Microbial Keywording

In a performative installation, Klaus Spiess & Lucie Strecker explore how language creates materiality. Based on a biochemical setup of experiments and with help from some volunteers from the audience they will demonstrate how language influences the oral flora and vice versa.

Every human being is the host of countless bacterial organisms. They form an ecosystem without which the body cannot live. Can the act of speech change this system?

In the performance, volunteers will repeat selected keywords multiple times, which affects the composition of the oral flora. An autonomous eco-linguistic system speaks through “its” human. Microbes will be removed from saliva samples and “trained” in nutrient solutions until they have anchored epigenetically in the memory of the oral flora and materialize as a “designer probiotic.”

With Klaus Spiess and Lucie Strecker (artists) followed by a talk with Regine Rapp (Art Laboratory Berlin)