“Any room coalesces with the beings that are in it,” said Body of Us curator Rebekka Kiesewetter. “Bacteria from building materials and human bodies interreact and grow in an unforeseeable manner, and so create new relationships between body and space.” In Body of Us, this process was illustrated by a vast petri dish containing bacteria from the room and the people who visited it.

The installation, Kiesewetter said, invited visitors to question their own ways of building relationships. “The petri dish is a symbol, a way to show that we are intrinsically related to the beings and matter that surround us, and to rethink what constitutes us as human beings. It is a means to make visitors rethink their own relationships, and the motivations behind them.”

The work also invited visitors to reflect on the potential of new forms of social bonds to lead to a more ethical, balanced society. “For us, friendship is a way to imagine a new horizon of living together,” said Kiesewetter. “Who are ‘we’ when we talk about ‘us’? We need to recognise that every ‘we’ generates exclusion, defining something as foreign or alien.” The designers proposed that we expand our search for friendly bonds – given the environmental challenges we face, perhaps even beyond humankind.

The micro-scale investigation of bodies and space was interwoven with an audio work that comprised a series of short poetic, scientific and essayistic excerpts, drawing connections between the bacteria and the broader topic of friendship reimagined. A publication, which was available in the space and on the project’s website, further explored the diversity of friendship and its potential to offer up new ways to live, work and connect.