Extremophiles and other species of microorganisms, which have developed survival strategies based on forms of anabiosis, offer cell-level solutions for long-term survival in a changing, even extreme environment.
anabiosis [ˌænəbaɪˈəʊsɪs] n
(Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Zoology) the ability to return to life after apparent death; suspended animation [via New Latin from Greek, from anabioein to come back to life, from ana- + bios life]
Fear of Mutation. The closest viable, albeit technology-based approximation of these processes in humans may be considered the in cryo preservation of reproductive (haploid, pre-zygotic) and pluripotent embrionic stem cells, all of which require sensitive, high-tech equipment to reconstruct a human or a part of him. Strict guidelines and policies referring to these processes imply there is a deeply rooted uneasiness humans feel when confronted with a non-natural re-creation of living beings, but the uncannyness becomes unbearable when imagining the subject of this practice to be a member of the human species.
Persistence At All Cost. The other prominent feature of the current attitude towards human biology – the obviously comfortable and pleasant experience of life – manifests itself in the relentless search for longevity, health and, as the most obvious solution to fight change in culture, the environment and the human species - sustainability. In a sense, humans are quite happy to put all of their efforts into arresting the development in fear of the possible negative outcomes of change.
The project does not wish to merely navigate between these two current inclinations (preserving the human state // disgust towards impurity (= mutants sensu lato)), but rather indivisibly combine them in a single piece, creating an agora for the confrontation of values and challenging the hierarchy of issues connected to human biology within the context of the free market of Western society.
The project would also address the following topics:
- anthropocentrism in relation to microbes, focusing on the restrictions of our sensorial apparatus; microbes are, mainly due to the limited resolution of our vision, forever “out-of-reach” to humans (the intervention of technology provides us with an image, but even with the complete acceptance (internalization) of these extensions of perception, we remain unconvinced – this is perhaps apparent when we try to imagine the bacteria on our skin. All of a sudden they take on exaggerated, cartoon-like features. I’m guessing this effect takes place regardless of one’s background, be it scientifically informed or not).
- the love-hate relationship, developed as we try to contain and harness microbes;
the turn from ignorance to awareness of the microbial world (aided by the discovery of microscopes); the fear of microbes as we connect them to the causative agent of many diseases; the almost obsessive need to control the microorganisms in our environment as well as in biotechnological contexts, where they are utilized in the production of numerous pharmaceutical and cosmetic products, food and food additives, household products and in products for scientific research.
- an individual’s identification with the human species in space and time; globalization has forced us to face the diminishment of spatial sequestration; changing/mutating/evolving through time is a problem of (time)scale = we have no personal accounts on changes beyond the length of a few generations (our actual experience of “life”) as well as relatively scarce and mostly deductive evidence on the scale, which is relevant (fossil evidence over millennia)
- the boundary between living and inanimate; Craig Venter re-booted a living cell, claiming it was synthetic, reminding us of the greatest failure in disproving intelligent design – the pure animation of a non-living system has not yet been achieved; it’s as if the initiation of a self-propagating thermodynamically unstable system is an extremely rare event, but when it occurs it stays amazingly resilient… at least in our (statistically insignificant) experience on Earth.
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