MYCOSKENE — Oder zur wuchernden Verflechtung einer singularisierten Zeit — Julia Ihls

Spatial staging should inspire amazement or create other worlds with artfully staged immersion. But how can we counter the fast pace of spatial design - at a time when we are confronted with pressing problems such as resource scarcity or a negative climate footprint? Pre/recycling of buildings or materials is certainly a tried and tested approach. But what happens if we take another critical step away from our anthropocentric view - with all its functionality, tight schedules and utilisation logic - and instead enter a field filled with non-human/human actors? How does our perspective on scenographies and exhibitions change when we no longer think of them in terms of construction - duration - dismantling, but in terms of growth - fruition - degeneration?

The diploma project MYCOSKENE revolves around these questions and in doing so opens up an experimental laboratory arrangement itself: the starting point for the thematic exploration is the realm of fungi, or more precisely - the mycelium. However, this subterranean network of fungi not only represents the conceptual-theoretical centre, but also the source material that revolves around this experimental system of spatial design. In this way, the fungi become important project partners, bringing their own temporality and rhythms with them, by growing together substrates such as wood shavings, spent grains or cereals with their fine hyphal filaments to form a sustainable and versatile building material.

However, instead of endeavouring to create a 'classically (natural) scientific' exhibition design, the eight-month exploration of Mycelium and its cultivation resulted in a multi-media installation that oscillated between strangeness, affectation and polyphony. A semi-transparent, amorphous form unfolded in the dark while visuals of growing hyphal threads crawled along the walls. At the centre of the structure was a glowing white cube, the interior of which was reminiscent of a sterile laboratory. To get inside, visitors had to undergo a "cleaning process" themselves by putting on white protective suits, clinical gloves and shoe covers. Who exactly was protecting themselves from whom in this utopian-dystopian arrangement was deliberately left unanswered. The guests walked through the scenographic ambiguity of a scientific, enlightening white cube and a darkly affecting black box, while a swelling, polyphonic 4-channel soundtrack accompanied the scenery.

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