“Altar for Cosmic Talismans” by Lucile Olympe Haute
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- Altar for Cosmic Talismans
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Juried artwork. Exhibition ‘AI, Kombucha, and Cyberfeminism’ at École des Arts Décoratifs, May 16 – 21
The altars for cosmic talismans compose a space of remembrance of the different facets of the same form of life. The staged discs can be perceived as material experiments, waste from a beverage production or ritual objects. They invite us to question what we believe in, our collective values and their influence on our relationship to the world, the ways we have of collaborating with, caring for, cultivating or exploiting other living beings.
The Great Cosmic Talismanwas cultured from a mixed strain. Received the same week of June 2021 from Alexia Venot on the one hand and Maya Minder on the other, mixed, maintained and drunk all summer and autumn, until January 2022 when she met the Vivant Kombucha strain that gorged the bequeathed cellulose for the Biomaterials, Fermentation and Kombucha workshop in Unîmes. A few months later, cultivation with these liters of starter took place in Limbes in Saint-Étienne, before returning to Nîmes to seed the tea prepared with Jeanne Mainetti and the help of Melissa Marquet. It grew and then dried at the University of Nîmes during the summer of 2022. Untreated until last January, it received a two-sided massage with Vivien Roussel’s linseed oil / turpentine / beeswax recipe for thr34d5.
Like the symbiosis that constitutes it, it is only relations and circulations: commensalism, predation, mutualism, competition, amensalism…
In collaboration with Olivier Lellouche, Mial Watkins and Jeanne Mainetti. Thanks to Eugénie Zuccarelli, Mélissa Markai, Christophe Pornay and the University of Nîmes.