Gut Feelings, 2016-ongoing

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(C) Photograph by www.tim-deussen.de
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Performance at Art Laboratory Berlin, 2017, as part of the Nonhuman Agents Series.  Performance as part of the exhibition Fraud, Fake and Fame – Goldrausch 2016, St. Johannes-Evangelist, Berlin, Germany, 2016.  Sticky Feelings, La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Montreal. Canada, 2018.

Materials: Symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts growing on kombucha tea; gloves made of bacteria cellulose.

A long glass container stands on a table, filled to the brim with 18 litres of liquid, inside skin-like substances floating.
I stand up above the table and plunge my arm in.  As I do, my arm displaces the liquid.
It overflows out of the container, onto the table and out onto the floor.
The excess liquid drips, forming pools.  A smell arises and spreads.

(Musings: Stories with Food, Feminism, Fermentation, 2019)

Given that more than half of the cells in the human body are bacterial cells and acknowledging the microbiome-gut-brain axis whereby bacteria in the gut have been shown to affect the mind, how people think, feel and even behave, bacteria can be seen as radical in the potential it has to challenge categories such as subject/object, mind/body and human/non-human.