Mushroom Resource Room

I have been consuming “mushrooms” merely as “food” everyday, not thinking much about their traits or living mechanisms. While participating in the collaborative art creation with the Agricultural Biological Engineering community, I became interested in alternative ways of living of life organisms, such as fungi, and how they can offer new insights on the development of my research. Thus, I began with exploring “mushrooms,” one of most familiar and common forms of fungi and created a Mushroom Resource Room where anyone can find information on mushrooms and how they have been explored in contemporary art.

FINDINGS

• Non-Binary

Mushrooms are fungi, which are neither animals nor plants, but take their own path of living somewhere in between. Fungi also deconstruct gender binary in that there are 1.5 million species and they have about 36,000 sexes: “All fungi need to do to reproduce and mix genes is bump into each other and fuse” (Gavin, 2021).

• Symbiotic Future

Fungi decompose dead and dying organisms, transforming them into soil. The rotters contribute to solving oil spills or pollutant problems by breaking down natural or hydrocarbon-based materials.

• Decentralized Network

Fungi is everywhere. They use decentralized modes of communication with themselves, trees, and other plants without a central controlling system, which challenges the conventional modes of human communications and proposes new ways of connection, collaboration, and communication.

 

BOOKS

 

ART PROJECT

Jae Rhim Lee, Infinity Burial Suit

http://https://youtu.be/_7rS_d1fiUc

“Could mushrooms be the symbol and tool for a cultural shift in how we think about death and our relationship to the planet?” – Jae Rhim Lee –

Exploring the entangled relationships between humans and natural environment, Jae Rhim Lee, a transdisciplinary artist, designer, and entrepreneur, developed a project called Infinity Burial Suit. In this project, Lee designed a burial suit which makes non-polluting death possible by using mushrooms to decompose and clean toxins in human bodies. She cultivated her own Infinity Mushroom by feeding edible mushrooms with human skin, hair, and nail. Lee founded Coeio, which helps people go back to earth through environment-friendly burial practices and Dennis White has been the first adopter of this new way of accepting death.

 

ART EXHIBITION

Mushrooms: The Art, Design & Future of Fungi, 2020, Summerset House, London, UK

http://https://youtu.be/2h5fPqHUOO8

This exhibition explores the cultural legacy of mushrooms and its implications for symbiotic future, reconceptualizing human relationships with nonhuman beings. Introducing over 40 artists, designers, and musicians such as John Cage, Beatrix Potter, and Cy Twombly, Mushrooms examines new ways of co-existing on this planet.

 

RESOURCES

[Netflix] Fantastic Fungi by Louis Schwartzberg, https://www.netflix.com/title/81183477?source=35

[TED Talk] 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World by Paul Stamets, https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

[TED Talk] My Mushroom Burial Suit by Jae Rhim Lee, https://www.ted.com/talks/jae_rhim_lee_my_mushroom_burial_suit?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

[Book] Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets, 2005, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/196974/mycelium-running-by-paul-stamets/ 

[Book] Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake, 2020, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566795/entangled-life-by-merlin-sheldrake/ 

[Article] The Artists Building a Future out of Mushrooms: Can fungus help us better understand what it means to be human? by Francesca Gavin, 2020, https://www.frieze.com/article/francesca-gavin-mushroom-futurism-2021

[Article] The Secret Lives of Fungi: They shape the world—and offer lessons for how to live in it by Hua Hsu, 2020,  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/the-secret-lives-of-fungi