Becoming Homo PHO2TOsynthesis
a Posthuman Hymn in Six Breaths
Documentation of the first research I made in the Gulf of Finland at HIAP Helsinki International Artist
Programme. Residency and project supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts,
Culture, the Civil Service and Sport (BMKOES).
Left: Self-portrait, urban sunbathing and woundhealing with algae patches - Helsinki, 2025
Right: Algae patch under UV light. With Auxenochlorella pyrenoidosa - strain from the Baltic Sea - from the
Finmari collection
Stage 2 of the transformation: Treating burned skin - anthropocentric wounds - with photosynthetic biomaterials that provide oxygen, essential for woundhealing. See also next photo below for more context.
During my residency at HIAP residency on Suomenlinna, an island in the Helsinki Archipelago, I worked on my concept for a transformation into a Homo Photosynthesis: a chimera symbiotically entangled with the photosynthetic breath of algae. This work emerges as an artistic response to the growing burden of CO2.
I explored new and ancient human-sea and human-algae relationships while initiating algae-friendly cultivation in a phyto-plant-station using local samples from the Finmari Collection. A collaboration with doctoral researcher Sonja Repetti based at Tvärminne Zoological Station. Inspired by plant-animals, I began my first research on ways to become chloroplastic developing algae tissues alongside writing the speculative story "The Chloroplast Protocols - A Posthuman Hymn in Six Breaths". Set in 2049 my future self is looking back on the transformation (you can contact me for a PDF).
In 2025 and 2026 I plan to continue the project by constructing an algae tank for teh third stag of becoming with algae in which I will immerse myself as a performance / video documented and I envision creating life-sized, living phyto-membranes and green prostheses, further embodying the mutation into a phytosymbiont.
Stage 2
"Something was off. My cells started distrusting the world. I was tired. Bone-tired. Breathless.
I woke up at night, gasping for air. Touch burned. My skin flared red, inflamed." *
Anthropocentric Wounds
Gulf of Finland 2025
* text fragment from the SF story with the work: "The Chloroplast Protocols - A Posthuman Hymn in Six Breaths"
The Chloroplast Protocols - Stage three of the transformation, 2039 :
At first, I was sceptical. Offering myself to an experiment I barely understood. It was only when leading scientist Repetti told me about the history of the algae strains with their enchanting names I changed my mind. Collected, isolated and domesticated by researchers Hällfors & Hällfors in Tvärminne in the early 90s — separated from the ocean and suspended in artificial light — they have since been seeking for the lost symbiosis in which they once thrived. Perhaps, I thought at the time, we could help each other by satisfying our mutual yearning for connection. And so I lay down in the algae tanks. The water smelled faintly of minerals and green. There was no turning back. I surrendered.
The word chloroplast is derived from the Greek words chloros ( χλωρός ), which means green, and plastes ( πλάστης ), which means "the one who forms". The green one who forms. Who transforms. And so I transformed. *
* text fragment from the speculative story I wrote with the work: "The Chloroplast Protocols - A Posthuman Hymn in Six Breaths"
THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Left:
Algae-human skin fossil
"Many attempts at fusion failed. Algae on my body were repelled or withered away, leaving behind intimate traces of severed connection, remnants of what had once been part of our shared body. In the later stages of my metamorphosis, I no longer returned the inert algae skins to the sea. I dried them."
Biomaterial from agar, glycerine, Chlorella Vulgarus, Auxenochlorella pyrenoidosa
Text fragment from "The Chloroplast Protocols - A Posthuman Hymn in Six Breaths"
Illustration right:
Fantasy for a chimeric skin membrane
