INTERBEING (2019-2022)
Installation — Petri dishes, magnifying glass, relationship chart and video. Dimensions variable.
MUA PLUS Residency 2019. Exhibited at the Museum of the University of Alicante
With the collaboration of:
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Alicante
Department of Physiology, Genetics and Microbiology, Miguel Hernández University, Elche
Interbeing / Interser
Video looping 04'21''
Lynn Margulis’s work on symbiosis and the holobiont, together with philosophical approaches to multiplicity developed by thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, challenges the idea of the organism as an autonomous individual. An organism can instead be understood as a complex assemblage of living entities, continuously interacting, transforming and exchanging with one another and with other forms of life.
If human contact involves the exchange of microorganisms, the body can be understood as an expanded, porous entity rather than a self-contained individual. From this perspective, the notion of a posthuman community emerges as an entangled network of interdependent beings, in which composite bodies — constellations of organisms — act upon and transform one another. This challenges established notions of identity and autonomy. It also resonates with David Bohm’s theory of the implicate order, in which visible reality emerges from a deeper, undivided whole in which each part is connected to the totality.
Developed as part of the MUA PLUS Residency 2019, INTERSER involved cultivating and comparing the microbial traces of different groups of people before and after everyday physical interactions such as kissing, embracing, or breathing the same air in a shared space. These scientific, philosophical and spiritual perspectives converge in a relational and non-dualistic understanding of existence. The project takes its name from a concept in Zen Buddhist philosophy according to which all beings and phenomena are interdependent and, rather than simply being, we inter-are.
Installation at Casa Bardin, Instituto Alicantino de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert
Group meditation alongside the work during the activity “Inter-being: A Mindfulness Practice,” held as part of La Nit en Blanc at Casa Bardin, 2022
A piece by composer Alessio Santolini inspired by Ana Pastor’s exhibition Del no-ser al inter-ser.
...“Working with these microscopic forms of life, the project moves beyond the idea of singularity, creating ways of thinking that are multiple. This is a form of resistance, because it creates images in which we can see ourselves as a mass in relation to the environment that surrounds us. Here, we can enter into a new way of thinking about ourselves, the bodies we inhabit, and our relationships with our social, ecological, cultural and biological environment. We are more than our bodies; we are more than human; we are a collective of life connected to all other collectives of life. Within these deep and complex structures of being, we can shape a future centred on inclusion and care. Through the creation of a new life, a new birth, a way of attending to multiplicity rather than the singularity of our future.”
Johanna Caplliure
Excerpt from the Exhibition Catalogue text Del No-ser al Interser