Mycelium has contributed with no less than three pieces for the Danish publication: En Anden Økologi – Antikapitalistisk håndbog.
The first essay is our speech from the Extinction Rebellion event Vendepunktet. The second one is an essay on socalled the so-called ecology of mycelium, including ecological cannibalistic strategies, and the final essay is a wonderful recipe.
Feeling peckish. See the recipe translation below.
TOURNEDOS ROSSINI Serves 2
For this dish, we use cuts from three fundamentally different realms. For the first main element, we need young, pale meat that is still quite unexercised and low in fat, which is why a young heir to a fortune or crown prince is preferable. For the second main element, we require an overworked liver with a high level of intramuscular fat in the offal; here, one would typically choose an ageing media executive.
For the sauce, we usually go for an older, leaner, and tougher mogul, since its meat is too tough to be used for proper roasts. It does, however, excel as a soup hen for making stock.
Ingredients 300 g tenderloin 100 g foie gras 2 kg marrow bones 50 g femur marrow 2.5 dl Madeira Sercial Colheita 1 shallot 2 cloves of garlic 1 bunch thyme 200 g soup vegetables 100 g Tuber melanosporum 1 slice white bread (alternatively, pound cake) 80 g salted butter Salt and pepper
Sauce
Bone out the meat and roast the bones in the oven at 200°C for 25 minutes.
Sauté the soup vegetables, onion, black pepper, and thyme in the marrow, add the bones, and cover with water.
Reduce at a gentle simmer for 12–16 hours, skimming impurities as they rise.
Strain the stock, reduce to a glaze, add the Madeira, and reduce again.
Mount with salted butter just before serving.
Tournedos
Trim the muscle, cut into suitable portions, salt, and let rest for 20 minutes.
Sear in neutral oil until a good crust forms.
Serve rare or bleu.
Foie Gras
Remove blood and veins from the liver and cut it into 2 cm slices.
Flash-sear for 1 minute per side.
Season with salt and pepper.
Bread (or Pound Cake)
Cut suitable slices and toast in butter.
Arrange on a flat plate with the bread first, then the tournedos, and finally the foie gras. Surround with Madeira sauce. Finish by shaving generous amounts of black autumn truffle or another mushroom over the dish just before serving—preferably done in front of the guest.
Mycelium has sprouted yet again. We have contributed to:
CONTEMPORANEA – A Glossary for the Twenty-First Century
NECROBIOSIS
Excerpt:
“Surrounded by the memorials, in denial of their own death, the complete separation of life and death is attained. More must grow. More monetary monoliths. More fuel. More more. Growth is inherent in its logic, even if this means deforesting. The oil burned was once summer days. In these dead structures wherein death is denied, life is bottled, turned into a commodity, shots of instant eternity. The cocoon seems hard. Maybe too hard.
It stands alone. The abyss seems endless. Sea, soil, and sun still run in its veins. God dies, but the sun shines on.”
The book is out on The MIT Press and is edited by Michael Marder and Giovanbattista Tusa.
Full list of contributors:
Mieke Bal, Claudia Baracchi, Amanda Boetzkes, Erik Bordeleau, Anita Chari, Emanuele Coccia, Valentina Desideri, Roberto Esposito, Filipe Ferreira, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Claire Fontaine, Graham Harman, Yogi Hale Hendlin, Ranjit Hoskote, Cymene Howe, Daniel Innerarity, Joela Jacobs, Ken Kawashima, Sabu Kohso, Bogna Konior, Brandon LaBelle, Anna Longo, Artemy Magun, Michael Marder, Michael Marder, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, Timothy Morton, Mycelium, Jean-Luc Nancy, Bahar Noorizadeh, Kelly Oliver, Uriel Orlow, Richard Polt, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Tomás Saraceno, Vandana Shiva, Anton Tarasyuk, Anais Tondeur, Giovanbattista Tusa, Sjoerd van Tuinen, Santiago Zabala, Zahi Zalloua, Slavoj Žižek
SOL deltog på Folkemødet i Allinge 16. juni 2023! 3 performances kurateret af Malou Solfjeld for SOL Nexø.
