Heterotrophs Need Autotrophs   🪰

As fungi needs to pair with the algae or cyanobacteria in order to thrive in the model of the lichen, so must humans conceptually pair ourselves – the heterotrophs – with the vegetal world  – the autotrophs – in order to imagine new cycles of continuance. The system of capitalism most of us participate in causes us to consume unstable amounts and produce waste that cannot be sufficiently metabolized.  We should pause and take a step back from our human ideas of creation, which is mainly repackaged consumption, and learn from the autotrophs. Not so that we become fully autotrophic, but so that we can become hybrid organisms; through this hybridization we can learn to consume in ways that produce generative materials that can be reused or actively metabolized.

As holobiont “humans,” we are chimeric -- it is estimated that 90% of the cells that make up the human body are bacterial, and there are over 150 different species of bacteria within the human gut microbiome (Gilbert, Sapp, Tauber 327).  If we consider Niels Bohr’s claim that the basic epistemological unit of the universe was not the atom, but instead phenomena, it becomes increasingly clear that the world is formed and functions relationally. Karen Barad states that phenomena are produced through “agential intra-actions of multiple apparatuses of bodily production” (17). A phenomenon, the base unit of the universe, comes into being through the relationship and potentiality of open-ended practices. So, instead of focusing on something’s perceived boundaries in determining its singularity, what should be focused on is how things are truly formed through relationships. It is through this lens that we can expand our understanding of “ourselves” and include the autotroph.





















Fig 11. Still from Residuum (0:41),  Single channel video, 2021.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic that occurred in 2020 and its restrictions on communal spaces, I didn’t have access to conventional studio spaces from April 2020 to September 2020. I began working in the basement of a building belonging to the church I grew up attending. The church building was built in 1883 and the basement floor is compacted dirt and detritus from former uses. In the room there are two basketball nets, a dehumidifier, two pylons, and a staircase leading to a boarded window. There is a stone tunnel leading from this building to the basement of the official church sanctuary building. This  space became a site of investigation instead of a studio. I began taking samples of the efflorescence leaching out of  the walls, and pouring silicone into holes in the dirt, over crystal structures forming over the crumbled limestone.

Dust &Dirt&Soil

Mineral, chemical... leaching

pylonx2 brickx14 plasticx24 ropex2

Fig 12. + 13. Documentation of efflorescence samples, 2020.

My experiments culminate in two works: Residuum (2021) and Excavation Growth Units 1+2 (2020). Residuum is a video piece shown integrated with Preservation Instinct and explores the physical space, as well as the concepts behind the exhibition via subtitles (which form the beginning of this paper). There are oral histories surrounding this Church and adjacent land that involve disease, mistreatment, and death, similarly to the pandemic circumstances that drove me to using the space. The dirt, detritus, and chemical leaching in the video and growth units are remnants of these difficult past histories that have been forgotten and left to their own devices within a vacant basement. It becomes a sort of peat moss bog where stories can be forgotten for decades, but unearthed as they were. Accompanying Residuum is a soundscape composed of the sound of the dehumidifier sampled from the church basement paired with audio samples of ultrasonic rat communication. This audio merges with the live sounds of dripping and bubbling from Preservation Instinct.

























Fig 14.  Excavation Growth Units, Excavated dirt, brick, stone, efflorescence, silicone, oyster mushrooms, sphagnum moss, PVC vinyl, plywood, casters, 2020.

Excavation Growth Units 1+2 take samples of the dirt and begin a remediative process, pairing it with soil, fungal spores, and moss. The source dirt is compacted with rat hairs, candy wrappers, and fragments of the former wooden gymnasium floor. It becomes a lichen, lying in the dark, filled with history but starved of food and light. Bringing light and attention to these dark forgotten histories creates the potential for them to be re-contaminated and metabolized, allowing histories to be heard and dirt to be fertilized.

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