[ISEA2024] Paper: Janina Hoth — The Un/natural Symbionts: Kombucha-Making as Social-Epistemic Practice

Abstract

Keywords:
Art-science, philosophy of science, social epistemology, symbiosis, multispecies, curatorial practice, ritual, lived experience

How knowledge can be adapted, exchanged, and transferred in between disciplines, is an open question in art-science. The project Unnatural Symbionts explores through rituals how knowledge from several disciplines and fields on micro-organisms can be made palpable in one space. Using kombucha fermentation as field for exploration, the various relations of microbes and humans in scientific and non-scientific discourses are discussed. Microbial life is understood in its other-than-human agency and its role in our human identities which becomes connected to personal memories of making food and drinking tea. The goal is a curatorial practice that invites artists, scientist as well as a wider audience to reflect on concepts of symbiosis from the perspectives of lived experience and multispecies rituals. Microbiological research on microbial diversity is questioned in its meaning for self and individuality as philosophical concepts. The kombuchamaking as a process becomes a method to experience microbial life with the naked human eye. The ritual binds these elements together to create a socio-cultural practice that avoids being bound to traditional conventions and creates a space for new ones.

  • Janina Hoth writes her PhD on collaborative practices in art, science, and technology. She investigates art-science as socialepistemic practice and questions how knowledge exchange happens within and outside of research. Her methods combine art history, philosophy and sociology of science with ethnographic practices. Prior to her PhD, she was a research associate at the Department for Image Science, Danube University Krems where she co-developed Digital Humanities projects and digital exhibitions as co-editor of the Archive of Digital Art. She lives and works in Hong Kong and Vienna, Austria. https://joth.me/