SYLIA presents “Metempsychosis”, mycelium exhibition and talks, on November 1st and 2nd 2024, Mollstr. 1, Berlin.

“Worms. Ants. Maggots. Beetles. Mushrooms. Death was almost the moment when life overflowed its cup. Death wasn’t the end of life. It was the end of the singular. The deer decayed out of its shape into explosive, generative plurality. One narrative diverged into four hundred narratives. If I feel myself, like the compost heap, beginning to melt, it means that I am also melting into another story. A bigger story. A wider cast of characters. Let me dance between ripe and rot. I don’t know what act in the play comes next. But I know what my prayer is. Make me bigger than an “I”. Make me good soil.”  —Sophie Strand

In philosophy, metempsychosis (Greek: μετεμψύχωσις) refers to the transmigration of the soul—the life breath—especially its reincarnation after death. Yet only in the 18th and 19th century did scientists understand that our breath depends on the oxygen produced by plants’ photosynthesis; and only in the 20th did researchers understand how most plants’ survival depends on their mycorrhizal connections with mycelium. In more recent years, specific studies linking cognition and oxygen levels have finally gained traction: our very cognitive functions, our life breath as human beings, would not exist without the interdependent and transformative exchanges between non-human organisms. The transmigration, thus, has no clear beginning or end. 

The group show updates the ancient concept of metempsychosis to open a new vantage point from which to (re)view our form of life. Using mycelium both as a symbol and a medium, the artists and designers explore and unearth its multi-layered meanings, as a metaphor of connection and of the interwoven process of decay and regeneration. 

Producing ideas, materials, and objects with mycelium, what is referred today as mycofabrication, is the prime example of interspecies design and art: there’s no genius, a homo faber who creates ex-novo, from nothing. Instead mycofabrication highlights the collaboration with another organism, with its own needs and preferences, and how its ‘mind’ influences our own. 

In this fungal-thinking feedback-loop approach, “Metempsychosis” showcases an interdisciplinary, intermodal and interspecies exhibition entangled in spirit. Each work transitions into another possibility—mycelium works as collective cooperative expressions, driven by the urge to heal our future collectively. The exhibition offers viewers alternative perspectives to materiality and knowledge production as practice, and invites them to explore the interconnectedness of life, the continuous cycle of transformation, and the regenerative power inherent in nature. Here, art is not just representational but is experienced as a living, evolving entity that transcends the human narrative, embracing the broader, more-than-human world.

The exhibition and talks aim at celebrating the intersection of art, design, science and ecology, and at exploring how the process of mycofabrication – using fungi as a tool for manufacturing – and multispecies design can reshape our perceptions, inspire new ways of thinking and reconnect us to the environment.

 

Metempsychosis, the idea of mind transmigration, serves as a metaphor for the transformative journey of creating with living mycelium, which not only serves as a medium but actively participates in the creative process.

Artists and designers on view in the group exhibition:

Augusto Calçada
Matteo Campulla
Markella Davu
Sharlene Durfey François
Helena Elston
Fade Out Label
Francesco Fossati
Paulina Heidlberger
Benjamin Janzen
Jan Klappenecker
Dóra Márföldi
Maria Kobylenko Ruzica Jovanovic
Yuliia Ovcharyk
Emma Patmore
Ivona Pelajić
Arezoo Ramezani
Xristina Sarli
Nicole Spit
Amy Toshizu Kanajikken
Alina Tofan
Matthildur Valfells
Alessandro Volpato
Karin Weissenbrunner
Caroline Wimmer
Frederic Zirbes

 

Speakers presenting during the talk series:

Dimitra Almpani-Lekka, Esther Betz und Ronja Kügow, Clara Sofia Fernández, Thordes Herbst, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, Alve Lagercrantz, Natalija Miodragovic, Eda Özdemir, Julian Roth, Emma Sicher, Nora Wilhelm, Karin Weissenbrunner, Ingo Johannsen, Adrienne Goehler, Andrew Gennett, Alessandro Volpato, Giulio Perticari

 

Event Schedule

 

Performances

Friday from 6 PM

  • Amy Toshizu Kanajikken – Amy & her quiet experiments

Friday 7 PM 

  • Kombucha Performance, Benjamin Janzen

Friday 8 PM 

  • Maria Kobylenkox – FEELING FUNGAL

Saturday 6:30 PM

  • Benjamin Janzen – Kombucha Performance

Saturday from 7 PM

  • Laccaria Amethystina: Guardian of Fragments, Alina Tofan
  • Alina Tofan – Laccaria Amethystina: Guardian of Fragments

Workshop – Saturday 2nd Nov. 12.30 – 16.30

Participants will learn how to:

  • Isolate / domesticate a wild mushroom into malt-extract agar Petri dishes
  • Produce mini-mycotretis blocks using plant-based substrate
  • Upcycle wood furniture and reshape it using fungi  

By Alessandro Volpato, Nora Wilhelm and Julian Roth

Talks – Saturday 2nd Nov. 17.00 – 18.30

  • Andrew Gennet – Understanding Fungi
  • Alessandro Volpato – Design with Fungi in communities
  • Emma Sicher – Tempeh – A material-driven experimentation for eco-social relationalities
  • Eda Özdemir – Upscaling Mycelium Composites for Architecture
  • Dimitra Almpani-Lekka – More-than-human Membranes
  • Natalija Miodragovic – Growing Architecture: Co-Designing with Fungi
  • Esther Betz & Ronja Kügow – Decayed – was entsteht, wenn was vergeht
  • Nora Wilhelm – Das Pilz-Kunst-Labor im Haus der Materialisierung
  • Clara Sofia Fernandez – Soft matter- digital crafting with mycelium
  • Alve Lagercrantz – Bioprinting kombucha 
  • Melissa Ingaruca – Endarken: creating darker futures with bioluminescent fungi
  • Giulio Perticari – SYLIA
  • Thordes Herbst – The curious tale of how I grew a Bioluminescent Mushroom in my closet 
  • Karin Weissenbrunner – Fungalgraphic discs
  • Julian Roth – Who is growing whom?
  • Ingo Johannsen – Myzel als Technischer Werkstoff
  • Adrienne Goehler – Rebuilding with fungal composites

 

Films – 1st and 2nd of November from 9 PM

“If Utopia is a movement towards and not simply a being in place, then there are practices one can build and refine to get there. I see mycofabrication as a very promising one.”

