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Dawoon Park — Summersnowglobalism

Carte Blanche — Summer 2022

In practice-based research of Summersnowglobalism, the stories of snowfall tell about bodily frictions between different forms of beings:
Sailing downy seeds in the air shed by poplar trees, a.k.a. summer snow—the snowpocalypse of fuzz over reforested areas with Salicaceae species in Beijing— causes anaphylaxis to the long-standing human-poplar alliance against desertification. In such a conundrum to identify which is the realm of nature and which is that of culture among humans, poplars, and deserts, the summer snow manifests friction between material bodies in an aperture of the nature-culture dialectic;
The first snow globe with a miniature of the Eiffel Tower in snow displayed embodied human imagination and the technical progress for its viewers in the Exposition Universelle of 1889. On the other hand, the snow globe has demonstrated a queer zone of intra-action between interrelated bodies—the animation on its surface, which diffracts in all shapes and sizes, does not precede the relationship between spheres, water, powder, human senses, and gestures. Snow globe manifests symbiotic ecology of interconnected beings that cannot be reduced to subject-object dualism.

Zooming in on the porous body of poplar fluffs and the mutation process of snow globes, we can see the human-centered interpretation of spaces in a new light. From micro to macro social perspectives, every being, biotic and abiotic, serves as a recipient in the conceivable virosphere. There are more than hundreds of bacterial species on our hands. Bacteria inhabit plants from the soil around the roots to the canopy. Cooperation through viral influences is unlimited inside and outside tools and machines, even between tangled circuits. Do the hollow structured bodies of poplar fluff contain microbes that can cultivate helpful fungi for yeast production? Can a snow globe be a container to receive them and things useful for collective maintenance?

The material sign of the mutant living system, fermentation, provides a spatial clue to the well-being of society at a microscopic level. Microorganisms from human hands and poplar lignocellulosic fibers move into and reproduce their descendant bacterial generations in rice doughs in collaboration with indigenous bacteria, and various tools, including an IoT incubator with a self-regulating climate system.

Through the window of a fermented liquor jar resembling a snow globe, we can observe the slow but changing climate of the biosphere created by companion species. Although microbes have digested most carbohydrates in rice, some grains still float around, illustrating a snowfall. The rice wine, dongdongju, then circulates back through human bodies, breaking down the corporeal and ontological membrane between all beings. Summersnowglobalism manifests generative friction when companion species culture each other and make a world together for collective maintenance.

See details: https://dawoonpark.net/Summersnowglobalism