More-than-human humanities research group!

Category: Bioart Society

Human-Yeast Interrelations: Publication & Exhibit

by Olga Timurgalieva, Patrícia Moreira, and Eva Direito

The art book, Yeasts as We Do Not Know Them, chronicles the roles of single-celled fungal microbes, mainly yeasts, in human lives. The art project, co-produced by designer Eva Direito, biotechnologist Patricia Moreira, and art researcher Olga Timurgalieva, traces the ways these single-celled fungal microbes are involved in producing food and beverage, medicine, animal feed, textile detergents, pigments, biofuels, and other products. 

Pages 20 and 21 of the book, Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them, related to yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used to produce sugar substitute xylitol, 2022. ©Eva Direito, Patricia Moreira, Olga Timurgalieva.

Nowadays, in the abundance of industrially manufactured products, we are often unaware of how and from which materials some specific things are made. However, in light of climate change and increasing pollution in the atmosphere, we are called upon to learn about “the substances that surround us, those for which we may be somewhat responsible, those that may harm us, those that may harm others, and those that we suspect we do not know enough about” (Alaimo, 2010, p. 18). The art book, Yeasts as We Do Not Know Them, therefore, maps some of the human-yeast interrelations and invites the audiences to learn about the materials produced with the application of yeasts.  

Pages 38 and 39 of the book, Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them, related to Saccharomyces cerevisiae used in bioethanol production, 2022. ©Eva Direito, Patricia Moreira, Olga Timurgalieva.
Pages 10 and 11 of the book, Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them, related to yeast, Pichia pastoris, studied to develop vaccines against Human papillomavirus infection, 2022. ©Eva Direito, Patricia Moreira, Olga Timurgalieva.

The book’s concept emerged under the influence of the 2021-22 PhD course “Gender and Sustainability – Introducing Feminist Environmental Humanities” (FAD3115) collaboratively delivered by the School of Architecture and the Built Environment of KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the Posthumanities Hub. The course focused on post-disciplinary approaches to sustainability and incorporated diverse critical and creative perspectives from environmental humanities. 

Inspired by the practices at the intersection of feminist theories and sustainability presented during the course, we conceived the book as practice-oriented research. The cross-disciplinary collective work has allowed us to dive into the diversity of human-yeast interspecies relations and to convert our leanings into the tangible form of the book. 

We were lucky to have exhibited the prototype of the book in Hong Kong and Portugal. In Hong Kong, the book was featured as a part of the exhibition, Nexus between Art, Practice & Researchat the gallery Floating Projects at Jockey Club Creative Art Centre. Later, on 17 September 2022, we presented the project on the campus of the Catholic University of Portugal in Porto as part of the celebration of International Microorganism Day. The celebration event was co-organized with the Federation of European Microbiology Societies (FEMS). The event gathered more than 500 students and highlighted numerous crucial roles that microbes play in nature and their relation to human society.

Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them at the exhibition, Nexus between Art, Practice & Research, Floating Projects, Jockey Club Creative Art Centre, Hong Kong, 14-31 July 2022. Exhibition view. Photo Credit: Kay Mei Ling Beadman.

The art book, Yeasts as We Do Not Know Them, has been produced with financial support by Portuguese National Funds from FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology through the Strategic Projects CITAR (Research Centre in Science and Technology of the Arts) [grant number UID/EAT/0622/2016].

Featured Image: Pages 12 and 13 of the book, Yeasts As We Do Not Know Them, include images, Bear in mind that bread made from Magic Yeast will cure indigestion: get the entire menagerie. Presumably, 1880-1890. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark Link: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/mu8gcrx7

References:

Alaimo, S. (2010). Bodily natures: Science, environment, and the material self. Indiana University Press.

Eva Direito holds a degree in Art Conservation and is currently doing her master’s degree in Conservation of New Media Art at the School of Arts (UCP, Portugal). Having received an artistic education, Eva works with digital and analog photography and graphic design. During the past few years, she’s been working as Art Director in short movies for the School of Arts, some of which had been nominated for prizes (“Our House in Flames” by Miguel Mesquita, at Curtas Festival of Vila do Conde, Portugal) and others had won awards, such as “Hysteria” by Luísa Campino, at Sophia Awards, Portugal. 

Patrícia Moreira holds a PhD in Biotechnology with a specialization in Biochemical Engineering from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP, Portugal). She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Arts (UCP). She is an integrated member of the Center for Research in Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR), coordinator of the Area-Focus Heritage, Conservation, and Restoration of CITAR, and collaborator of the Center for Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry (UCP). Her main research area is innovation in Biotechnology for Cultural Heritage, with emphasis on biodeterioration, sustainability, citizen science Green Conservation, and bio-art practices. 

Olga Timurgalieva is a PhD candidate at City University of Hong Kong and a former visiting researcher at King’s College London. Awarded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, her research investigates the intersections of contemporary art, microbiology, and ecocriticism, with a particular focus on fungal microbes and their interspecies relations. Olga has worked in art institutions, including V-A-C Foundation (Moscow) and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), and co-curated the exhibition, “Here and Elsewhere,” at the Kobro Gallery, The Strzemiński Academy of Art (Lodz) and the festival, “Seasons of Media Arts 2019,” at the ZKM. 

