Sweat, (Re)materializing: Labor

This chapter departs from direct critique of DNA-centrism employed in previous chapters, utilizing a post-anthropocentric perspective, which in contesting human agency also contests DNA determinism. Our bodies serve as hosts to a myriad of flows, forces, metabolisms and behaviors of intimate microorganisms. The work of such non-human agents living as “micro performers” on the human body is the focus of my recent artwork, Labor, a multi-sensory art installation that endeavors to re-create the scent of human exertion—in-vitro—with bacteria of the human epidermis. In Labor, these bacteria produce the scent of sweat, not as a vulgar bi-product of production, like in factories of prior centuries, but rather as an intentional end product.