Giulio Perticari

Co-Founder & CEO

Interview

Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Giulio, I come from the pearl of the Mediterranean—Rimini—and you can catch me at Top LAB or walking in the streets with my truffle dog Lana.

What is your background?

Neuroscience, philosophy, and literature. For many years I wrote for an independent travel magazine about culture, art, and fashion. I also took care of editorial curation and managing collaborations for each new issue. Some odd jobs that I have done include being an international recruiter for engineers, an event manager on luxury wooden schooners on New York’s waterfronts, and a marketing manager at the German copycat of Etsy.

What brought you to mycelium and mushrooms?

Besides an early love for porcini and Toad, the mushroom character in Mario Kart, my fascination for mycelium really developed when I read The Mushroom at The End of the World in 2018. I started researching the use of mushroom and mycelium in neuroscience, and read books by McKenna, Stamates, and Sheldrake. Once I had a grasp of mycelium’s potential and its connection with the evolution of human cognitive development, it was a wrap for me, finally I had found a conceptual hub that contained all my interests, from cultural evolution, to phenomenology, design, fashion, nature, waste, experimentation, and citizen science.

How did you end up in Berlin?

After graduating from high school sucking at German but loving its literature, I decided to spend that summer in Berlin to learn the language before going back to Italy for university. When I got out of the bus at Alexander Platz, I thought to myself, these ugly buildings just plopped from the sky! It was far from love at first sight, but enough for a summer fling. Yet after stints in Rome and Switzerland I came back and studied here. Then moved back-and-forth from the States three times. Somehow, though, Berlin has always brought me back through its unconventional pull.

Can you share a project that you are particularly proud of and why?

Two years ago I was working for an AI incubator, and was captivated by the atmosphere around founding teams. I took a semester-long course about developing a startup business at Humboldt. On the first day we were asked about our business ideas, and I was adamant about doing something with materials made out of mushrooms—virtually all fellow participants didn’t know what I was even talking about, and yet here we are today!

What is your role in SYLIA?

I focus a lot on the team’s dynamic and constellation—the most important thing is that we are all in a position to carry out our talents to their fullest potential and create an infectious momentum for the whole enterprise. As the most senior member of the team, I’m the veteran control tower: I have the overview of what has happened and which opportunities to seek out in order to make our vision financially sustainable for the years to come. My role is to amplify what we do through storytelling, marketing, collaborations and strategic partnerships.

What motivates you in your work?

Finding meaning in what I do, which takes many forms: being experimental and bold, producing a material that excites people and fulfils market and environmental needs, doing something cool and inspiring others to explore their own passions, working and collaborating with people that are driven, creative and follow their dreams. Also, the realization that in the end I wouldn’t trade what I do with anyone else.

How do you see the future of mycofabrication?

Splendid! With all the waste in the world, there’s an organism that can help us regenerate it, by literally forming it into new objects and materials, which when thrown away, will be reintegrated into the soil, enriching it. And there’s more: most people can make their own material at home if they chose to—mycofabrication is very DIY-friendly! And should they choose to simply buy it, that’s amazing too: they are happy, we are happy, and soils, waterways, and animals are happy as well (and yes, I approve anthropomorphizing nature and naturalizing humans)!

What are some of your favorite poetry, books, films, or works of art?

Books are my obsession, novels especially. I love it when a writer is able to express the unsaid through language—their characters’ stupidity, ironies, splendors and contradictions. Right now I’m reading Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Laclos, and it’s brilliant! The way Laclos is able to describe emotions in the web of rococo social norms is light years ahead of what social cognitive scientists can say about ours today. And while his sociopathic libertine anti-heroes are seducing and entertaining the reader, societal expectations as a whole are ridiculed.

For me art needs to go against the grain, follow its own rules, and be free. I like virtue and virtuosity, fearless and funny. I like the Guerilla Girls, David Wojnarowicz, Dadaists, Piero Manzoni, Philip Dick, Colette, Aldo Busi.

When it comes to films, I like camp à la John Waters, for instance in Pink Flamingo and Serial Mom, and the surreal à la Buñuel, for example in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, or in David Lynch’s masterpiece Twin Peaks Season 3.

What does your utopia look like?

Utopia for me is when the mind is in harmony with the environment, i.e. the inside is on the same frequency as the outside and vice versa. It means not needing to dissociate because life is so contradictory and society is so hostile for its semi-unconscious death drive. Utopia supersedes and contains all ironies at the same time. In less abstract terms: no militaries, no empty consumerism, no linear production, no revolting capital accumulation. Yes to openness, mutualism, solidarity, active imagination, play, freedom and peace. Even more concretely? Utopia is also the absence of tasks like filling out papers and forms. Also, wouldn’t it be cool if there was no need for money?

If Utopia is a movement towards and not simply a being in place, then there are practices one can build and refine to get there. I see mycofabrication as a very promising one.