Seaside Arts and Low-Trophic Imaginaries: A State of the Art Network Mid-term event

On 30th September and 1st October we will have a pleasure to host the event forming part of the State of the Art Network (SOTAN) activities, which will take place on the island of Ornö in Stockholm Archipelago. It will have a hybrid format (with eight participants on location and others taking part via Zoom) and will be open to all SOTAN members as well as registered non-SOTAN participants.

REGISTRATION

In order to take part in the event, please register by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub@gmail.com by 27th September 2021 at noon (CEST) the latest.

The Zoom links will be sent to you on 28th September in the evening.

SEASIDE ARTS AND LOW-TROPHIC IMAGINARIES, Location: Ornö, Stockholm Archipelago, and online. 

All through the extended history of Earth, the coastline has been a zone of unrest, where waves and tides have forged life and land on this planet. Oceanic algae, once terraforming the Earth into a breathable planet, still produce most of our oxygen. Today, beaches and oceans are haunted by plastic waste, eutrophication and diminishing biological diversity. Kelp forests and mussel beds (and all the other species that depend on them) are receding with the warming waters of climate change. Yet, as also remarked by late marine biologist Rachel Carson, the edge of the sea remains a strange and beautiful place. We think it is a sanctuary for co-creation and worldly re-imaginings. The marine wrack zone, a boundary area between sea and land, hosts low-trophic species, like mussels and seaweeds, and it harbours marine hope. Like the common bladder wrack in the Baltic Sea, it mitigates the eutrophication of the sea and provides shelter for all kinds of creatures and creativities.  

The State of the Art Network (SOTAN) mid-term event SEASIDE ARTS and LOW TROPHIC IMAGINARIES, hosted by The Posthumanities Hub and The Eco- and Bioart Lab, welcomes artistic and scientific entanglements with the environmental humanities to the seaside. This workshop invites salinity to brackish times by bringing together environmental engineers (like bladder wrack), sea garden activists, artists, feminist blue humanities scholars, marine biologists and those with local know-how for a situated encounter by the edge of the sea. The aim of the event is to re-tool our oceanic imaginary with insights and creative suggestions for how humans can be a more caring and attentive ecological force for multispecies futures by the edge of the Baltic Sea.  

State of the Art Network (SOTAN), initiated and headed by Bioart Society/SOLU in Finland, is a Nordic-Baltic transdisciplinary network of artists, practitioners, researchers, and organisations who have come together to discuss the role, responsibility, and potential of art and culture in the Anthropocene. By developing creative practices, transdisciplinary collaborations, and public engagement, the network aims to create resilience and concrete actions for living the change in culture, economy, and environment, and to find concrete hands-on methods to deal with the Anthropocene and environmental crisis. The network wants to strengthen competencies in remote hosting and participation as well as practical sustainability, which will be applied in the production of the activities and throughout the network: https://bioartsociety.fi/projects/state-of-the-art-network        

The Posthumanities Hub, partner and co-pi of SOTAN, is a longstanding feminist research group and multi-university platform for more-than-human humanities. It brings art and science to the humanities, and transformational insights to the people. In the interface of Swedish-international networking, the Hub has pioneered feminist cyborg studies, technohumanities, medical humanities, environmental humanities and recently taken a turn towards the marine fringes. Fostering doctoral careers, academic activism and societal commitment, the Hub has recently spawned two sub-groups, one of them is The Eco-and Bioart Lab. https://posthumanitieshub.net/

The Eco- and Bioart Lab connects artists, artistic researchers and other practitioners, as well as doctoral students whose practice and research focus on art and the environment in their broadest understanding. EBL opens up a transdisciplinary space, where artistic practice converges with philosophy, cultural theory, art studies, visual culture, queer death studies and posthumanities in synergy and as equally legitimate voices. Web: https://liu.se/en/research/the-eco-and-bioart-lab

Remote participation programme. All times indicated in CEST.

30th September (Thursday)

14:00 – 14:30 – Welcome & presentation of the programme of the mid-term meeting SEASIDE ARTS AND LOW-TROPHIC IMAGINARIES.

14:30 – 16:00 – Performance/panel “Seaside Arts” (Andy Best & Merja Puustinen, Jessie Peterson, Caroline Elgh Klinborg)

16:00 – 16:30 – Break

16:30 – 17:30 – SOTAN mid-term meeting (internal)

17:30 – 18:00 – Break

18:00 – 19:30 – Keynote 1: Stacy Alaimo (University of Oregon), “From Seaside to Abyss: Deep Sea Creatures and Low Trophic Imaginaries” + discussion.

