Artists Statement
K10 is a collective project engaging in social and material research that blurs lines between aesthetics, functionality, and activism. We mediate intra-species ecologies. K10 proposes to present ongoing interdisciplinary work conducted on trans-species relationships and synechdotal dependencies: scaled down DIY versions replicating co-evolutionary schema, oriented toward increasing the representational legibility of energy transfers, and toward urgencies for ecological sustainability. Through practical demonstration, workshops and digital visualization, Katalog10 builds on a conceptual model of Jianghu mycelia; brainlike structures that co-evolve in landscape.
K10 will be in residence in a rural/agricultural area in Yunnan conducting material and social research. In a project that combines Chinese agro-ecological agriculture, utopian landscape architecture, and a current imperative for value-added products induced by an influx of tourism in the region, K10 will build a material systems project demonstrating strategic carbon recycling within an environment, while providing delicious human edibles. This involves a western-style beer of local ingredients, brewing wastes are deployed to feed pigs and cultivate fungi, and Fungi used to build berms and to abate soil erosion on hillsides.
The project highlights competitive allocations of resources between agricultural, subsistence and tourism economies. Beer originally made through the capture of wild yeasts, was selected for its long association with human societies, an excellent example of human co-evolution with other organisms for mutual survival. Remediation activities underline the process by which energy- in the form of materials- changes its state, from the waste of production into food for another organism. Introducing fungi cultivation into this energy loop strategically frames cycles of decay and reuse for public contemplation.
Additional ongoing/proposed projects:
- Future Travel: Trash Dirigibles
- Changing Standards
- What is Clean: A Reintroduction of Bacteria for the North
- Open Source Soap and Happy Dirt
- The International Pooper that Pays
- The Air-Conditioning Festival
- Sarah Lewison, USA mcma.siu.edu/people/faculty/radiotelevisionanddigitalmedia/lewison.html
- Duskin Drum (USA) is an interdisciplinary scholar, artist, performer, and woodsman