Fungi + Plastics = <3 – Collaborative design for coliving in queer ecologies
This is a story of encounters.
This is a story which began long ago, when fungi first flourished on Earth.
This story will end long after you, dear reader – long, long, as long as plastics stray on the planet.
Let me tell you the tales of mycelia, polymers and witches; of creatures who don’t care for normativity, and who become together.
Fungi can grow anywhere and are potentially immortal. Some of them can only exist by creating interspecies relations with their neighbours. They have their own vast and mysterious realm, always already there, below the surface. Fungi and humans are mates on the planet, and I believe they have a lot to teach us.
One particular fungus is of importance in this story: Pestalotiopsis Microspora. Pestalotiopsis Microspora is a plastic-decomposing fungus, one of those living organisms who have drastically evolved in the Anthropocene.
Plastics have been accumulating on the planet for over a century. The cycle of their production and circulation follows, perpetuates and reinforces the inequalities and harm inherited from colonialism.
A high percentage of plastic pollution is composed of micro- and nanoplastics, which are often the result of plastic waste being worn out or eroded. Those plastic particles are so small that they are invisible to the bare and can easily penetrate human bodies. Even in Sweden, where we live in privileged conditions and with an efficient recycling system, your plastic waste comes back to, comes back inside of you. This is one aspect of plastic pollution: you are unknowingly queering your own body.
Within the theoretical, practical and creative background of queer ecologies, traditional frames such as human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism and heteronormativity are rejected, to focus instead on interconnectivity, togetherness and potentialities of becoming with. In such perspective, toxicity resulting from plastic pollution can be considered generative because of its queering factor, and because it brings forth the inherent permeability between the existence of plastics, fungi, humans, and other creatures. It invites you to consider that queering of bodies makes space for queering of relations, and vice-versa. This story happens in such space.
In comes the designer, an anxious human who doesn’t know anymore where to stand. With the climate and ecological emergency, I can have a totally different approach to waste-led design. My collaborators are not humans, and my approach of sustainability therefore shifts toward multispecies practices of care.
If aiming for environmental justice means standing against the colonial heritage of inequal waste distribution and toxic exposure, then I can consider a plastic-decomposing fungus to help me decolonise my plastics waste. And in a the longer-term, aim for a more balanced future.
This project results from the omnipresence of plastics and fungi in human life. Since I cannot get rid of either, I choose to adopt a position of living together and becoming with them, in entanglements: co-living. It is a queer relation which might fit better under the umbrella of symbiotic relationship than anything else.
Between the nanoplastics swarming inside my body, and the other polymers all around, when a plastic-decomposing fungus makes its appearance, then I can be a host to them, or they can be a host to me – but it doesn’t matter who is what, or to whom. What matters is that I can imagine and create interfaces for the fungus to strive on plastics, integrate them into my daily life, and be part of this odd multispecies relation where I would be provider and caretaker.
This position is a form of slow activism. I want to make space for actions that do not necessarily have immediate effect, that might not appear exceptional, and focus instead on existing within the current situation. Such actions bring to light relations of hosting and caring which have a potential for rebalancing – rebalancing damaged ecosystems or waste colonialism.
To act on this, I propose a workshop which brings together different communities of practitioners. The first edition on May 12, 2022 stood as a bridge between the local designers, change agents, and mushroom enthusiasts from Linnaeus University’s campus in Växjö.
The Radical Speculation Lab invites the participants to engage in collaborative design to materialise forms of coliving with Pestalotiopsis Microspora and plastics in daily situations. They are put in a position of host, and thus have a responsibility to cover for the fungus’ needs.
The participants develop their ideas through a set of two activities. The first game makes them familiarise with fungi and plastics and consider the possibilities of kinship. During the second activity, the participants can create their own DIY artefacts. Those artefacts act as the props which they would use to carry around a culture of plastic-decomposing fungus while attending to their daily routine.
This workshop is supported by an ongoing collaborative research on fungi cultivation, locally developed with +Change students and members of the Regenerative Energy Communities in Växjö. Our progress are communicated on a dedicated website designed by yours truly.
Visit the virtual WitchLab here!
This is just the beginning of a journey to reframe sustainability through the prism of queer ecologies.
The first step we can take together is actively changing the opinion on plastic waste.
