A giant-sized laboratory petri dish. Hands full of microbes. And time. These are the only elements needed to create the colony of microorganisms that we see growing in this piece/ritual produced for the ZIP Festival at the TNC – National Theatre of Catalonia (2022).
Our relationship with microorganisms is constant and intimate. Without even realizing it, every day we feed, carry, and share our bodies with millions of bacteria and fungi that are invisible to the naked eye. While creating this piece, its creators discovered that, interestingly, the exchange of microorganisms is a component of many religious rituals. For this reason, El pensament salvatge (The Savage Mind) is a ritual aimed at nourishing and cultivating the microorganisms that live on our skin.
The ritual spans several days and begins with an inoculation ceremony—a playful, festive gathering where performers and audience members come together around a two-meter-diameter petri dish to prepare the microbes’ food while engaging in conversation about the relationship between microorganisms, spirits, and waste. Over the course of three to four days, the dish becomes an installation, where growth slowly becomes both visible and audible.
Finally, we gather once more around the dish for a sonic intervention featuring percussion and electronic music composed by Gerard Valverde Ros and Miquel Vich Vila, as we observe the microbial landscapes that have emerged. The geographies shaped by these microorganisms confront us with an unfamiliar image of our own bodies and the place we occupy in the universe.
Photo by Eva Carasol