In a world where science is opening the dark abyss of knowledge ever wider, we want to run deeper into the darkness. Reality becomes more fantastic than fiction. I think about humanity and I feel the abyss opening up, making me question my identity.
REIMAGING HUMANITY
I wander on the margins of humanity and feel more and more how the wandering turns into unrecognizable shapes of beings, some kind of delirium.
BACKGROUND
WANDERING
Wandering is usually defined as physical, Philosophical or mental exploration. In my research, wandering is like the transformation of wandering into delusion, where reality becomes fiction and fiction becomes reality and you never know where it starts and ends. According to contemporary thinkers and philosophers, we would generally be better off distancing ourselves from previous understandings of humanity, recognising the non-human reality as our entire reality, and creating a new, post-human perspective. So, when I started to look for a place to myself. A place to create in a posthumanist world, to see myself as a creator in it, I ended up wandering. Without the exact place and with no expectations for results.
Looking back at the More than human concept, gardens, atmospheric air, food, and water—all of these are the result of millions of years of microbial work. Human bodies are no exception.
We tend to think that microorganisms live inside our bodies. But we can also think in reverse: we are gardens or shells for organisms, inhabited by microscopic beings that dwell within us and populate us. Though we are inclined to occupy and claim ownership, to call our bodies our own, in my view, we are a political ecosystem. While we consider ourselves indivisible, almost like gods within our own bodies, we carry out world-scale genocides without a second thought or cultivate life forms favorable to us. In reality, we are microbial architecture, and we cannot even be sure that the thoughts flooding our minds are truly ours—uniquely human
Thus, in creating this wandering nerve, linking the brain with the gut, like a highway of communication for non-human beings, I ask myself
THE MAIN QUESTION:
How can we be certain that our thoughts are truly ours?That our bodies are truly human? If 57 % of the human body is made up of non-human colonists?
COLONISTS
Colonists - living and dying inside us, changing our temperament, character and desires. Changing form. Our happiness, our emotions are just physiological compounds that flow through the anatomical map of the body and turn into a maps of unrecognised beings under our skin. We are happy when the beings within us are happy. For example Bacteria that live in the gut are able to communicate with our brain via the vagus nerve. And then the brain, through nerve impulses, tells us to behave and feel one way or another. These bacteria are constantly changing within us. From the environment, the food we eat, the rhythm we live. Emotions change the composition of the bacterial colonies, and the colonies change the way we feel. So these bi-directional relationships shape the being that we still call human, when in fact it is perhaps the most possible non-human expression of being.
MORE OR LESS HUMAN
Sometimes it is said that people who live together start to resemble each other, but from a scientific perspective, it is actually their bacterial colonies that become similar. These colonies eventually send signals and communicate with the brain, influencing how we feel and behave. We share bacteria that shape our perceived humanity into something alike
The butterflies in our stomach are awakened by the wandering nerve. The butterflies of love and the butterflies of fear are physiologically very similar—they are the movement of the vagus nerve in our stomach. When we touch another person, this nerve activates in our body, creating pleasant emotions.
.png)
The separation of two people can also be understood physiologically, as the division of a bacterial colony into two parts. Over time, as they part ways, these colonies drift apart and begin forming a new, independent existence.
.png)
For example, after a French kiss, two people exchange DNA for an hour, becoming, in a small way, something different. In this process, the wandering nerve is often involved. But only for an hour. After that, nothing remains.
Through movement, following those mysterious beings in my body - wandering - blindfolded, with my hands, fingers, toes, feet, thoughts - creating movements that press against the surface. I feel my consciousness leave my body and I wander into a state close to catharsis.
I am trying to reach - the unreachable.
Distances are distorted.
Why is it so difficult to reach what is closest?
To reach what is within?
The vagus nerve stretches from where infinity lies in the gray, butterfly-shaped clouds of the substantia grisea in our brains to our gut—the teeming realm of non-human beings whose seemingly simple existence reveals, with every scientific investigation, more and more secrets about who we really are.
It is important to realise - this real, one of the longest nerves in our bodies, connects the brain and the gut (as well as many other places in the body). The nerve controls human movements and senses; it sends signals to the heart and lungs, it is responsible for good memory; and finally, it returns our body to normal condition after an experience of excitement or anxiety. It is like a forest that protects the soil or sand.
AUTO-ETNOGRAPHIC WANDERS
So I wonder with my body and minds. I record the movements, senses and feelings. I track the routes outside me and inside. Eventually, the movements merged into inhuman beings.
In these wanderings, I follow my own Vagus nerve. At times, I cross physical, emotional, or moral boundaries. I wander. My research, which began within the framework of my doctoral studies, has permeated my entire being.
I no longer know where I begin and end, or who I am.
I no longer know where inhumanity begins and ends.
These will be wanderings
Diary through lava fields, the Himalayan mountains, the streets of Tokyo, and Vilnius. These are wanderings within myself, walking the edges of humanity and trying to understand who I am.
.jpg)
.png)
FIRST WANDERING.
THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH. ALONG THE PATHS OF NORTHERN DREAMS.
The very first wandering I followed as part of my research took place in Iceland. There, I roamed across lava fields and rough surfaces. A significant part of these wanderings consists of dreams, merging with the polar day and human everyday life. On one of the fifteen days of the wandering, I wrote:
You have to be careful when you put your foot in, so that it doesn't dissolve in the sulphur. Wandering through lava meadows, where the surface is barely 5 cm in places, is like wandering through the valley of death - every step could be your last. I cannot explain what invisible force pushed me into a steaming lava meadow, where just a few hundred metres away, a volcano was erupting. Within moments, I could feel the soles of my shoes melting in my feet, and I had to quicken my steps to avoid getting stuck in a sea of hot lava.
Wandering knows no feeling. Hormones - whether from fear or happiness - are just a response to stress and affect the body in a similar way. I stood on the edge of the world and watched something incredibly frightening approaching. Butterflies fluttered, hitting the peritoneum and dying the most beautiful death. In that macabre light, at about three o'clock at night, lost in the northern mountains and walking fifty kilometres, I felt that dreams were mixed up with dreams and you couldn't tell which was reality.
.png)