COSIMA HERTER & MARTA DE MENEZES | I can’t live without you
2024
Keywords
Proportions | Development | Anatomy | Symmetry | Asymmetry | Dimensions | Diversity | Divergence | Generation | Growth
Synopsis
I Can’t Live Without You is a multimedia collaboration between storyteller, artist, and a plastic-eating fungus. It is a large-scale, living sculpture born inside a science fiction thriller written by Herter (I Can’t Live Without You; unpublished) which explores humanity’s varying relationships with technologies that have literally taken on lives of their own.
From a distance, the installation appears to be a life size sculpture of a naked, adult female form in a glass aquarium. She is hollow, made of plastic, nearly transparent, and seems eerily delicate. She stands with her arms raised above her head with her fingers spread as though touching a spectacle in front of her lifted eyes that we cannot see. Her body is poised in mid-strain as she reaches upwards. As the viewer moves closer, it’s apparent that she is not alone. Her partner is revealed on the texture of her surface: Pestalotiopsis microspora (P. microspora). Over the next several weeks, the fungus will, literally, eat the sculpture. Colonizing her body, consuming her being, and ultimately dying of starvation once she is completely gone.
Artist Bio
Cosima Herter (b.1970) is a Canadian writer, creator, story & science consultant with a scholarly background in the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, & Medicine. She is most known for her collaborations on the famed, multi award-winning series Orphan Black (BBCA),
and Snowpiercer series (TNT/Netflix). She currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Marta de Menezes (born 1975) is a Portuguese artist, with a Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Lisbon and a MSt from the University of Oxford. De Menezes is director of Cultivamos Cultura, the leading institution devoted to experimental art in Portugal and Ectopia, dedicated to facilitate the collaborative work between artists and scientists. Marta de Menezes has worked in the intersection of art and biology since the late 90s, in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and Portugal, exploring the conceptual and aesthetic opportunities offered by biological sciences for visual representation in the arts. Her work has been widely exhibited in major venues in all continents, presented in most anthologies devoted to bioart, discussed in doctoral dissertations, and considered an example of research in the visual arts. Among the most recent international exhibitions, de Menezes was invited for the 2019 Ars Electronica Festival: Out of the Box, and organized two 2020 Ars Electronica Gardens (Lisbon and São Luis). She was invited to be the official representation of Portugal at the London Design Biennale 2016 and exhibited at the Beijing Biennale of New Media Art 2016. DeMenezes was nominated in 2015 by Time and Fortune magazines for the Art and Technology Awards 2015.
