with PD Dr. Annette Moter and Tarsh Bates:
23 April, 2016, 6PM (more
information)
Finissage with talk by Felix Navarrete: 30 April, 2016, 3-6PM
Exhibition
runs: 27 February 30 April, 2016, Fri-Sun 2-6PM and by appointment.
(29 April open until 9PM)
left: François-Joseph
Lapointe, Microbiome selfie, 2014, center & right: Saa
Spačal,
Mirjan vagelj, Anil Podgornik Mycophone Unison, Responsive
installation: electronics, sound, and biological material, 2013;
Petri dish, detail of installation 2013
Art
Laboratory Berlin is pleased to present the new series Nonhuman
Subjectivities. Based on current philosophical theories
of the object and a critique of anthropocentrism, our attention
is focused on non-human actors.
The exhibition, the first of our new exhibition series Nonhuman
Subjectivities, presents various artistic reflections on the
complex microbial environment found on and within the human body.
Scientists say that bacterial cells are as numerous as human cells
in our body. The phenomenon of the microbiome also brings forth
many complex questions about human identity and our relation to
our multiple selves.
François-Joseph Lapointe connects his biological research
with performance art. His latest works of art deal with the microbiome
in our daily lives and physical connections to others. Lapointe
sequences his microbiome to produce metagenomic self-portraits,
Microbiome Selfies, which illustrate the metamorphosis of
his bacterial self.
The exhibition features new works from his performance in 1000
Handshakes which was realised on 3 February, 2016, the opening
night of transmediale. During the evening Lapointe shook 1001 hands
at the Berlin House of World Cultures. Every 50 or so handshakes,
samples were collected from his palms for DNA analysis of the microbiome.
The results demonstrate how the contact with others shapes our microbiome
and changes us.
To create his artistic works Lapointe has used a next generation
sequencing platform and network visualisation software developed
for bioinformatics. In contrast to the analog microscopic analysis
of previous generations, Lapointe is working here with a digital
DNA record. Both the video work and the six prints constitute the
final step of the analysis: the network analysis, It is noteworthy
that Lapointe, in his artistic aesthetic production, deletes the
systemic context (numbers, data). The pictures show a microbial
profile during the interaction with the microbiomes of others. It
is fascinating to think back to the essential gesture of his performance:
the handshake, a basic and ancient act of networking.
Saa Spačal
together with Mirjan vagelj
and Anil Podgornik are interested in the contrast between
the oneness of the human body as biological entity and the multiplicity
of the human microbiome. In their installation Mycophone_unison
the artist-scientist-designer collective has developed a sound map
of intra-action between their microbiomes and the recipient. By
leaving a fingerprint the viewer sends a signal to the map that
processes it through the central 'celestial plate' to the microbiomes.
The polymodal sonification stresses the multiplicities of the makers.
The three petri dishes on the 'celestial plate' are cultured with
samples from the work's three creators. These cultures, in their
multiplicity and complexity, defy any monolithic or unitary definition
of being. But in their ever-changing resistance to an electrical
current, these cultures microbiomes create, together, a unison of
tone with the participatory aid of visitors.
Left: Tarsh Bates working in the science lab for
artistic production, School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine,
The University of Western Australia, 2015
Right: Joana Ricou, Other landscape no. 1, microbiome of the
artist and environment, C-print, 89 × 140 cm, 2014
Joana
Ricou's works blur the fundamental boundary between organism
and environment, taking the shape of photographs of microbial paintings
or performance. Ricou collected samples of her own microbiome and
that of her environment and cultured these in the lab to visualise
them. Out of this two portraits emerged: Other-self Portrait,
a composite of cultures derived from her body, and Non-self Portrait,
a composite of environmental cultures. Ricou, an émigré,
began this work questioning whether her new environment was changing
her microbiome, and if so, asking what is the border between self
and 'non-self'.
Her series Other Selves is a series of microbiome portraits
that Ricou has carried out over the last few years, in which she
has cultured samples from the belly buttons of over 400 people,
resulting in an amazingly diverse range of bacteria, fungi and archaea.
These portraits, in turn, challenge our traditional view of the
self as solitary, or solely human.
Tarsh Bates artistically explores what it means to be human
when we recognise our bodies as composed of over one trillion cells,
of which only around half are human. This new work Surface dynamics
of adhesion, created here in Berlin, resembles a model of flocked
wallpaper. Sealed in a series of acrylic boxes in agar based on
the blood of the artist, living Candida parapsilosis grows
in a pattern based on the first drawing of its relative, Candida
albicans, by Charles Philippe Robin in 1853. It was also the
Victorian era when awareness of hygiene was rapidly increasing.
This complex installation includes furniture from that time and
invites visitors to sit down and read more about Tarsh Bates and
her artistic research on Candida.
Her video work Ereignis, Gelassenheit und Lichtung: A love story
shows, in time-lapse video, Candida albicans developing in
the laboratory, whilst mixing with serum collected from the artist.
Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz (curators)
More on the Nonhuman Subjectivities series
Original
press release (10-2-2016) as .pdf
Press/exhibition
text as .pdf
berlinartlink.com,
publishes on 16 April 2016 von Alice Bardos BODY // Nonhuman
Subjectivities: Humans Can Learn from the Political Make-Up of Our
Bacteria
labiotech.eu,
published on 5 March, 2016 by Claire Braun, BioArt : What is
our True Relationship with the Human Microbiome?
art-in-berlin-de,
published 3 March, 2016 by Inge Pett, Die Kunst des Händeschüttelns.
Eine neue Ausstellung bei Art Laboratory Berlin
The
Daily Mail, published 2 March, 2016 by Abigail Beall, The beauty
in your BELLY BUTTON: Artist uses fluff and bacteria from navels
to create works of art that are 'unique as fingerprints'
Delo,
published 27 February, 2016 by Mojca Kumerdej, Poleti bi lahko
brstela v triindvajsetih identitetah
gizmodo.com
published 26 February, 2016 by Jennifer Ouellette, Your Belly
Button Lint Makes a Beautiful Portrait as Unique as Your Fingerprint
iflscience!
published 25. February, 2016 by Tom Hale, Petri Dish Portraits
Of The Belly Button's Bacteria
The
Guardian, published 24 February, 2016, Navel gazing: portraits
of the bacteria in our belly buttons in pictures
RTE
(Radio Television Ireland), published on 12 February, 2016 by Luke
Clancy, Cultural File: Hacking a Microbiome
as
.mp3 (from 2'22")
BZ-
Berlin, Published on 3 February, 2016 by Philipp Pohl, Haus der
Kulturen der Welt: Künstler will 1000 hände schütteln
With the generous support of:

