Publication launch: Orgs: From Slime Mold to Silicon Valley with performance by Jenna Sutela

Publication launch: Orgs: From Slime Mold to Silicon Valley with performance by Jenna Sutela

8pm Jenna Sutela will be reading a performative transcription of the publication Orgs: From Slime Mold to Silicon Valley in collaboration with Physarum Polycephalum, the single-celled yet “many-headed” slime mould to accompany the launch.

The publication Orgs: From Slime Mold to Silicon Valley and Beyond is an experimental survey of decentralised organisms and organisations drawing on several perspectives and presenting a constellation of different voices – the book itself an exercise in coexistence. Orgs expands upon work by artist Jenna Sutela, enmeshing writers and artworks together to consider new ways of thinking through Donna Haraway’s proposition of joint kinships with “animals and machines” and… single-celled organisms. Learning from the nocturnal slime mould, the collected material tends to see light in a hive-like subjectivity, one based on interactions rather than essences. Unity in diversity.

Elvia Wilk, a Berlin-based writer who researches the ethics of art-making in relation to emerging technologies, writes on Sutela’s work with Physarum polycephalum, whilst Mike Pepi extrapolates as to how these organisms inform new forms of capitalist organisational model in his essay: Sublime Administration. The publication also features contributions by Dennis Bray, Aslak Aamot Kjærulff, Chus Martínez, Venkatesh Rao, and more.

Orgs also includes a rare excerpt of Neko-Gusu, a manga by master of the genre: Shigeru Mizuki, published for the first time in English.

>Observe: Physarum networks are slow, much slower than plant or animal networks
and very much slower than silicon computing
>Comment: But their circuits are self-growing and self-repairing, producing systems
tolerant to interruptions or failure
>Comment: Repeated exchange between environment and organism rather than a
centralized program or algorithm
>Observe: Stable relationship is maintained through active discourse
>Conclude: Here, the law of competition bows before collaboration
(extract: Log of Terra Neo-Tokyo, X-OO, CS + STU)