SYLIA presents “Metempsychosis”, mycelium exhibition and talks, on November 1st and 2nd 2024, Mollstr. 1, Berlin.

“Worms. Ants. Maggots. Beetles. Mushrooms. Death was almost the moment when life overflowed its cup. Death wasn’t the end of life. It was the end of the singular. The deer decayed out of its shape into explosive, generative plurality. One narrative diverged into four hundred narratives. If I feel myself, like the compost heap, beginning to melt, it means that I am also melting into another story. A bigger story. A wider cast of characters. Let me dance between ripe and rot. I don’t know what act in the play comes next. But I know what my prayer is. Make me bigger than an “I”. Make me good soil.”  —Sophie Strand

In philosophy, metempsychosis (Greek: μετεμψύχωσις) refers to the transmigration of the soul—the life breath—especially its reincarnation after death. Yet only in the 18th and 19th century did scientists understand that our breath depends on the oxygen produced by plants’ photosynthesis; and only in the 20th did researchers understand how most plants’ survival depends on their mycorrhizal connections with mycelium. In more recent years, specific studies linking cognition and oxygen levels have finally gained traction: our very cognitive functions, our life breath as human beings, would not exist without the interdependent and transformative exchanges between non-human organisms. The transmigration, thus, has no clear beginning or end. 

The group show updates the ancient concept of metempsychosis to open a new vantage point from which to (re)view our form of life. Using mycelium both as a symbol and a medium, the artists and designers explore and unearth its multi-layered meanings, as a metaphor of connection and of the interwoven process of decay and regeneration. 

Producing ideas, materials, and objects with mycelium, what is referred today as mycofabrication, is the prime example of interspecies design and art: there’s no genius, a homo faber who creates ex-novo, from nothing. Instead mycofabrication highlights the collaboration with another organism, with its own needs and preferences, and how its ‘mind’ influences our own. 

In this fungal-thinking feedback-loop approach, “Metempsychosis” showcases an interdisciplinary, intermodal and interspecies exhibition entangled in spirit. Each work transitions into another possibility—mycelium works as collective cooperative expressions, driven by the urge to heal our future collectively. The exhibition offers viewers alternative perspectives to materiality and knowledge production as practice, and invites them to explore the interconnectedness of life, the continuous cycle of transformation, and the regenerative power inherent in nature. Here, art is not just representational but is experienced as a living, evolving entity that transcends the human narrative, embracing the broader, more-than-human world.