towards the (in)human spore

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.

support bacteria. it's the only culture some people have.

About half a year ago, one of my professors at the Department of Microbiology in Slovenia published an article in the journal Fungal Biology titled “Dishwashers - A man-made ecological niche accommodating human opportunistic fungal pathogens”. The paper showed the presence of two opportunistic fungal pathogens from the genus Exophiala in over half of the dishwashers they took a swab sample from. Of course, the black yeast species can cause systemic disease in humans, but needless to say, even though most of us have come across the much-appreciated dishwasher at one point or another, rarely (actually never) did we meet people cultivating this black fungus in their lungs. It is in fact a disease, which affects immuno-compromised patients with a preexisting condition such as AIDS or cystic fibrosis. However, as is customary in the world of science, the article ended with a statement intended to emphasize the importance of the work:

“Knowing that these fungi coinhabit our homes, further research is imperative as only this could reveal, whether the presence of E. dermatitidis inside our households poses any threat to human health.”

Conveniently picked up by journalists and disseminated to the sensation-thirsty public with entertaining titles such as: “Could a Dangerous Fungus Lurk in Your Dishwasher?” (US News), “Dishwashers harbor ‘killer bugs’ (The Daily Telegraph), and my personal favorite “My dishwasher is trying to kill me” (Physorg). Besides granting the Slovene researcher fame and fortune (though I suppose grants are no easier to come by after being interviewed by a non-peer reviewed, albeit highly influential international journal The Daily Telegraph…) it sparked a bit of envious ridicule amongst the scientific community.

It also sparked a mischievous idea to make an art exhibition falling into the for this purpose newly concocted category “Hausfrau Art”; the gallery would be filled with household appliances designed in a way to emphasize the presence of the extreme microbes, which dwell incognito in our most treasured devices – the fridge, the dishwasher, the vacuum cleaner, even the ever scrubbed shower isn’t immune. Well, to choose a research topic as popular as extremophiles in this day and age may seem opportunistic – and, as the black fungus, perhaps I am. So Zietgeist.

Extremophiles, organisms adapted to life in extreme environments, are most often associated with conditions that mimic those on Earth when life began. Many of these conditions, coincidentally, also occur in microenvironments engineered by humans amidst our colonization of natural territories. It is generally perceived that, as we acquire wealth, energy and raw materials to satisfy our needs, we bring systematic ruin to the natural, patrimonial environment through collateral damage. However, a less teleological and anthropocentric look at the environment we create reveals our symbiosis/commensalism with a plethora of extremely “well adapted” and “socially acceptable” (=unseen) microorganisms.

I have developed an almost obsessive thought process where, whenever considering new information, be it a concept, a strategy or mere sensorial input, I try to de-humanize it. That is, consider it without an anthropocentric bias, which has been evolutionarily implemented in the human psyche to ensure the propagation of our species. In fact, this post-anthropocentrism seems to be spreading both in the scientific and art community, but is generally perceived as offensive by the rest of the population, as it strikes upon the taboo of indifference towards the survival of humanity. Similar to the astrophysicists’ conundrum of the anthropic principle, where observations of the universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it, there is an obvious paradox and thus futility in the attempt to be objective when it comes to observing our surroundings (Fig. 1). However, it does offer an alternative vantage point; one which I wish to explore.

                                              Fig. 1 Rhinocentrism.

Besides questioning the concept of objective reality, post-anthropocentrism greatly reduces the role of humans in the development of the ecosystems on our planet. We are neither the most numerous nor the most influential of species, though we are often accredited with having the most detrimental effect (a widely accepted truth towards which I also have some reservations, since pollution, deforestation, intensive agriculture, cityscapes etc. are also processes that provide novel niches for organisms). Our environmental concerns stem mainly from the sentimental attachment we have to our initial surroundings; a type of juvenile imprinting, fighting change and ensuring our acquired comforts and luxuries are here to stay.

In fact, if we were to (objectively) examine our relationship to other organisms, we would most likely end up frustratingly ambivalent. This is particularly obvious in the case of microorganisms. We tend to ignore their omnipresence due to their scale and the limitations of our sensorial apparatus – only when we see food rotting or we develop an angina is their existence acknowledged. We are oblivious to the fact there are 10 times as many bacteria living on our body as there are human cells consisting it. Their biology, adaptability and mutability dictate they are unstable as a species, making it a challenge to classify them. At the same time this increases the survivability of their lineage (transgressing the species). If we were to compare their vitality across millennia, it would be as if humans identified themselves with mammals in general and were indifferent to whether it was rats, bears or transhumans that survived to see the year 5000. This proposition is outrageous enough to not even be considered by us as a valid strategy to sustain life on Earth. It once again draws the attention to Aristotle’s distinction between Zoë and Bios, the former term referring to the primal essence of life and the latter to it’s intricate realization (complex beings, i.e. humans). Are we not in some way also emotionally tied to “life”? Could this connection ever feel strong enough that we would consider it irrelevant as to which life form survived the imminent environmental changes?

On the other hand, the human tendency to test the limits of our living conditions is an ever present cultural process, be it physical, social, intellectual or within the construction of our own cognition and consciousness. We feel that by examining these extreme creatures we will somehow unlock their secret and expand the extremely narrow ecological niche, which supports our survival. It falls nicely within the current reductionist scientific paradigm. Having knowledge of the human blueprint, we will be able to improve our bodies at will. Actually, this thesis lost a bit of its followers as, a decade after deciphering the human genome, we still haven’t conquered obvious (potentially genetically linked) diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. In the mean time the extremophiles are exploited in biotechnological processes - they (metaphorically speaking, of course) do our laundry, perform much of molecular biology and produce drugs.

My thesis, this thought experiment, involves re-inscribing “ecology” as a complex interworking of social, natural, and technological worlds. It is about acknowledging extremophiles, which are present in our environments; natural, urban, artificial, and degraded. It wishes to transfer concepts and attitudes from the laboratory into real world, tangible situations. Within the work I hope to address larger questions and challenges which emerge – how to accept climate change, how traditional notions of research and knowledge can interplay with socio-developmental processes and how the edges and boundaries of extreme spaces are managed, maintained, or created in order to create novel living spaces for the extremophiles we are increasingly becoming.

legality dictates legitimacy, but the thought has nothing to do with the following post

artists, like entrepreneurs, hope to gain new opportunities from the shifting socio-economic circumstances in the western world. it seems their real life creativity and street-smarts will be put to the test, and the question of "hunger" will once again be used in the literal sense, not merely as a measure for the artists' ambition. dog eat dog - but i wonder - have we not surpassed the romantic stance that dictates an artist should be inspired by the suffering he must endure in his own life?