Zooming from outer space to the gut’s interior, Jenna Sutela’s video essay Holobiont presents the human body as a fluid assemblage of motley life forms interacting at multiple scales. The holobiont, a recent biological concept, radically redefines the notions of entity and species by positing that the “unit” is always co-constituted by the host and its microbiota. In short, it asserts that entities are always made of many species, inseparable. This scientific theory echoes the philosophical concept of hospitality and dissolves traditional notions of identity, community, and agency. Sutela’s work takes viewers on an imaginatively expansive journey where extremophile bacteria, fermented food, and panspermia theory–which posits that earthly life came from outer space, transported by meteorites, asteroids, or comets–map out new connections and solidarities. Holobiont is an invitation to consider the idea of embodied cognition on a planetary scale and the pleasures of dispersion.
Jenna Sutela is a Finnish artist based in Berlin who works with words, sounds, and other living media. She engages with both futuristic and ancient materials in audiovisual pieces, sculptures, and performances. Sutela’s work seeks to override aspects of culture based on a survival-of-the-fittest narrative in favor of symbiotic relationships between all life forms, both organic and synthetic. Her microbial collaborators include Physarum polycephalum, the “many-headed” slime mold with a decentralized nervous system, and the extremophilic Bacillus subtilis nattō bacterium. Recently, she has also collaborated with artificial neural networks. Sutela’s work has been presented internationally at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Serpentine Galleries, London; Shanghai Biennale, and other locations.
Zooming from outer space to the gut’s interior, Jenna Sutela’s video essay Holobiont presents the human body as a fluid assemblage of motley life forms interacting at multiple scales. The holobiont, a recent biological concept, radically redefines the notions of entity and species by positing that the “unit” is always co-constituted by the host and its microbiota. In short, it asserts that entities are always made of many species, inseparable. This scientific theory echoes the philosophical concept of hospitality and dissolves traditional notions of identity, community, and agency. Sutela’s work takes viewers on an imaginatively expansive journey where extremophile bacteria, fermented food, and panspermia theory–which posits that earthly life came from outer space, transported by meteorites, asteroids, or comets–map out new connections and solidarities. Holobiont is an invitation to consider the idea of embodied cognition on a planetary scale and the pleasures of dispersion.
Jenna Sutela is a Finnish artist based in Berlin who works with words, sounds, and other living media. She engages with both futuristic and ancient materials in audiovisual pieces, sculptures, and performances. Sutela’s work seeks to override aspects of culture based on a survival-of-the-fittest narrative in favor of symbiotic relationships between all life forms, both organic and synthetic. Her microbial collaborators include Physarum polycephalum, the “many-headed” slime mold with a decentralized nervous system, and the extremophilic Bacillus subtilis nattō bacterium. Recently, she has also collaborated with artificial neural networks. Sutela’s work has been presented internationally at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Serpentine Galleries, London; Shanghai Biennale, and other locations.