Jana Piotrowski is a freelance artist and master class student with Ingo Vetter at the HfK Bremen.
In her artistic practice she works primarily with organic matter and collectively producing systems. Through spatial installations she explores site-specific processes of change and development triggered by time. She is interested in how we are interwoven with our environment and the invisibilities in which we move and encounter.
She sees networks that occur in nature and those in which we move in everyday life as examples of sustaining connections, encounters, and exchanges. Jana moves in independent art and cultural collectives, working in collaborative contexts and DIY/DIWO formats. This is a way for her to meet others in doing and thinking and to create knowledge and experiences together.
Thinking with Slime Mould is an attempt to step outside the human perspective and carefully form relationships. The Slime Mould (Physarum Polycephalum) is a single-celled organism that acts as a collective body, that can remember, carries knowledge into its own system, and joins forces with other organisms. Through pulsating movements, the Slime Mould orients itself in the environment, scanning it and leaving traces that are legible to it.
For me, the 'collaboration' with the living being opens up the possibility of thinking about the transmission of memories, knowledge and experience in non-hierarchical, collective systems.
Where are memories stored and how do biological entities make decisions together?
Is the slime mold able to let us take a different view, ones that includes and rethinks a privileged and superior position of cognition that starts from the human being?
How does a Slime Mould perceive the world?
During my time in the Arbeitszimmer I invite queer-/feminist thinkers, or their literature into the space (e.g. Lynn Margulis, Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, Ursula le Guin) and link them to the traces of the Slime Mould. Feel free to stop by during open hours to read, explore, and reflect on symbiotic relationships in our lives- in the very small and the very large.
Art Residency #3
Jana Piotrowski
19.12.-12.01.23
Slime moulds, include 900 -1500 species - research is still divided -, only certain is: it is not fungi in the true sense, because these amazing creatures combine properties of fungi and animals. A slime mould in a natural environment, for example, lives on rotting wood or in mold and consists of protoplasm with many cell nuclei, sometimes several billion. In a hitherto largely unexplained way, these microorganisms, which can grow to several square meters under laboratory conditions, exhibit intelligent behavior: they seem to remember, think and actively decide, as is evident from their locomotion to food sources. In any case, they are only apparently fragile in their soft, gelatinous body, because in the tens of millions of years of their existence they must have successfully survived many emergency situations ...Jana Piotrowski writes: "Thinking with Slime Mould" is an attempt to take a step out of the human perspective and to establish careful relationships. The Slime Mould (Physarum Polycephalum) is a single-celled creature that acts as a collective body, remembering, carrying knowledge into the system, and connecting with other organisms. Through pulsating movements, the Slime Mould orients itself in the environment, scans it and leaves traces that are legible to it. Where are memories stored and how do biological entities make decisions together? How does the Slime Mould perceive the world?"Jana Piotrowski will dedicate her residency time to the slime mould and invites you into Arbeitszimmer thealit on three dates to follow in its tracks and those of some queer/ feminist thinkers. The thinking about and with the slime mold can be approached by all curious people on January 7, 10 and 12, 2023.
January 7 and 10, starting 5 pm
Thinking with Slime Mould
Open Studio
Jana Piotrowski invites you to the project "Thinking with Slime Mould". On 3 dates it is about getting closer to the amazing slime mold, an almost unimaginable creature: at thealit Arbeitszimmer, St. Jürgen Str. 157/159 in Bremen.
I'll be in the workroom and you're welcome to visit me from 5pm, make yourself comfortable in the reading corner and read, browse or take home a slime mould yourself if you like (for instructions and building an environment for your Slime Mould on the Petri dish we'll meet at 7pm) I'll be serving porridge and beer, the Slime Mould's favorite!
January 12, 7 pm
Slime Around
A guided meditation/body journeyI invite you to a guided meditation/body journey (with 3-8 people) where we connect with the Slime Mould's network and get closer to himherit. Through pulsating movements the Slime Mould orients itself in the environment, scans it and leaves traces that are readable for it. A slippery journey, without a brain, in friendship with the water, the darkness and the earth. Please bring comfortable clothes!
ith registration:jana-pi(at)web.de You can also come spontaneously, we'll see if a place is available.
Afterwards the Arbeitszimmer thealit is open for everyone, starting at 8 pm. I'm looking forward to seeing you!"
Other work by Jana Piotrowski
