Unlike the microbiome, which has been described as working in symbiosis with living systems, the necrobiome is a living community of micro and macro-organisms haunting bodies and materials beyond the boundary given to define “life”. The Necrobiome and the Thanatomicrobiome that comprises it microbial agents actively dismantle the material composition of life as we knew it, signaling to cultural notions of the abject and putrefaction[1], [2].
However, the necrobiome remains an undeniably important framework for understanding the complex and shifting network of interactions and relationships that living organisms have beyond the anthropocentric boundary of death. From whale fall to compost, the necrobiome exists all around us and plays a crucial role in planetary cycles.
Consulting both scientific and cultural practitioners working with these facets of death, “Dust to Dust” attempts to examine the value systems projected onto death, the meaning death has in life cycles (micro and macro), and the rituals that exist around death (both scientific and cultural). Exploring the role of planetary forces and the needs of overlapping systems of living entities that permeate the boundary between life and death, “Dust to Dust” offers artistic mediation on the cycling of carbon on our planet.
[1] Kristeva, J., 2024. Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. Columbia University Press.
[2] Nakas, K., 2013. Putrefied, Deliquescent, Amorphous: The 'Liquefying' Rhetoric of Ugliness. In: A. Pop and M. Widrich, ed., Ugliness: The Non-Beautiful in Art and Theory. I.B.Tauris.
Lyndsey Walsh is an artist, writer, and researcher from the United States and based in Berlin, Germany. Lyndsey has a Bachelor’s in Individualized Studies from New York University and a Master’s in Biological Arts with Distinction from the SymbioticA Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia. Lyndsey’s practice fuses speculative narratives with autoethnographic investigations into the ruptures created by technology in the corporality of culture. Lyndsey sets out to question the cultural binaries of human-non-human, diseased-healthy, and life-machine using Crip, Queer, and intersectional feminist frameworks. Currently, Lyndsey is the first and only residing artist of the Department of Experimental Biophysics at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. They have been awarded the S+T+ARTS Prize 2024 Honorable Mention, and their work has been featured in events and with institutions such as Frieze Art Week New York, the Humboldt Forum, the Ural Biennial, the Berlin Biennale, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Transmediale/CTM, and more.
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