Abstract

Keywords: Molmedia (neologism), personality transplants, microbiome anthropophagy, neuroregenerative nutrition. microbial resource management, cannibalist manifesto, psychobiotics, art and science, relational food, probiotics

“Transplanting the Self: Microbiome Anthropophagy” (2018) was designed as a bioart installation that involves the audience as active participants in an experiment that invites for a reflection about the limits of microbiome manipulation, evoking and exploring ancient practices such as the use of young virgins’ saliva in the production of ritualistic alcoholic drinks, such as the ‘cauim’. The drink is produced from chewed and fermented manioc and the collective consumption of cauim integrates ancient rituals of hunting and cannibalism of native Brazilian tribes. Relating to ISEA 2019 subtheme Aeternitas: Eternity of the Mortal the work discusses and explores future possibilities in engineering personalities addressing critically issues such as the very nature of consciousness and the self. ‘Transplanting the Self’ can be understood as both an installation and a performance were the artist and the audience contributes for its actualization and activation as an artwork.

• Clarissa Ribeiro, Ph.D. in Arts, Former Fulbright Scholar in Arts, M.Arch, B.Arch, chair of the first Leonardo ISAST LASER talks to be organized in Brazil, directs the CrossLab research group and art collective and the LIP Lab for Innovation and Prototyping at the University of Fortaleza. She was an Associate Professor for Roy Ascott Studio B.A. in Technoetic Arts in Shanghai in 2015, after one year (2013-2014) collaborating with the Art|Sci Center and Lab at UCLA in Los Angeles as a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Research Scholar in Arts. From 2009/2010 she was a Ph.D. researcher at the CAiiA node of the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK, by the time she was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Sao Paulo, and a member of Gilbertto Prado’s art collective Poéticas Digitais. Her artistic and research interests converges in the exploration of consciousness and the self as emergences from local and nonlocal communication phenomena in macro, micro, molecular and subatomic scales.

Full text (PDF) p. 558-561

The artist would like to thank the microbiome donors Clara Reial, Aderson Passos and Andressa Hadig Haidar.