Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab
The exhibition presents bodies, environments, texts, media, machines and biological organisms condensed into pictorial spaces.
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 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!
Curated by Judith Reichart, Lucie Strecker, Thomas
Feuerstein, Jens Hauser
Jens Hauser
Jens Hauser is a Paris and Copenhagen based media studies scholar and art curator focusing on the interactions between
art and technology. He is currently a professor in art history at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), an affiliated
researcher at University of Copenhagen’s Medical Museion, a postdoc researcher at the Medical University Vienna, and a distinguished
affiliated faculty member at Michigan State University, where he co-directs the BRIDGE artist in residency program. At the
intersection of media studies, art history and epistemology, he has developed a theory of biomediality as part of his PhD
at Ruhr University Bochum, and also holds a degree in science and technology journalism from Université François Rabelais
in Tours.
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).