Mycelium var allerede gået i jorden længe før træerne opstod, og Mycelium vil være her længe efter, at lyslederkablerne ikke længere leder lys, og satellitterne på himlen lukker øjnene i. Mycelium var det første internet, ubegrænset af firewalls, protokoller og muromkransede haver. Mycelium bryder bjergene ned, netværker mellem arterne, og flytter næringsstoffer gennem ruinerne. Mycelium er en kombination af æstetik og aktivisme, der kan påvirke samfundet og verden på måder, der først vil vise sig grundlæggende. Mycelium er en åben og fri struktur, der inviterer alle til at deltage og bidrage med deres ideer og visioner. Biomineraler er mineraler produceret af levende væsner. Dit skelet er et biomineral, der har din ryg. Computerkredsløbene, der styrer alt fra din bil til verdensøkonomien, selvom de ret beset blot er lyn indskrevet i sten, er en form for biomineral produceret af menneskelig intelligens. MYCELIUM udvisker grænserne mellem det mineralske og det animalske rige.
Og vi er mange Og vi er ingen Mycelium er ingenting Mycelium er et mellemværende Mycelium er det forhold, at vi er forbundet. Som alt andet er forbundet Som er det naturen er Når den ikke er andet end det forhold at alt er Og derfor ikke er noget Ingen ting Intet produkt Et tv, en bil, en telefon, et feriefoto, en prostitueret, en livsstil, en svinekotelet
Dette er et åndedrag Og vi er natur Når naturen ikke er noget Når naturen ikke er noget vier i, men noget vi eraf Og vi er miljøet Når miljøet ikke er noget der omgiver os, men noget der gennemtrænger os. Som et åndedræt, en kniv Som manglende drikkevand eller stigende oliepriser Som fraværet af en afdød art Som hjertets forhold til lungerne Og lungernes forhold til nyrerne Og nyrernes forhold til stenene Og stenenes forhold til stjernerne Og stjernernes forhold til planterne Og planternes forhold til olien Og oliens forhold til maskinerne Og maskinernes forhold til kapitalen Og kapitalens forhold til krigen Og krigens forhold til døden Og dødens forhold til mulden Og muldens forhold til myceliet
Dette er et åndedrag Og myceliet spreder sig i mulden Som det spreder sig i døden I krigen, kapitalen, maskinerne, olien Planterne, stjernerne, stenene, nyrerne Lungerne, hjertet Og omsætter døden til liv I alle ting, som var de ingen ting Det spreder sig tager til Udvider sig Danner kreds Skyder sine svampe over jorden Som hekseringe, hvor der blev danset Som dansepest og glædesråb Som hellige rum, der aldrig har kendt til guder Men som ene og alene hylder solen Den sol der dør Der nærer alt liv på jorden. Der omsættes af planterne Der gør luften åndbar Der fortæres af dyret Der fortæres af andre dyr Der lagres i olien Der smører maskinerne Der udødeliggøres i plastikken og diamanten Som et udødeligt løfte om flere ting
Dette er et åndedrag Og solen høstes forskelligt Den akkumuleres på få hænder Vi er ikke i samme båd De slikker sol på en yacht De slikker sol i Dubai De slikker sol på vesterbro De slikker sol på safari Vi er ikke i samme båd De sveder sol De sveder blod De sveder plastik De sveder Iphones De sveder porno Og vi slikker salte solkroppe tør for næring Vi høster olie, blod og børn Vi høster børn Og de har ikke samme farve, køn og indkomst Og det Gaias fødselsmerter Der adskiller himlen og jorden Solen og planeten Men naturen er ikke Gaia Naturen er Shiva Der høster hoveder og drikker blod Men naturen er ikke Shiva Naturen er Lego, Nestle og Apple The stuff that dreams are made of Pagt med naturen er for de privilegerede Vi kan ikke redde naturen Vi skal ikke redde naturen Måske skal den redde os Men det vil sige, at vi skal redde os selv Fra os selv For Gaia vil omfavne dig Shiva vil hugge dit hoved af Og solen giver liv Uden forventning om modregning Uden ønske om gengæld Uden interesse i hvordan vi forvalter det
Solen vil skide på kapitalismen Der alene kan akkumulere der lider af forstoppelse der derfor udelukkende skider monumenter Solen vil skide på asketen Hvis reaktion på forstoppelsen er fornægtelse
Og solen vil skide på dig Som naturen vil skide på dig Som blomsterne vil skide på dig Så skid som solen På kapitalismen På Vareliggørelsen På nytteværdi På markedsværdi På friværdi På værdi Stick it where the sun doesn’t shine Og skid som solen Men skid en frugtbar mødding Skid som solen giver liv uden modregning Generøst og ødselt Som gaven der giver sig selv I dansen I glæden I latteren I erotikken I fødslen I protesten I en radikal omfordeling uden modregning