Cooperation partners:

Media
partner:
Made
possible in part by a generous gift from Michael Schröder.
Mycophone_unison from Saša Spacal on Vimeo.

Saa Spačal
with Mirjan vagelj and Anil Podgornik Mycophone_unison,
Responsive installation:
electronics, sound, and biological material, 2013, Photographs
copyright by Tim Deussen

Saa
Spačal
with Mirjan vagelj and Anil Podgornik
Mycophone_unison,
Responsive installation: electronics, sound, and biological material,
2013; Petri dish, detail of installation 2013, Photographs
copyright by Tim Deussen
Saa
Spačal
with Mirjan vagelj and Anil Podgornik
Mycophone_unison,
Responsive installation: electronics, sound, and biological material,
2013; Petri dish, detail of installation 2013, Photographs
copyright by Tim Deussen
Foreground:
Saa Spačal
with Mirjan vagelj and Anil Podgornik
Mycophone_unison,
Responsive installation: electronics, sound, and biological material,
2013; background:
François-Joseph Lapointe, Microbiome selfie,
2016, Photographs
copyright by Tim Deussen
François-Joseph
Lapointe, Microbiome selfie, 2016, Photographs
copyright by Tim Deussen
François-Joseph
Lapointe, Left:
Microbiome
selfie, 2014; center: Microbiome selfie, 2016, animation;
right: 1000 Handshakes, 2016, documentation of performance
at transmediale 2016,
Photographs
copyright by Tim Deussen
Left
Tarsh Bates, Surface dynamics of adhesion, 2015-16,
installation with live Candida Parapsilosis; right: Joana
Ricou, The Other Selves, 2015, video, Photographs
copyright by Tim Deussen
Tarsh
Bates, Surface dynamics of adhesion, 2015-16, installation
with live Candida Parapsilosis; right:
Ereignis, Gelassenheit und Lichtung: A love story,
2015, video, Photographs copyright by Tim Deussen
Tarsh
Bates, Surface dynamics of adhesion, 2015-16, installation
with live Candida Parapsilosis (detail), Photographs
copyright by Tim Deussen
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