Sacro Sanctus Residuum: Kombucha Biofilms ｜2020

biofilm pellicules on canvas | 25cm x 25cm

Sacro Sanctus Residuum: Kombucha Biofilms” is basically a collection of  many dried remnants of kombucha biofilms. These biofilms, composed of a delicate blend of yeasts and bacteria, reveal a array of organic forms and colors. From rich shades of brown and beige to a faint, almost golden luminescence when caressed by the light, they offer a visual poetry that evokes the placental and the planetary, the earthly and the celestial. Also the patterns reminds those of the cryptic prophecies of ancient oracles. 

||| preserved “skeletons” that look like planets and pieces of giant cells|||

From then on, the resacralization of the “disposables” arrived in my personal and daily life in a process where I assumed myself as a sort of “reframing nano-factory” that transforms disposables that carry aesthetic and ethical provocative potential, and do not have an appropriate disposal place to go so that I can direct them, into something else.

stories…

The production of this work is an act of opposition to the status quo of consumerist culture: I produce my own kombucha, for personal consumption, for therapeutic health reasons. When carrying out this production, I get in touch with ancestral techniques that survived many different situations, went through several civilizations – the first report of kombucha production and consumption comes from China, in 221 BC, during the Qin Dynasty and there are mentions of this drink in the Bible, in Ruth 2:14, where it is referred as the vinegar drink. The more I study about this “living-material,” the more I understand how it is is an auxiliary agent of evolution and adaptation for our own species. It brings health and wisdom, literally, to our body because when we ingested it, the bacterial cells will literally exchange information by exchanging DNA molecules among them in our intestines, so we truly learn how to digest better the world we live in by drinking it.

But it happens as the living films do not stop growing and reproducing, soon I’d have many more than it was necessary for personal consumption. And the crucial question came: what to do with surplus biofilms? Throw in the trash? – I did it once, but the discomfort I felt was so significant, I had to find another strategy. This little living being, when “fresh,” looks like living adipose tissue, and produces a drink that does me so well, that cures me, so I need to have a lot of respect for it, I can’t just throw the excess in the trash.

I had to rethink what to do, I couldn’t store gallons and more gallons with growing biofilms forever, and I wasn’t able to manage an outflow for them, by donation or anything like that. And all these daydreams and reflections on the discards came to the fore. From then on, I started to practice sun-dehydration of the surpluses, in a ritual process of storing them one by one. And each dry biofilm was a surprise, with their natural forms created by nature and chance, full of grooves and unique designs, so, with time, it naturally became a collection, as a kind of entomological collection, between the ready-made and the “self-made.”

micropolitics…

The questions this work evokes are urgent. A new conscience must emerge on a large scale, applying the principles of reverse engineering to the different layers of thought. It is time to reformat the intentions of production systems, change habits as a form of effective political action, micro-policies that penetrate the ontological mechanisms of society, in the sphere in which the “me and the other” are no longer separate beings, but a single body, a rhizomatic organism.

Reorganize our own relationships with the inanimate helps in creating a new form of respect to guides us towards the new paradigm that we will need to live, producing less and conserving more. This is what Sacro-Residuum is about.