ISSUE 58 — SUMMER 2022

Back in 2000, when I became involved in animal-studies, the mycological turn in the humanities was inconceivable. And yet, through a determinate will to challenge ourselves and fine- tune, not reject, the synergy of empathy and imagination, artists, researchers, and scholars have brought us so much closer to the non-human, making available to us more vivid, accessible and world-enriching tools than ever before. Mycorrhizal networks are the perfect metaphorical incarnation of the webs of knowledge that the different strands of academic research are generating today—open-ended and poietic support networks that gather and convey information across multiple individuals, shared communities, stratified and often invisible underground agents.

This issue of Antennae features the work of many scholars, researchers, and artists who have accomplished just that by harnessing the world-forming power of empathy and imagination in order to make visible what has for too long been made invisible. Over time, they have devised new and much needed thinking-structures that reconnect us with the ecosystems and ecologies we share with other earthlings.

Dr. Giovanni Aloi
Editor in Chief of Antennae

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in this issue

Rachel Armstrong

Suzette Bousema
Eli Brown
Vitor/Yama Chiodi

John Dao-Tran

Darcie DeAngelo

doxiadis+

Madge Evers

Annike Flo

Michael J. Hathaway Allison Kotzig

Laurel V. McLaughlin

Elspeth Mitchell

Marion Neumann

Dao Nguyen
Regine Rapp

Marjolaine Ryley
Merlin Sheldrake

Galina Shevchenko

Remi Siciliano

Mendel Skulski

Kuai Shen

Fereshteh Toosi

Lenka Vráblíková
Helena Wee

How to live and die

text and images: Dao Nguyen

This portfolio consists of a

selection of images from a research-based practice that straddles science, art, and philosophy, and wonders how we live with others. These images exist somewhere between portraiture and documentation.

Toward
a radical mycology

main text: Peter McCoy

interviewer: Marion Neumann

Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing & Working With Fungi by Peter McCoy explores the uniqueness of fungal biology, the critical ecological roles

of micro and macro fungi,
skills for accurately identifying mushrooms and mycorrhizal fungi, the importance of lichens as indicators of environmental health.

p 19

p 12

Cocreat:e:ures

Annike Flo investigated what happens when we, as artists, shift our perception of other beings towards collaboration partner, and oddkin instead of stranger, prop or material to manipulate.

text: Annike Flo

Your_wildlife communities, yeast worlds

text: Darcie DeAngelo
images: Darcie DeAngelo and John Dao-Tran

Darcie DeAngelo follows the lab and its community images of sourdough starters and their boules. Members compare human participants with their sourdough starter companions. Wild yeast cultures are shared among participants as well as photos of their new companions.

p 37

p 47

Mycorrhizae project

text and images : Allison Kotzig

Mycorrhizae Project, a large scale, international collaboration is planned using a digital ritual space as a way to connect disparate emanations across a “forest” or mycorrhizal network of artists, each providing sustenance to the whole.

Entangled kingdoms

in conversation: Giovanni Aloi and doxiadis+

Entangled Kingdoms by Greek Architectural and Landscape practice doxiadis+, highlights the importance of the symbiosis between species as a sine qua non condition for the survival and future prosperity of our planet.

p 59

p 69

"Is Darwin anthropomorphizing the flower or is he being veg-etalised by the flower? We are influenced by non-human organisms all the time. As we try to make sense of them, they impact the way that we think, feel, and imagine."

Merlin Sheldrake, p 198

"Mushrooms link the spheres of sacred, chthonic-diabolic, and fertile-reproductive. They reflect an element of risk with which the evolution of human culture is associated."

Galina Shevchenko, p 121

"The delicate microbial ecosystem that is a human body (of which only ten percent is human) functions as a stand-in and reflection on the larger systems within which human bodies are embedded."

Dao Nguyen , p 13

"As the fungi moved into my atelier, eating their way through coffees, books, discarded textiles, and substrates, it became clear that a major part of the piece would be working at the fungi’s pace."

Annike Flo, p 37

Metabolic rhythms of fungus-farming

text and images: Kuai Shen

The fungus farming of leaf-cutter ants can be amplified by means of creative uses of technologies. These ants produce acoustic vibratory messages and enact fermentation processes by cutting, licking, and secreting chemical substances on leaves.

Museum of queer ecologies

text and images: Eli Brown

Eli Brown discusses aspects of transgender life in relationship to mycelial life: asking if trans people are the first human-born multi- species organisms, and imagining a techno-sexual future where humans have learned to procreate with fungi.

p 77

p 88

Out of office

text and images: Elspeth Mitchell

and Lenka Vráblíková

This contribution tests a premise that encounters with mycorrhiza a symbiotic association between a fungus and a plant understood as partial, situated, embodied and entangled practice-in-motion— enables critical re-considerations of individual and collective relationships.

Financial crisis mycoremediation

in conversation: Giovanni Aloi

and Fereshteh Toosi

images: Fereshteh Toosi

In Financial Crisis Mycoremediation, oyster mushrooms, known to excel in bioremediation, are decomposing some canonic works representing the rise of neoliberalism and the global financial crisis.

p 96

p 108

From “Lenin is a Mushroom” to “On the Edge
of Tenderness”

text and images: Galina Shevchenko

Chthonic and sacred, meaty and delicate, forbidden and desirable, seductive and liberating, ambiguous and omnipresent, mushrooms are powerful signifiers that embody the mythological convergence of nature and culture.

Caucases of inhalation

text and images: Laurel V. McLaughlin

Anicka Yi’s exhibition “You Can Call Me F” (2015) and the installation Immigration Caucus (2017) are ac cumulations of bodily and more than-human biological cultures, that, when exposed to the air, immerse audience-actors within mycological “caucuses” for their metabolic, immersive, political, and ethical consumption.

p 121

p 129

More-than-human ethics for biodesign

text: Rachel Armstrong

Recently, the ability of mycelia to act like a living glue has provided inspiration for cutting-edge biodesign practices through the production of lightweight, organic mycocomposites. While these new materials are environmentally beneficial, biofabrication introduces ecoabuses into an otherwise regenerative process.

On mycohuman performances

text: Regine Rapp

The work of Saša Spačal, Tarsh Bates and Theresa Schubert is not representational in the manner of traditional fine art but propose through performative, multidisciplinary, and research-based strategies that produce artwork through fungal material as such.

p 144

p 157

"Fungi are the heroes of the web of life, and this is the exact message we consider vital and needs to be understood by each one of us."

doxiadis+, p 71

"Mycelia challenge scientific taxonomy. Their existence is grounded on making kin with living and nonliving things on their way."

Vitor/Yama Chiodi , p 226

"Instrumentally understood as acquiescent composters and opportunistic saprophytes that transform organic matter into forms that can be used by other decomposers, Fungi are regarded as mere infrastructure in producing food for plants, rather than valued beings in their own right."

Rachel Armstrong , p 146

"Then, his body transformed into different parts of the world. His head and extremities became mountains. His breath became wind and clouds. His voice be- came thunder, his eyes the sun and moon."

Helena Wee, p 239