I explore the question of building relationships with non-human agents—microorganisms and artificial intelligence—not as tools, but as active participants in an artistic statement. At the same time, I do not abandon my authorial position, but seek to expand the understanding of it. In this project, the “tea fungus” becomes not only a medium but also a co-author of the project. I take its properties into account and allow it to influence the form of the work, its content, and the process itself.

The subjects of the tattoos are the words: cooperation, community, competition, conflict, public good, altruism, trickster, colonization, partnership. These words were obtained through a content analysis of research on the interactions of microorganisms that form kombucha. I selected those terms that are also used in the social sciences, and are even more characteristic of them.

The network, on the one hand, refers to the appearance of kombucha itself under high magnification in a microscope, and on the other, symbolizes the complex social relationships within this community of microorganisms. The integration of words through tattooing is a way of physically embedding human language into the fabric of the work, a symbolic bridge between the social processes of human society and the symbiotic community of microorganisms.

PROJECT DIARY ⇢