Holobiont: Life is Other

At the peak of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Gaian Systems was invited to contribute to the exhibition Holobiont: Life as Other. We collaborated with Dorion Sagan to develop a high-resolution poster illustrating the concept of a holobiont, first introduced by Dorion's mother Lynn Margulis. We also experimented with early generative imagery tools to see how they would visually interpret the prompt "image of holobiont."

This is a zoomable version of the exhibition poster. We suggest viewing it fullscreen (by clicking the click the "Toggle full page" icon) and giving the portion of the image you've selected time to resolve.

Credit: Lynn Margulis/Bruce Clarke/Dorion Sagan/David McConville
Wood panel with digital print 300 x 200cm

Great fleas have little fleas
upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn,
have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still,
and greater still, and so on.

- Augustus Morgan, Book of Paradoxes, 1872

Exhibition description

From the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab exhibition catalog:

The exhibition title Holobiont: Life is Other cites the term introduced by the biologist Lynn Margulis of the holobiont, which describes the cohabitation of different organisms in a host that together form a metaorganism. The concept of the holobiont allows for a current view of life as a cooperative and holistic system. According to this theory, at an evolutionarily early stage, they entered into a symbiotic relationship with other prokaryotic cells, which led to the development of the latter into eukaryotic cells. This thesis also explains the special properties of mitochondria and plastids as cell organelles and the emergence of other eukaryotic cell characteristics such as the nucleus.

This tableau, specially designed for the exhibition, was conceived by Dorion Sagan - Lynn Margulis' son - and Bruce Clarke. It brings together quotes and images of polyps, corals, the human microbiome and the entire biosphere. An insight prevails that breaks through conventional categorizations of species and gives Arthur Rimbaud's famous sentence "Je est un autre" a new meaning in the light of contemporary life sciences.

Gaian Systems, together with Dorion Sagan, designed this contribution to the Holobiont exhibition.

HOLOBIONT. LIFE IS OTHER

Announcement from Universität der Künste Berlin

We are inhabited by bacteria and viruses, just as we humans inhabit homes, cities and environments. We also serve as hosts for ideologies, media and technologies. The term 'holobiont', coined in 1991 by biologist Lynn Margulis, describes us as a total living being permeated by the biosphere. 'Holobiont' explodes the self-understanding of individual life, links us symbiotically with other organisms via our microbiome, disrupts the division into subject and object and offends our usual ego concept..

The social and psychological transformations of the last few months bring to mind that 'life' is above all that of other than human actors.

Simple demarcations no longer stand up to this dynamic. We' experience 'us' as transitory beings drifting between digital and molecular worlds and sense the twisting of boundaries within us as the possibility of a new language beyond a symbolic distance from the world.

With the exhibition HOLOBIONT, Magazin4 shows bodies, environments, texts, media, machines and biological organisms - condensed into ten pictorial spaces, each of which represents a narrative about another life and about the lives of others: LIFE IS OTHER! Using different methods, theoretical concepts, processes and metaphors, the gallery becomes a "holospace" - a magazine within a magazine.

With contributions by Art Orienté Objet, Irini Athanassakis, David Berry, Julia Borovaya, Juan M. Castro & Akihiro Kubota, Tagny Duff, Thomas Feuerstein, Ana Maria Gomez Lopez, Luis Hernan/Pei-Ying Lin/Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Nigel Helyer, Hideo Iwasaki, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Eduardo Kac, Lynn Margulis/Dorion Sagan/Bruce Clarke/David McConville, Yann Marussich, our alumna Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Gerald Nestler, ORLAN, Špela Petrič, Chris Salter, Maja Smrekar, Klaus Spiess, Lucie Strecker/KT Zakravsky, Franco Vaccari, Paul Vanouse, M R Vishnuprasad and Peter Weibel.

Curated by Judith Reichart, Lucie Strecker, Thomas Feuerstein, Jens Hauser and Magazin4.

When? Where?
17 April – 20 June 2021 (opening: 16 April, 3-5pm)
Magazin4
Bergmannstraße 6
6900 Bregenz