At the border of gene editing technologies, tissue engineering methods and the study of micro-worlds Ontologie partagée is a fictional exploration of the perception of boundaries between humans and non-humans, at the periphery of interior and outside, from visible to imperceptible. Developed through short speculative narratives in which distant forms of life intermingle and associate, these writings attempt to compare advances in biotechnology and questions of care or ethics relating to the separation of the living and the non-living. It was part of the exploration process of research project Expérience de panser.
"The existence and the ontological thickness of the beings which surround us would depend in a way not only on our capacity to name them, but also on our capacity to perceive them as well as the capacity which we have to be in relation with them”. Jessica Borotto, Living in Trouble with Donna Haraway, Dehors Edition.
They are gathered here as in Ursula K. Le Guin's basket, an object that collects and cares for a collection of small creatures, elements without apparent identities, devoid of the ability to say that they are alive. Because it is this word and its antonym that it is. Or this in-between, this border that separates the living from the non-living as well as that which distinguishes the natural from the artificial.
Imperceptible, invisible and silent. The physiological devices of the human body are being(s). They are assemblies, meetings and associations. They form the mass of a body with a plural identity and yet with a unitary appearance. In the depths of fiction, these beings are invited to share inter and intra species encounters thanks to the development of tissue engineering tools, transplantation and grafting processes that make human and non-human intertwine. And thus lead to glimpse these vagabond life forms as mediation and exchange supports with a constantly changing environment.
Then through fictional stories, communication bridges are deployed between entities chatting in a microscopic cloud and the scale of human perception. The almost immobile and the dynamic, the inert and the living covet each other to form more-than-living agglomerates on which interactions of a new kind are taking shape. Humans and non-humans meet to give voice to invisible beings, hidden and scattered in the interstices of the human(s).
Read in french ➔
Ontologie partagée - 2019
Part of research project Expérience de panser
Part of research project Expérience de panser