PT// “Como podemos transformar vinho em água?”
a comunicação na interface de água
Ada Gogo e Nathalie Dubois

Água é primordial. A água é a interface que permite aos múltiplos actores/partes de um sistema simpático/holobionte humano comunicarem e a base da vida. Mas a visão convencional ocidental da água não reconhece este aspecto. Como mulheres de uma cultura ocidental, devemos reescrever os contos culturais cristãos paternalistas da Última Ceia – em que o vinho é um símbolo da interconexão humana com Deus – e o baptismo de Cristo para apresentar as nossas histórias baseadas numa união holística e simpática mediada pela água. Simbolicamente, queremos transformar o vinho em água. As nossas histórias precisam de provas visuais e emocionais e experiências físicas de interligações entre o nosso corpo e um corpo fluvial (Rio Mira) para aguçar a curiosidade e abrir uma reflexão na mente dos nossos espectadores sobre como transformar o vinho em água. Outro ponto crucial é compreender as comunicações entre espécies (humanas, bacterianas, algas) dentro e fora de um holobionte, um rio, e o ciclo de vida simpático baseado na água. Para nos orientar nesta busca, utilizámos a ideia do acoplamento estrutural (Maturana e Varela, 1972): a interface da água molda todas as comunicações padronizadas dentro do holobionte/simpoiético, permitindo as comunicações. A evidência da nossa natureza holobionética está escondida nas nossas roupas, onde escrevemos uma mensagem. As duas colunas de vidro, uma de Winogradsky e a outra com manchas de culturas dérmicas mostram a nossa comunicação/conversação com o rio Mira em escalas microscópicas e macroscópicas. No projecto, introduzimos objectos culturais e científicos de uma forma reescrita. No trabalho foram reunidas camadas de histórias de escrita de padrões culturais e incorporámos a comunicação como uma manifestação afectada da nossa união holobiónica mediada pela água do rio Mira. Mais do que em símbolos – pão e vinho (como o corpo e sangue de Cristo) – a nossa mensagem está na água e no corpo de água: “Este é o meu corpo de água, e o meu sangue é água,” e “Eu vos baptizo em nome da Mãe Gaia, da sua filha, o rio Mira, e do Espírito Santo da Natureza”. Esta mensagem é invisível quando inoculamos o tecido. As colónias microbianas em crescimento da nossa microbiota revelam-na gradualmente.Através da sensualidade da compreensão do papel da água no sistema simbólico dos seres humanos e de outros corpos vivos e não vivos, uma questão deve emergir na mente da audiência: “Como podemos transformar o vinho em água?”

EN// “How can we transform wine into water?”
communication in the water interface
Ada Gogo and Nathalie Dubois

Water is paramount. Water is the interface that allows the multiple actors/parts of a sympathetic system/human holobiont to communicate and the base of life. But the conventional Western view of water does not recognize this aspect. As women from a western culture, we must rewrite the paternalist Christian cultural tales of the Last Supper- in which the wine is a symbol of human interconnection with God- and Christ’s baptism to present our stories based on a holistic and sympoietic togetherness mediated by water. Symbolically, we want to transform wine into water. Our stories need visual and emotional evidence and physical experiences of interconnections between our bodies and a river body (Mira River) to pique curiosity and open a reflection in our viewers’ minds about how to change wine into water. Another crucial point is understanding communications between species (human, bacterial, algal) inside and outside an holobiont, a river, and the sympoietic water-based lifecycle. To guide us in this quest, we used the structural coupling’s idea (Maturana and Varela, 1972): water interface shapes every patterned communication inside the holobiont/sympoietic system, allowing communications. The evidence of our holobiontic nature is hidden on our clothes, where we wrote a message. The two glass columns, Winogradsky’s one and the other with patches of dermal cultures show our communication/conversation with the river Mira at microscopic and macroscopic scales.

In the project, we introduce cultural and scientific objects in a rewritten way. In the work was put together layers of cultural patterned writing stories and embodied communication as an affected manifestation of our holobiontic togetherness mediated by Mira’s river water. Then more than in symbols – bread and wine (as Christ’s body and blood)- our message is in water and waterbody: “This is my waterbody, and my blood is water, “and “I baptize you in the name of Mother Gaia, her daughter river Mira, and the Holy Spirit of Nature.” This message is invisible when we inoculate the fabric. The growing microbial colonies from our microbiota gradually reveal it. Through the sensuality of understanding the water’s role in the sympoietic system of humans and other living and non-living bodies, a question must emerge in the audience’s mind: “How can we transform wine into water?”

BIO

Nathalie Dubois Calero

I am a fully self-accepted BacterHuman, bioartist, and scientist (Ph.D. in plant science) named Nathalie Dubois Calero, a multiplicity of bacteria, fungi, archaea, and human that create my hybrid identities. My works are ephemeral, like human life itself, and simultaneously eternal as my microbes. They are an act of reconciliation with the invisible world of microbes. My recent project, BacterHuman, focuses on the cutaneous microbiota (all the micro-organisms living on and inside the skin) and the multifaceted relationships we have with it. This tryptic includes Microidentidad (2020), Queer and Biophilic Approach of the Cutaneous Microbiome (2021)/We are planets (2021), and Bodies of water (2022).
Microalgae are part of my microbiota, apart from bacteria involved in our immune system. What entangled relationships could I have with rivers? Why am I carrying microalgae from millennia? Nobody knows. My last performance, Dissection (Bodies of water, part 1), is all about that. They are on/in my skin, this in-between space where every improbable meeting is possible. I want to witness this millenarian encounter between rivers and microalgae, my microbial component, and my skin, and be a Bacterhuman Petri dish: this is the theme of my residence at Cultivamos Culture.

Ada Gogova

I was graduted a Ph.D. Degree of Multimedia and Design at Tomas Bata University, Faculty of Multimedia
Communications in Zlin, Czech Republic. In my transdisciplinary research, spanning Art & Science and
Technology, I focused on the ‘process based’ posthumanist speculative practical and theoretical
approach to communication between humans and more than humans. The speculative approach is based on the intersection of schematically described communication by a “transient pattern” which could be placed on/in many different or hybrid interfaces. I wrote and edited the publication book: From Grid to Rhizome (Gogová A., Husárová, Z., Atcheson, H. Garafová C., D., (2021) Od Gridu k Rizóme, Prehodnotenie rozloženia štruktúry postdigitálneho textu, PP Production Trnava 2021, ISBN 978 – 88- 570- 1547-5) and a few conference articles. I exhibit my works, the last of them was presented in Portugal in 2021: International exhibition, INTERSPACES Exhibition, Galeria da Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa, Burnt Paths Exhibition, Ectopia, (Re)Existence, Cultivamos Cultura Sao Luis,… and in 2018 in Slovakia I exhibited (Ne)viditeľné mestá, gallery SATELIT SCD Bratislava, Slovakia. Since 2019 I have been a part of the research group Metatechnicity Lab. at Cardiff Metropolitan University, School of Art and Design Cardiff in the UK and the International Femeeting research group.