With Swarm Dust / Zwermstof, artist Anne Marie Maes creates an artificial environment as a stage for the unpredictable emergence of life. Semi-transparent skins, grown from colonies of bacteria and yeast, almost completely cover a reflective wall, hanging loosely over sandy gravel and pebbles. The eponymous “swarm dust” is scattered over this gravel: clusters of enlarged mint pollen visualise how complicated and detailed their structure is. The scene is complemented by screens rising from the gravel: Margarita Maximova’s video works pick up on the hypnotic and psychedelic properties of plants. A tea ceremony combines smoke, sound and flavour to create a live listening performance and activates the space on the opening weekend.
Swarmdust (Zwermstof), Installation & Performance in the exhibition Orangerie der Fürsorge and part of Berlin Art Week, from 11 September to 17 October 2024.
Orangerie der Fürsorge at nGbK Berlin
Berlin Art Week 2024
Pink Microbial Cellulose wall, concrete casts of Mentha spicata pollen, black&white tapestry ‘Glossa’ (bee tongue), granit sand, LED light | ‘Sycamore Dreams’, HD video 08 min 50 sec, ‘By Word of Mouth, Echoes Travel’ HD video 02 min 30 sec
The multidisciplinary artist Anne Marie Maes is trained in botany and visual anthropology. She combines art and science with a special interest in ecosystems and alchemical processes. On the roof of her studio in Brussels, she has set up a field laboratory to work with insects and bacteria and studies the moulding processes of nature. Maes has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions worldwide. “Swarmdust” is a new work she has developed for the exhibition.
Margarita Maximova’s audio-visual practice refers to the diverse ways in which contemporary image technologies function. In 2021 she published her first book “You Have Within You Something Stronger and More Numinous”. She has shown her work at S.M.A.K, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (BE), Beursschouwburg, Brussels (BE), Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin (DE) and Grazer Kunstverein (AT), among others.
During the opening weekend of Berlin Art Week, artists Anne Marie Maes and Margarita Maximova will activate their installation, Swarm Dust, with a tea ceremony. The performance is conceived as a “walking meditation,” where performers and audience undergo a shared meditative experience on a molecular level. This event will combine taste, smoke, and sound into a live listening performance.
Anne Marie Maes & Margarita Maximova : Swarm Dust / Zwermstof, 2024
Pink Microbial Cellulose wall, concrete casts of Mentha spicata pollen, black&white tapestry ‘Glossa’ (bee tongue), granit sand, LED light | ‘Sycamore Dreams’, HD video 08 min 50 sec, ‘By Word of Mouth, Echoes Travel’ HD video 02 min 30 sec
SWARM DUST/ZWERMSTOF
Berlin, nGbK, 11.09.2024 – 22.11.2024
With Swarm Dust/Zwermstof, artist Anne Marie Maes creates an artificial environment as a stage for the unpredictable emergence of life. Semi-transparent skins, grown from colonies of bacteria and yeast, almost completely cover a reflective wall, hanging loosely over sandy gravel and pebbles. The eponymous “swarm dust” is scattered over this gravel: clusters of enlarged mint pollen visualise how complicated and detailed their structure is. The scene is complemented by screens rising from the gravel: Margarita Maximova’s video works pick up on the hypnotic and psychedelic properties of plants.
The installation Swarm Dust weaves a tapestry of stories. It can be experienced as an extraplanetary landscape. An archeology of the future. We are in a world of entangled life: lichens, spores and cyanobacteria. The air is full of interaction between plants and insects and changes are driven by abiotic elements as temperature, light, and air. Time passes at its own rhythm and things can react in unpredictable ways. History is etched in the language of seedpods and minerals.
Diverse micro-ecosystems of soil bacteria and algae mingle to form new life. Protected from light and air, new tissues and textures are created. Skeletons of bugs and traces of minerals mix with fine dust particles. Bacteria consume and create. The process of fermentation unfolds like a natural metamorphosis.
All matter is alive, pulsating and in motion. Fungi and mycorrhiza are in a constant competition for dominance, a battle interrupted only by cycles of growth and decay. The air is filled with the raw essence of adaptation, the primal force through which the interplay with nature is driven. Newly-acquired techno-alchemy is modeled on rites from a bacterial past. It is a process within process.
This place is not a utopia of beauty but a utopia of adaptation. Utopia is a no-place, a grim reality shaped by the resilience of life in all its microbial glory.
SENSORIAL SKINS
biotextiles, 2015-2024
Since 2015, Anne Marie Maes has been developing organic textures by fermenting bacteria and yeasts. She calls these biofabrics her Sensorial Skins,
to emphasize their living and evolving nature. The Sensorial Skins are formed during a fermentation process during which the bacteria are weaving the material from the cellulose they produce. After harvesting and drying the wet skins they resemble vegetable leather. The fabrics react to variable factors as temperature, humidity and the local enzymes in the air. Every newly grown Sensorial Skin is the unique result of the specific site were it is grown, with its own metabolism and aesthetic specificities. The roughness of these biofilms indicates their origin as the fruit of an agglomeration of different bacterial colonies.
Just as human skin carries the imprints of time, bacterial grown skins age and transform. Within their folds, memories are preserved, silently narrating the stories of their existence. Memories reside not only in the folds of these Sensorial Skins but also in the smells they emit. A specific scent can transport us back to a particular moment, evoking a sense of nostalgia and temporal connection. The Sensorial Skins also embody a remarkable flexibility and softness, akin to organic textiles. They adapt to the ever-changing needs of their environment, exhibiting a responsiveness that defies rigidity. In their pliability, we find an invitation to engage in a dialogue with the material world, acknowledging the agency of these living fabrics and our own role as co-creators.
GLOSSA (bee tongue)
jacquard woven tapestry, 2024
This work, executed as a woven jacquard tapestry, is based on a microscopic photograph of the tongue of a honey bee. Glossa is a close-up of the tip of the proboscis, the group name for the different parts of the bee tongue. Through a play with scale/size, the details lose their meaning and take on a new, abstract dimension. As a result, the complexity of the different elements of the tongue transforms into a minimalist image.
The irregular chunks we can discern between the hairs on the tongue are pieces of fine dust, the regular forms between the hairs are pollen grains.
MENTHA SPICCATA (mint pollen)
cast objects (mint pollen) – concrete, resin, 2024
Pollen play an essential role in plant reproduction. These microscopic particles are transferred by the bees to other plants, thus ensuring fertilization.
In the installation Swarm Dust, small piles of pollen are scattered over the gravel as if they had descended there during the bees’ foraging flights. The shape of the pollen is inspired by the morphology of a pollen grain of the mint plant, Mentha spiccata.
SYCAMORE DREAMS (9:36)
BY WORD OF MOUTH, ECHOES TRAVEL (03:02)
by Margarita Maximova
“The videos came into being during a prolonged period of headaches, migraines, and other bodily pains. Every day, I went for long walks in the park because they partly reinvigorated me. I remember a phrase from my mother: “I fondled the branches and saluted the trees; it was a religion to me.” I could always relate to this. During these walks, I made extreme close-ups of plants and also collected material of other people observing them. I archived them, reworked them heavily and mixed them with footage of migraine auras, ASMR sound snippets, and a video of the tragic near-death of a butterfly.
I wanted the works to be partly soothing, partly haunting. The same holds for the soundtrack: I mixed pop songs with meditation tracks, soft whispers and harsher clicks to tune in to that ambiguity.” (Margarita Maximova)
