Mixed media installation | tables containing drawings, slideshow, spoken text (3:40 min, loop), animated pencil drawing (1:23 min, mute) projected on a round screen and an object made of coir rope | about 5 x 5 m | 2015
See publication on researchcatalogue.net
Inspired by a Residence at NCBS (National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India) and talks with various scientists as well as experiencing the mega city of Bengaluru (also called Bangalore) led to the idea of developing a work on the city as a superorganism.
In 1851 Herbert Spencer described society as a social-organism with organs, growth and disappearance. Later biologist William Morton Wheeler (1910) created the term "superorganism" in relation to his work with ants. Since then the idea has been refined in various directions.
A video installation is showing how a single cell starts to grow and, with increasing speed, becomes a humongous organism that is in motion all the time. Therefor 6 historic maps of the city of Bengaluru have been animated with pencil drawings aside a spoken text describing the functions of the superorganism.
Aside there are drawings and collages made on the pages of scientific books on the topics of biology and geology that link to the matter the superorganism is made of in a poetic way.
Developed in the "bangaloREsidency" of Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, at NCBS (National Centre of Biological Sciences) Bangalore, India.
Thanks to Christoph Bertrams, Maureen Gonsalves, Antonia de Baey of Goethe Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan as well as Deepa Agashe, Upinder Bhalla, Axel Brockmann, Sandeep Krishna, Naresh V Narasimhan, Shannon B Olsson, Sunitha M R, Uma Ramakrishnan, Lena Robra, Mukund Thattai, Robin Vijayan.