Performance Sonja Bäumel
MICROBIAL ENTANGLEMENT*
in vitro breakout
09.10.2019, 20:00
with Doris Uhlich and Andrius Mulokas
* Part of the project “What would a microbe say?” (2017-2020), a collaboration project between Sonja Bäumel and Helen Blackwell, (Professor of chemical biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA).
Sonja Bäumel’s performance with Doris Uhlich and Andrius Mulokas revolves around an oversized Petri dish. In natural science, in vitro refers to experiments that take place in a controlled artificial environment outside a living organism, for example a Petri Dish. The performance wants to point out that a living being cannot be reduced to its DNA and that its exploration of social relationships requires, among other things, an artistic and philosophical extension of scientific tools. With this performative work, Bäumel makes use of principles of biological cooperation models in order to transform them metaphorically. She negotiates phenomena such as quorum sensing, a field of research that investigates communication systems between microbes.
Further information is available here.