Practice of culture/nature non-discrimination*
presented on virtual exhibition via Experiment Gallery Human Condition, 2020
It is possible that mental health and environmental "health" are linked, and people are deeply traumatized by the fact that they have severed their ties with non-human beings - ties that persist deep in our bodies (for example, in our DNA). We broke these ties in the social and philosophical space, but they still persisted, like thoughts that we consider unacceptable and which seep into our nightmares.
The feeling of disgust caused by the fact that we are literally covered with non-human beings, that they have crept inside us, and this is not some fatal accident, but something inevitable, a key factor in our very existence - is a symptom of this trauma. But if there was no bacterial microbiome in our digestive system, we would not be able to eat. Perhaps the feeling of disgust will diminish if we get used to being immersed in the biosphere. Just as neurotic feelings lose their sharpness when we become friendlier to our thoughts - thanks to the psychotherapy or meditation.
The work is the author's practice of such ecopsychotherapy. Where, with the help of a ‘photo-trace’, I try to suggest visual features that have arisen as a result of complex interactions between DNA expression and the environment in which it spreads. In other words, these visual traits are the result of the drilling communication of the DNA and symbionts of its host, where the beaver DNA is on the edge of it dam.
* This work is the third and the last in the series of experiments on constructing the author's symbiotic constructs of nondiscrimination between natural and artificial.