Angewandte Interdisciplinary LabOpening with live performances
by Maja Smrekar and Klaus Spiess / Ulla Rauter / Emanuel Gollob / Rotraud Kern and a welcome by curators and artists Judith
Reichart, Lucie Strecker, Thomas Feuerstein, Jens Hauser
Presentation of bodies, environments, texts, media,
machines and biological organisms condensed into pictorial spaces
We humans are colonized
by bacteria, fungi and viruses, just as we colonize homes, cities and environments. We also serve as hosts to ideologies,
media and technologies.
The concept of the holobiont, introduced in 1991
by biologist Lynn Margulis, describes us humans as a total living being permeated by the biosphere.
It explores
the self-conception of individual life, links us symbiotically with other organisms via our microbiome, disturbs the division
into subject and object and offends our usual concept of ego. Understanding the world as a holobiont reminds us: Life is other!
The social and psychological transformations of the pandemic and the consequences of the climate and energy crises have
brought to the forefront that life is first and foremost that of agencies other than human. Simple demarcations no longer
stand up to this dynamic.
‘We’ experience ‘us’ as transitory beings drifting between digital and molecular
worlds and sense the twisting of boundaries within us as the possibility of a new language beyond a symbolic distance from
the world. With the exhibition Holobiont. Life is Other, the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab presents bodies, environments,
texts, media, machines and biological organisms condensed into pictorial spaces – each of which represents a narrative about
another life and about the lives of others.
Curated by Judith Reichart, Lucie Strecker, Thomas Feuerstein,
Jens Hauser
With contributions by Art Orienté Objet, Irini Athanassakis, David Berry, Julia Borovaya,
Adam Brown, Juan M. Castro & Akihiro Kubota, Tagny Duff, Thomas Feuerstein, Karmen Franinovic, Ana Maria Gomez Lopez,
Luis Hernan/Pei-Ying Lin/Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Hideo Iwasaki, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Eduardo Kac, Roman Kirschner, Lynn
Margulis/Dorion Sagan/Bruce Clarke/David McConville, Yann Marussich, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, ORLAN, Špela Petrič, Chris Salter,
Maja Smrekar, Klaus Spiess/Ulla Rauter/Emanuel Gollob, Lucie Strecker/KT Zakravsky, Tina Tarpgaard, Paul Vanouse, M R Vishnuprasad,
Peter Weibel, and authors of the special issue On Micorperformativity, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts,
2020, 25 (3).
Scenography: Wolfgang Fiel, Institute for cultural policy
The exhibition
was curated originally for the Magazin 4 exhibition space in Bregenz. The content was adapted and expanded for display at
Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab (AIL)
20 Jan 2023, 19:00
Finissage with book presentation