1st October (Friday)

14.00 – 16:00 – Panel “Sea Gardens” (Janna Holmstedt, Malin Lobell, Cecilia Wibjörn, Maria Bodin, Lena Kautsky)

16:00 – 17:00 – Break

17:00 – 18:30 – Keynote 2: Anne-Marie Melster (ARTPORT), “WE ARE OCEAN: A global program linking the arts, sciences and education for ocean protection accompanying the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development” + discussion.

18:30 – 18:45 – Break

18:45 – 19:30 – SOTAN: closing discussion.

If you missed the event, you still have a chance to watch the recordings of several of the talks via our YouTube channel: Seaside Arts YouTube Playlist

Braiding Friction | biofriction

It is our great pleasure to announce details about the upcoming online event series ‘Braiding Friction’, conceived by the Biofriction network with Hangar.org, Cultivamos CulturaGalerija Kapelica / Kapelica Gallery and Bioart Society . As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and postponed activities, Biofriction has set up a series of Working Groups and online events. The aim is to answer to the need of an informed discussion on the science and politics of the pandemic and the possible role of artists and researchers, to unpack and understand the enormous complexity we are confronted with. The group hosted by the Bioart Society is called Non-Living Queerings and consists of philosopher Marietta Radomska, biologist Markus Schmidt, and artists and researchers Terike Haapoja, Margherita Pevere, and Mayra Citlalli Rojo Gómez. The launch event which will introduce all groups will take place on 2nd of June 18h (CET) with consecutive public events following. For more, see Biofricition website.

EDIT: You can now watch the recording of the session on the Biofriction YouTube channel:

A warm welcome to the new members of our Advisory Board!

We are very proud and happy to announce that we have some new members of our Advisory Board. They join an already diverse and distinguished crew. Please let us introduce:

Martín Ávila Professor in design at the Department of Design, Interior Architecture and Visual Communication, Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, SE

Erich Berger Director of the Bioart Society, Helsinki, FI, an association developing, producing and facilitating activities around art and natural sciences with an emphasis on biology, ecology and life sciences.

Prof. Myra J. Hird School of Environmental Studies, Queen’s University, CA and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Prof. Patricia MacCormack, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

Bioart Society: SOLU Space Opening

[Repost from Bioart Society]

SOLU Space opening

Dear friends and colleagues,

In spring we commemorated together the 10th anniversary of Bioart Society. It is now again time to celebrate big time and with great pleasure, we invite you to the opening of our new SOLU Space. The new SOLU Space is a major component of an ongoing transformation from Bioart Society to SOLU – an artistic laboratory and platform for art, science and society. Please join us on Nov. 9th and 10th at Luotsikatu 13 in Katajanokka to celebrate and reminisce the past successful years and to toast to the coming ones!

Friday 9th of November 15:00h

We start with brief opening speeches by Mari Keski Korsu (Bioart Society), Antti Tenetz (TAIKE), Anna Talasniemi (Kone Foundation), Atte Korhola (HY) and a toast to the new SOLU Space with sparkling. After that we continue with an inaugural speech, a journey through (bio)art history with bioart pioneer Antero Kare, performative interventions by Till BovermannKira O’Reilly and Ava Grayson, and the opening of a photographic retrospective of ten years work of the Bioart Society. We commence with food and a proper party. For the party in the evening we kindly ask you to bring some drinks.

Saturday 10th of November 09:30h – 15:30h

A Conversation in Progress
ambiguous, changeable, erratic, fickle, insecure, irrational, precarious, risky, rocky, sensitive, shaky, slippery, ticklish, tricky, uncertain, unpredictable, unsettled, unsteady, volatile, weak, wobbly, borderline, capricious, dizzy, dubious, fitful, fluctuating, giddy, inconsistent, inconstant, lubricious, mercurial, mobile, movable, moving, mutable, not fixed, rickety, shifty, suspect, teetering, temperamental, untrustworthy, vacillating, variable, wavering, weaving, wiggly

09:30-10:00h Welcome with coffees and pulla

10:00-12:00h What we do in the shadows
– a sneak preview into the upcoming book of the Bioart Society with writers and the editorial team moderated by Kira O’Reilly with

Marietta RadomskaDoing Away with Life: On Biophilosophy, the Non/Living, Toxic Embodiment, and Reimagining Ethics
Erich Berger(Deep) Time Machines – artistic vehicles and the scope of the real
Antti TenetzMachine Wilderness – a field report

Short break

Helena SederhomExamining the Monstrous
Kaspari Mäki ReinikkaCave paintings for the AI – Art in the age of Singularity

12:00-13:00 Pizza, lemonade, coffee, mingling

13:00-14:00 What we do in the lights
– an art and science Petcha Kutcha session with
Leena Valkeapää, Minna Langström, Paula Humberg, Lauri Linna, Björn Kröger, Jose Cano Arias, Maarit Laihonen, Jussi Eronen

Short break

14:15-15:00 Discussion panel moderated by Juha Huuskonen/HIAP with
Taru Elfving/Seili residency, Lucy Davies/Aalto Univ., Paul O’Neill/Publics, Pauliina Leikas/Mustarinda, Piritta Puhto/Bioart Society

For more see: Bioart Society

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén