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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. 

Posthumanist Horses

November 24

Lectures and talks inspired by Tove Kjellmark’s ongoing exhibition “The horse, the robot and the immeasurable”

Lecturer: Martin Olin, art historian and head of research at the National Museum and Cecilia Åsberg, professor and director at The Posthumanities Hub, Linköping University

Conversation leader: Daniel Urey, process manager Färgfabriken

Main hall, Färgfabriken 17.30–18.30

Opportunity for the audience to ask questions after the lectures.

The exhibition is open extra between 16.00 and 18.30 in connection with the event. Free entrance.

Announcement for Karen Barad upcoming virtual talk (28 Sep) On Touching the Stranger Within

Professor Karen Barad gives a virtual talk and presention Wednesday, September 28, 2022, titled On Touching the Stranger Within—Material Wonderings/Wanderings. The talk is free to attend, and it is part of a touring art exhibition called DRIFT: art and dark matter, which is currently showing at the Justina M. Barnicke gallery at the University of Toronto.

Part of what makes this event so exciting is its cross-disciplinary nature, combining work in particle physics, philosophy, and art. Karen Barad is a professor of feminist studies, philosophy, and history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Their work is highly interdisciplinary — prior to this appointment, they held a faculty position in particle physics. DRIFT itself is a cross-disciplinary exhibit. From the gallery website: “four artists of national and international stature were invited to make new work while engaging with physicists, chemists, and engineers contributing to the search for dark matter at SNOLAB’s facility in Sudbury, two kilometers below the surface of the Earth.” 

More information about the event and a registration link are available on the gallery website:https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/program/keynote-karen-barad/ 

Best wishes, 

Sarah  

Sarah Dawson (she/they)

Event Coordinator & Interim Communications Officer

Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute

SPLINTERED REALITIES: RIXC Art Science Festival 2022

Exciting! Check out SPLINTERED REALITIES: RIXC Art Science Festival 2022!

Invitation: the Create/Feminisms cluster in the Arts and Creative Industries Faculty

The Create/Feminisms cluster in the Arts and Creative Industries Faculty
invite all staff and students to log in, listen and take an active part
in the following 4 externally facing ONLINE research seminars
on De-/Post-/Anti-colonial Feminisms in Fine Art and Textile Crafts.  

We hope you will cascade this invitation to anyone else as these events focused in theories of contemporary art and textile crafts are open to all.
Registration is required to receive Zoom links to join the seminars.

Registration Link for any of the 4 events:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/de-anti-post-colonial-feminisms-in-fine-art-and-textile-craft-tickets-335506016527

These events have been organised by Professor Katy Deepwell, Dr. Neelam Raina and Neda Mohamadi.
The events are supported by ACI’s research funds.
Each seminar will have a keynote, a panel of 2-3 papers and an open poster session.

1) Decolonising Craft (Tuesday, June 14) 2-6pm

Keynote Speaker: Aarti Kawlra

Panellists: Fatima Hussain, Neelam Raina

2) Feminist Pedagogies: learning to unlearn and decolonial toolkits (Tuesday June 21) 2-6pm

Keynote Speaker: Dalida Maria Benfield

Panellists: Sharlene Khan, Michele Williams Gamaker, Isabelle Massu

3) De-/Anti-/Post-colonial Futures in Feminism (Tuesday June 28) 2-6pm

Keynote Speaker: Francoise Verges

Panellists: Renee Mussai, Sahra Taylor, Antonia Majaca

4) Feminist De-/Anti-/Post-colonial Aesthetics (Tuesday July 5) 2-6pm

Keynote Speaker: Madina Tlostanova

Panellists: Shanna Ketchum Heap O’Birds, Ayanna Dozier, Leslie C. Sotomayor.

These seminars have been organised with the belief that feminism needs to represent its own pluri-versality as it continues to redefine local/global politics through its alliances and maintain its allegiances to diverse ways of thinking and making. De-/Anti-/Post-Colonial thought contains many different tactics, approaches and spheres of influence in visual arts and textile crafts. Feminist work in de-/anti-/post-colonial thought has pursued a long-standing critique of the blindspots on gender in configurations of modernity/coloniality; in postcolonial and critical race theory scholarship; in black feminist and anti-racist, anti-homophobic thought; and is evident in black, third-world, global majority, post-Soviet as well as indigenous histories and movements. These complex interventions redefine feminist intersectionality and queer theory away from their configurations solely in nation-states, area studies or world systems theories, searching for other ways to re-imagine global connections, histories and cultural developments, as well as systems of belonging or referencing, to envisage new forms of planetary visions of space and time, past and present. It is in this spirit of acknowledging and making visible the range of this work that we have organised these seminars.

Katy Deepwell

Professor of Contemporary Art, Theory and Criticism

Middlesex University
Hendon Campus
k.deepwell@mdx.ac.uk

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