Eating and Living with Divese Germs
This event was a public program organized in conjunction with the artwork The future beneath by factory collective, a participating artist group in the 10th Seoul Mediacity Biennale Eu Zên.
factory collective consists of the artists Saerom Suh, Ara Ahn, Hyejin Yeo, and Kyounghee Lee. Based in the space of “FACTORY 2” located in Jongno-gu, Seoul, factory collective experiments with the curatorial models of mutual support and education. factory collective is an “art community where learning transpires” and a collaboration group comprised of a yoga master, a chef, a graphic designer, and a curator of art and culture bands together. It is constantly expanding its boundaries to include the members’ colleagues, friends, and other collaborators. In this Biennale, factory collective collaborated with the omnidirectional maker Jung-min Son, the artist Andeath, the Helsinki based artist Tuomas Aleksander Laitinen, and the curator of HIAP Jenni Nurmenniemi.
The future beneath is largely comprised of research, exhibition, and programs. The first was a research and exhibition; it was a record of observations of the organic lives of germs (the source of “fermentation”) and human beings. The second was a performance Eating and Living with Divese Germs that involved observing and eating cultured mushrooms or germs such as yeast that were grown on-site together with the audiences, ultimately collapsing the border between the organic and the inorganic. Finally, through the lecture performance Myriagon 1: Word Worlds, the project explored the meaning of “the good lives of diverse species,” questioning the multi-layered lives of various organic and inorganic lives in the environment, including human life, and exploring different manners of symbiotic living amid its interlaced complexity.
In Eating and Living with Divese Germs, artist Andeath leads a session where participants observe and consume mushrooms, yeast, and other fungi grown within the exhibition, thereby breaking down the boundary between the observer and the growing organisms. Andeath baked bread using the cultivated yeast, while Ara Ahn shared it with the audience, topped with mushrooms, aquatic plants, various edible powders, and fermented sugars.
