fresh bloat decay remain
for MYCELIUM by Zosia Hołubowska
2023
MYCELIUM is a multi-media installation by Zosia Hołubowska in collaboration with Joanna Zabielska and Claudia Strate, weaving together a crocheted sculpture of over 40 structures, binaural audio essay in 5 parts, zine with texts and writing prompts, AR application and smell. The non-linear narrative conjures an ecosystem based on care and mutual aid and speculates on intimacies with other species and other forms of intelligence.
Concept, composition, sculpture and smell: Zosia Hołubowska
AR, 3D sculpture: Joanna Zabielska
Texts by:
Ursula K. Le Guin
(fragment from The Word for World is Forest)
Agnieszka Szpila (fragment from Hexy)
Claire Lefèvre
Jul Zabowskx
Claudia Strate
Production, Zine: Claudia Strate
Exhibition design assistance: Bilal Alame
Spatial engineering: Rhys Connolly
Supported by:
Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture,
Civil Service and Sport (BMKOES)
City of Vienna
A small signal sent out in circles.
Softly trembling our hyphae, it went on, tickling the tips of our roots.
We were shivering in nervous excitement.
The sun was already going down,
and we let the warm weight of their body cover us.
As the night was falling, we calmed down.
While they seemed calm as well, we sensed distress.
Their eyes were wide open, piercing through the falling darkness.
Are you cold?
They did not answer.
You seem cold.
They kept staring into the distance, limbs all stiff, hands clenched.
We felt a bit uneasy, but we held our water.
We fell asleep to the sound of crackling leaves.
When the sun rose, the cells of their skin had tuned in
to the dry autumn rustle.
Are you thirsty?
We opened our million mouths,
and shared a few drops of water with them.
But they did not move, and we couldn’t read their absent gaze.
By noon, the sun was blazing, and we got high on sweet, sweet sugar.
Do you know the feeling of oxygen slowly running out?
That tickling high?
It accelerated us, and we began eating ourselves.
We tore down what was left of us,
the walls, the structures, they dissolved, we dissolved.
Everything around us liquefied, we were oozing, we were dripping.
We were a slimy mess, and we had a plan.
Their body started moving again.
The strong smell that wrapped them in,
it was attractive in a peculiar way.
We met all over, we came from within, we came from afar.
Fungi, worms, insects,larvae, birds, scavengers, bacteria!
We followed the green veins of their skin,
and it began to swell and to blister.
Their body was taking its last and deepest breath,
inflating like a giant bubble until it burst,
tossing tendons, hair and fingernails around.
Eventually, that pile you call body is gone.
We burp and we spit out the bones.
They’re gone, gone elsewhere, they come with us, in all different directions.
We are built for recovery1. Take a breath, take us in.
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1Borrowed in appreciation from Suzanne Simard (2021):
Finding the Mother Tree. Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
© Dino Bossini