The summer season at RADIUS commences with the group exhibition WE ARE ALL HOLOBIONTS! Popularised from 1991 by American evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011), the term holobiont refers to a host body—think of a coral reef, the human intestines or lichens—and its associated communities of microorganisms. A host body and its microbiota thus form a holobiont: an overarching composite life form constituted by different species that together form an ecological unit, therein demonstrating the importance of symbiosis for our and the planet’s health. In a similar fashion, the exhibition WE ARE ALL HOLOBIONTS! forms a multilayered assemblage that challenges current mechanisms of domination, competition, hierarchies, power structures and categorisation, in favour of ‘new’ ways of thinking and being in the world, in which reciprocity, interdependence, symbiosis and mutualism form the basis.
Campaign image WE ARE ALL HOLOBIONTS! by Lisa Rampilli.
[…] I want to focus specifically on the holobiont, the organism plus its persistent microbial communities, and the ways that this concept disrupts the tenents of individualism that have structured dominant lines of thought not only within biology but also in the fields as diverse as economics, politics and philosophy. The holobiont is powerful, in part, because it is not limited to nonhuman organisms. It also changes what it means to be a person.
[...] That is decidedly not the same thing as One and Individual. Rather, in polytemporal, polyspatial knottings, holobionts hold together contingently and dynamically, engaging other holobionts in complex patternings. Critters do not precede their relatings; they make each other through semiotic material involution, out of the beings of previous such entanglements.
The social and psychological transformations wrought by the pandemic have shed additional light on the idea that life is, first and foremost, a process of multispecies becoming-with: we humans, like before, are colonised by bacteria, viruses and fungi. “To be animal is to become-with bacteria, viruses and many other sorts of critters,” in the words of feminist philosopher of science Donna Haraway, as she continues: “Indeed, responsibility in and for the worldings in play in these stories requires the cultivation of viral response-abilities, carrying meanings and materials across kinds in order to infect processes and practices that might yet ignite epidemics of multi species recuperation and maybe even flourishing on terra in ordinary times and places.”
However, capital accumulation and its (neo)colonial tendencies that continue to objectify the world prevail, emphasising an ego-centric (instead of eco-centric) and anthropocentric race to the bottom, ignorant of the multitudes that need to be contained in order to make environments that are liveable. As anthropologist Anna Tsing reminds us, sustenance and resurgence in complex ecosystems is the work of many organisms, negotiating through and across difference, without which we humans would sacrifice our livelihood.
Simultaneously it becomes increasingly clear that it is unattainable to continue to consider the Earth as a repository of natural resources for unbridled human exploitation, exhaustion and expanse. Economical and ecological crises, furthered by advanced capitalism, have exemplified the pitfalls of individualism and the competition-driven model of neoliberalism even further. Within this dynamic, it seems no longer possible to uphold simplistic demarcations such as self and other, difference and sameness, individuality and collectivity, and yet we are made increasingly complicit in the intensifying geopolitical polarities and the fever dreams of border politics in which ecocide and genocide form two sides of the same coin in the ongoing struggles for land sovereignty—of humans and other-than-humans.
Portrait of Lynn Margulis.
Acknowledging that the world is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice, and in moving against the feigned and fictitious categories of individuality and purity, this group exhibition is intended to form a multilayered assemblage that challenges current mechanisms of domination, competition, hierarchy, power structures and categorisation, in favour of ‘new’ ways of thinking and being in the world, in which reciprocity and interdependence form the basis.Following a more recent paradigm shift, this exhibition does so on the premise of a symbiotic worldview, for which it echoes the work of evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) and the concept of the holobiont that she has popularised. From Margulis’ teachings, this exhibition follows the logic that life produces its own environment, by which living forms are not found in an environment, but that they—including humans—have ended up making it. The exhibition is conveyed through the work of a group of artists that consider the human and its figuration as an intrinsic part of life—we are not individuals by genetic criteria; the isolated island of the self being a myth—beyond a symbolic, wholesomely romantic and harmonious understanding of entanglement, to its recovery in the key of collaboration as a process of giving and taking. Rather than thinking about ourselves as individuated singularities increasingly turning in on themselves, the holobiont provides a call to action: feeling part of something more elaborately networked and extensive, to become part of an ecosystem comprised of symbiotic entities—we are all holobionts!
Scott F. Gilbert, ‘Holobiont by Birth: Multilineage Individuals as the Concretion of Cooperative Processes,’ in Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, ed. Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press), 75.
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Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 60.
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Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 65 and 114.
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Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, ‘A Threat to Holocene Resurgence is a Threat to Liveability,’ in The Anthropology of Sustainability, ed. M. Brightman, J. Lewis (New York: Palgrave Macmillen, 2017), 52.
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Here we recommend the publicationAgainst Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times (2016) by Alexis Shotwell.
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Curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk.
The RADIUS 2025 year-programme BEYOND POLITICAL LIMITS, of which this exhibition is a part, has been made possible with support from the Mondriaan Fund and the Municipality of Delft. This exhibition has been made possible with additional support from the Iona Stichting, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and the Gilles Hondius Foundation. We thank them all kindly for their support!
However, capital accumulation and its (neo)colonial tendencies that continue to objectify the world prevail, emphasising an ego-centric (instead of eco-centric) and anthropocentric race to the bottom, ignorant of the multitudes that need to be contained in order to make environments that are liveable. As anthropologist Anna Tsing reminds us, sustenance and resurgence in complex ecosystems is the work of many organisms, negotiating through and across difference, without which we humans would sacrifice our livelihood. 
Following a more recent paradigm shift, this exhibition does so on the premise of a symbiotic worldview, for which it echoes the work of evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) and the concept of the holobiont that she has popularised. From Margulis’ teachings, this exhibition follows the logic that life produces its own environment, by which living forms are not found in an environment, but that they—including humans—have ended up making it. The exhibition is conveyed through the work of a group of artists that consider the human and its figuration as an intrinsic part of life—we are not individuals by genetic criteria; the isolated island of the self being a myth—beyond a symbolic, wholesomely romantic and harmonious understanding of entanglement, to its recovery in the key of collaboration as a process of giving and taking. Rather than thinking about ourselves as individuated singularities increasingly turning in on themselves, the holobiont provides a call to action: feeling part of something more elaborately networked and extensive, to become part of an ecosystem comprised of symbiotic entities—we are all holobionts! 
