fluidspecies*

Fig. #01.  Contact between a future human and a symbiotic artifact born out of synthethized bacteria at the start of the Symbiocene, 2021.

          FLUIDSPECIES is a speculative manifesto that reflects on our condition as “humans” and “individuals” in relation to the living, aiming to change our perception around the species that inhabit this planet. Until the Anthropocene, in fact, our race had placed itself above the other beings, perhaps deceived by their own inability to perceive the invisible. What no eye was able to see.

          Bacteria, viruses, protozoa and millions of other microorganisms - ubiquitous and immanent, closer to Gods than to animals indeed - divinities that continuously move in a perpetual osmotic flow, dwelling from space to space, from body to body, triggering and guiding our deeper instincts.

          Starting from the realization of this new paradigma, we no longer conceive an ‘individual’ identity, but we now recognize ourselves in a ‘collective’ identity, beyond bodies and species. This “fluid identity” coincides with the whole, the imperceptible, that which we cannot see: what we don’t know that we ignore. This way we can let go off our anthropogenic past and enter the early ‘Symbiocene’, a new conceptual representation of multi-species’ coexistence. A new Era through which we can design hybrid organic tools to connect with other beings and to finally develop enough empathy towards the living.

Fig. #04.  Future human and future bat exchanging emotional data through shared bacterial symbiosis, 2021.