Created as part of the 17th Biennale Architettura 2021, Entangled Kingdoms is an installation aiming to promote a new understanding of the world as an act of symbiosis among multiple ‘kingdoms’ of life. It proposes a closer look at fungi, situated between the animal and plant kingdom, and acting both as a facilitator of life and a decay catalyst.
The space is structured around a multisensory experience of light, sound, and movement. A very 4.5m diameter gobo projection of a symbolic ‘mycelium network’ draws the stroller of the long Arsenale hall into a much darker room, through animal sounds and plant selections.
Τhe visitor is sequentially pulled into the heart of the installation, the Fungi Temple, by the sound of a heartbeat. Amidst the dark room, a frame projector casts an exact circular light beam on a live fungi culture developed in a giant, custom-made ‘petri dish’, at the centre of the enclosed place. Further information is emerging from the sides of the room with the targeted illuminated reading table of the exhibition.
The installation is the outcome of a long and meticulous collaboration between several specialists. It required multiple trials to produce colonies of various colours and configurations within different environments built up to the live culture of fungi. These were collected from the exhibition space and the Biennale gardens and offered for close observation during the event. Various spectra of light were also cast on the cultivations to understand if the fungi were benefiting from different types of artificial light.
Coordinated and installed during the pandemic crisis, this extremely low-budget lighting installation had a mesmerising and informative effect on visitors.
Collaborators:
Zacharoula Gonou-Zagou – Mycologist, Scientific Collaborator
Julia Pitts – Exhibition Interpretation Consultant,
Peter Aslanidis – Sound Design, Composer, mixing
Kostas Linoxylakis – Sound, mixing
Lars Ohlendorf – Sound, assistance, sourcing
Helliniki Meletitiki – Structural Engineer
Cathy Cunliffe – Photographer
Lefteris Laxouvaris – Mycologist, Mushroom Supplier
Furio Ganz – Video
