Jennie Park
Interschool Schools of Art and Critical Studies, Art and Creative Writing, MFA 2
And/Or
What can we learn from the fact that litmus papers, as binary indicators, are able to change color due to lichens, which are symbiotic organisms?
How can the "and/or" connoted by litmus paper -- red and blue in superficial appearance, while at once exclusively red or blue in test result -- be informed by the "and/or" of lichens, where lichens are fungi-algae composites that extend their inherent mutualism to the environments and substrates they inhabit?
If we become conscious of and examine the process by which mutualist lichens become paper test tools -- awakening from the spell of a "normal" that ubiquitously converts "things we are" into "things we use" -- can we more clearly see ourselves in and as others?
SANDBOX
"It matters what thoughts think thoughts. It matters what knowledges know knowledges. It matters what relations relate relations. It matters what worlds world worlds." (Donna Haraway). In this play- and meditation-invoking sandbox, worlds regeneratively world worlds.