Holobiont. Life is Other

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

Program

5 Oct 2022, 19:00
Opening with performances, artists’ and curators’ talks

19 Oct 2022, 16:00
Tour with curator Jens Hauser

4 Nov 2022, 17:00
Tour with curator Lucie Strecker

10 Nov 2022, 19:00
Towards Interspecies Performance Art
Tour, performance and discussion by Maja Smrekar, Fahim Amir & Lucie Strecker

24 Nov 2022, 18:00
Language as Biomedial Intervention
Lecture and performance with Jens Hauser, Thomas Feuerstein, Špela Petrič, Klaus Spiess, Emanuel Gollob, Ulla Rauter, Rotraud Kern, Lucie Strecker

20 Jan 2023, 19:00
Finissage with book presentation

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