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We celebrate 35 years of bold ideas, critical perspectives, and transformative queer cultural work.

Happy Birthday, thealit! Thank you for the past, for the present and for the future ahead! 

Artists & projects 2025/2026


NOW AT ARBEITSZIMMER THEALIT

Jennifer Yue Yuen Yu's residency is dedicated to the Siphonophore Paradox.

Siphonophore Paradox... What is that? First, ‘siphonophore’: "Siphonophores (Siphonophorae) are an order of colony-forming and free-swimming cnidarians of the class Hydrozoa, whose colonies consist of hundreds to thousands of polyps. The individual animals of the colony are so highly specialized and diverse that they can almost be considered organs of a single organism. There are feeding polyps, sensory polyps, defensive polyps, reproductive polyps, and cover polyps, as well as the upper swimming buoy and numerous swimming bells." (‘Wikipedia)

And could the paradox of these state-like interacting polyps have something to do with the so-called 'plankton paradox’? "In essence, the paradox is that species that compete for the same resource should not be able to coexist when resources are homogeneously mixed in the environment. In such a situation one species should always prevail, [it does under lab conditions] […] This conflicts with what is seen in the environment, where hundreds of plankton species coexist, even where competition is heavy." (Towards a resolution of ‘the paradox of the plankton’)

The work of Jennifer Yue Yuen Yu will certainly establish its own unique connections here. She formulates it in general terms in her announcement: The project explores “the blurred boundaries between individuality and collectivity within aquatic lifeforms. Through this entanglement of the human body and the siphonophore, her work opens speculative spaces for rethinking identity, kinship, and interdependence in watery worlds. Moving toward the concept of fossilizing living bodies—fluid beings caught in forces beyond their control—she traces how diasporic identities and ecological histories intertwine to shape embodied experience.

Building on previous drawing studies that explore the figuration of human-sea creature hybridity, this project will expand into a bodily performance using a custom-built sculpture that both fits, holds, and transforms my body. There may be a performance at the end of the residency to showcase the result or progress. The sculpture will act as an extension and distortion of my form—a prosthetic ecology. Inspired by the modular anatomy of the siphonophore, the work explores how bodies move through constraint and fluidity, not as singular entities but as distributed systems of relation.

By submitting my body to this structure, I aim to rearticulate forms of support, vulnerability, and adaptation in a queer futurity where bodies are never fully fixed, but always in becoming.”

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