Kling & Bang gallery/ Reykjavík / 2021
the end of me,
the beginning of you,
“the end of me, the beginning of you” is a speculation on the future of the relationship between humans and microorganisms within the growing field of microbial industry.
the end of me, the beginning of you is an installation and participatory performance where the audience is invited to the kitchen/nursery of the artist and are able to adopt one of their microbial daughters. Under this workshop format, participants learn about fermentation and microbial symbiosis, they learn how to care for them and how to work with them to create biotextile or food and are introduced to the concept of interspecies mothering. Here, fermentation is both a metaphor and a material practice for care and nurture for multispecies worldings. An invitation to consider the natural world as a relative and a space for discussion on the future we want to build and ask the question to the public: can we truly be Mothers of non-human beings?
A human body is inhabited by ten time
s as many non-human cells as human cells.
Cells from my body, bacterias from my body, yeast from my body.
When inside human-me we are one body. Outside of human-me, in artificial wombs they become their own body.
I care for them, feed them, protect them, watch them grow.
They are part of human-me that become their more-than-human-me selves.
They are my daughters. I am their mother.
I care for them, I am mothering them. And then I’ll eat them.
