STILLLEBEN with Symbionts

Abstract

‘STILLLEBEN. Becoming Symbionts’ proposes to value milk and its microbial constituents as primordial assets and currencies - along with cells, sperm, blood, water, and oxygen. The latest scientific research, which has suggested that there is an intimate unseen interplay between mothers and their babies via the transfer of breast milk and microbes, which actually increases the value of the currency with each exchange. The co-operation of Irini Athanassakis and David Berry is an invitation to perceive the transfer of milk not only as an interaction visible to the naked eye, but also on the microscopic level of cells and bacteria. In order to challenge us with this unseen perspective, Athanassakis encourages us to step forward and take a performative and procreative role in expanding our perception. As we are home to billions of microscopic entities, we continuously cast this part of ourselves into our surroundings, impacting and interacting with everything around us. We leave a microbial trace, a lingering residue of cells on the objects, rooms, and people that we encounter. Breast milk and formula are part of such an exchange process. If we look at the logic of microbial exchange in nursing as ‘giving’ and knowledge about symbionts for a future holo-economy based on co-operation and mutualism for collective survival.