The 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by the incredible Lesley Lokko, has officially begun, and we are pleased to announce mogu’s contribution to the project “Museum of Symbiosis: science fiction storytelling from a symbiotic future” by Faber Futures.
Opened Saturday May 20th, 2023 and on show until November 26th, 2023, the immersive installation Museum of Symbiosis narrates through an audio experience a science fiction story about a society prospered and re-organized in symbiosis with the living world as a result of biotechnological developments.
More specifically, the materialisation of the Museum of Symbiosis is also to be seen as an investigation of both the technical and conceptual possibilities offered by mycelium-based technologies.
By entering the exhibition, you are first faced with the representation of a replica of a 17th-century microscope (i.e. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek revolutionary microscope), whose fundamental and controversial historical role is investigated by mogu co-founder and Chief Mycelium Officer Maurizio Montalti. Such microscope replica in fact allows to make visible the great diversity of life in which we are immersed, while also embedding notions related to the colonial scientific methods that contributed to alienating people from nature.
Furthermore, the mycelium “shells”, grown at mogu by means of fermentation-based mycelium technologies, help leading the public on a journey designed to explore the ongoing bio-technological shift, as through objects created by practitioners and researchers who are already today key employing bio-technological principles and processes as new contemporary means for favouring a renewed connection with the living world.
The installation debuted as part of Special Projects program, titled Guests from the Future, as part of which practitioners, researchers, and innovators from all over the world were invited to challenge the limits of what constitutes architectural agency and practice under the curatorial themes of decolonisation and decarbonisation.
About Museum of Symbiosis
The ‘Museum of Symbiosis’ project stemmed from BIO STORIES, a previous project and an overall methodology for design-driven global stakeholder engagement, developed by Faber Futures in collaboration with the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Synthetic Biology.
The purpose of BIO STORIES is to contextualise synthetic biology through stories from stakeholders around the world, while revealing what our priorities are for further human development.
Discover more about Faber Futures’ project here:
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