Jenna Sutela’s project Orgs, a performative collaboration with Physarum polycephalum, the single-celled yet “many-headed” slime mold, juxtaposes the organism with organizational and spiritual charts. Drawing from biological research and systems theory, among others, Sutela creates labyrinthine structures for the slime mold to navigate. One of those seen at AB6 shows the Decentralized Autonomous Organism drawing itself across an organizational maze outlining the shift from hierarchy to holarchy. Another one is based on a mandala drawn by Minakata Kumagusu, an early collector of slime molds, manifesting the limits of anthropocentrism and the existence of systems beyond cause-and-effect chains of connection. The slime mold is an ancient group organism resisting taxonomical descriptions. Though it doesn’t have a brain or nervous system, the slime mold demonstrates advanced spatial intelligence, finding the quickest route to its food source inside the two plexiglas sandwiches.

#labyrinth #liveorganisms #intelligence #mandala #humanorganizing

photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos, 6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI