The laboratory is a hermetic seal where only “preferred” life exists, in isolation and under an unforgiving shelf-life. What kinds microbial interactions life exist out there, in the “wild”?
During 3 Days of Fat Faber Futures exhibited WILD TYPE!, a new project exploring the microbial biodiversity of a context-specific Fatberg. Research for WILD TYPE! begins with an exploration of the microbiome of a context-specific Fatberg generated by artist Arne Hendriks and designer Mike Thompson of Thought Collider.
Over a generative event titled 3 Days of Fat, colonies of bacteria prospected from Thought Collider’s Amsterdam-based Fatberg were grown live in an exhibition, some of the revealing the myriad species that have colonised this superorganism. Questions arise over biological constraints, situational behaviours, cultural attitudes towards the emergence of the unseen, and how the whole “truth” of a microbiome cannot really ever be seen or known.
This intervention begins a comparative dialogue between synthetic and non-synthetic life, and how as humans we practice coming to terms with the consequences of a long history of re-constructing nature. Stay tuned to see how the project develops.