How to Work with Fungi: Interspecific Collaboration and Sensorial Engagements

• In Event: Nonhuman Phenomenology and Technoscientific Intersubjectivity - 4: Subjective Attunements

Abstract

Relying on the tools of biotechnology and sometimes referred to as "biofabrication", an emerging field is gathering people who are experimenting with living (micro)organisms as a way of designing more sustainable alternatives and cleaner production in the area of manufacturing. Many do-it-yourself biologists, designers, and amateurs as well as professional scientists are particularly interested in working with mycelium, the vegetative part of fungi, as it can be harnessed to produce a wide range of biodegradable materials (e.g., packaging, construction, and textile). Working with microorganisms requires engaging with invisible entities; and engaging with those entities requires finding ways to develop a multisensorial understanding of those organisms and their ways, one that unfolds on a day-to-day interspecific relationship relying on direct, sensory engagement that sometimes exceeds ocularocentrism as well as rigid scientific protocols.
Drawing on an ongoing ethnographic research conducted in Western Europe, this paper addresses how those practices of growing materials in collaboration with microbial nonhumans invite us to reflect on how humans may get to know such organisms that are so alien to them. To know how to work with fungi one needs to know how a particular fungal specimen works —that is, what is it, what does it need to thrive, how to understand and handle its sometimes unpredictable reactions, and how to actually feel and engage with that nonhuman.

Author

• Juliette Salme, FNRS - University of Liege