This workshop is the third in a series that aims to engage questions of giving voice to our microbiomes – the plethora of critters who co-constitute us as embodied and social beings, often invisible in human experience. The aim is to experiment with collective and experiential ways of making tangibly present the microorganisms that live around, on and within us and make us hosts of living assemblages, or what biologists refer to as holobionts. Over four activities, workshop participants are invited to collectively materialise, narrate, and perform more-than-human co-presence; engage microbial-human interdependence, making it conceptually and methodically relatable; and speculate relational futures. In practical terms, we take a multi-tier approach.
NOTE:
Participants are asked to prepare a short but rich vignette developed using the self as the site of inquiry as a route to ecological understanding. We are interested in narratives involving relations with microbiomes, activated using text, collage, illustration or other means. We invite participants to: (i) bring an object that can serve as a boundary object to guide them in (re)narrating their vignettes in the workshop; and (ii) disrupt common hygiene practices by leaving a small but accessible patch of skin (e.g., on the upper forearm) unwashed for at least three days before the workshop, to literally and metaphorically cultivate the growth of their skin microbiome.
PRESENTERS:
Danielle Wilde, Umeå University, SE and University of Southern Denmark, DK
Tau Lenskjold, University of Southern Denmark, DK
Lindsay Kelley, Australian National University, AU
Tarsh Bates, Umeå University, SE
Daphné Hamilton-Jones, Umeå University, SE and ENS Paris-Saclay, FR
Lucas Ihlein, University of Wollongong, AU
Leena Naqvi, Umeå University, SE
Alia Parker, Australian National University, AU
Helen Pynor, Independent artist