Dette er et åndedrag Vi står her, som mycelium Fordi vi ikke er mycelium Fordi mycelium er ikke noget man kan være Fordi det er et mellemværende Der ikke stopper ved dig og mig og os Der ikke stopper med os og jorden og solen og mælkevejen og intet Fordi naturen blot er det forhold at den er Fordi miljøet er det, at det gennemtrænger os Som en kniv, som den sjette massedød, som smeltende iskapper, som klimaflygtninge og dollargrin Mycelium er udelukkende Et fælles åndedrag, der trækker verden ind og ud
In 2017 Ark Reviewof Ark Books in Copenhagen sat down with Mycelium. The interview took place ahead of their public performance, ‘Witches Circle’, which happened in connection to solstice. The purpose of the interview was finding out how this fungus can move us to organize in radically different ways, beyond individualism and the ego.
What is Mycelium?
Mycelium is a root network of mushrooms. It consists of spores, which form a communicative web with neither spider nor commander. Displaying sensibility and the ability to interpret environmental circumstances, it seeks to expand: eventually forming a disc. It then cannibalizes its own center as to distribute excess energy. In further attempts to expand, it forms a circle of mushrooms above ground. The fairy rings of folklore: a meeting place for witches, a place for sacred activities: ritual, symposia, sabbath. Communion, transgression. Mycelium itself is sexless, however, the coven is abundant. Its spores cannot be considered closed individual beings, they are explorers, seekers, cannon fodder. Copulating, communicating. However, mycelium doesn’t form a singular organism, it is legion. Mycelium is an open-ended and indeterminate dynamic structure, where the totality exceeds the number of beings. Birds in motion: black sun.
What is so perverse about Mycelium?
Traditionally the pervert is someone who diverts her eyes from the truth. That is: God. The Eye in the sky, the metaphysical sun. Perversion corrupts being. According to Freud the pervert confuses truth and what is false. Perversion becomes a diagnosis of humanity, but a sickness nonetheless. Today, perversion is accepted as private fantasies, which are legitimized via informed consent and is overall a part of our self-exploration and self-realization. In that respect, perversion is stripped of its subversive potential. Thus, traditionally, the pervert is someone who actively averts her gaze from the singular truth and its institutions, the constituted homogenic order and bourgeois morality, which are based on ressentiment. The “object” of perversion (when taken to its subversive limit and not just your private “legitimized” fantasies) is always that which disrupts the homogenic order.
The homogenic order is the world that we have taken into possession and made orderly. It’s the world we have rationalized, machined, organized. According to Nietzsche, it is a possessed world, taken into possession by rationality through fictions and conceptual constructions; it is the world of work, utility and production. Mycelium disrupts the homogenic order, by its mere opposition to it. Mycelium does not have a center of truth entailed in it, nor does it have a center of self, nor does it abide by a generalized economy of benefit to one at the cost of another, but disrupts and undoes itself continuously, in order to become (an)other, while never in itself identical. It embarrasses the established order. Today’s truths are those of self-realization, egoism, capitalism, neoliberalism, utilitarianism, rising nationalism and necessity. Such logoi produce their own witches [and] naked life. The perverted won’t accept these power-manifestations. The perverted averts her gaze to glance other truths and raises her fist. Seeks subversion and revolt.
Why write collectively? What limitation do you escape once you leave the individual identity of an author behind?
We should begin with some notions on what the ego and what an individual is. According to Schopenhauer our individuality is constituted by the double experience, that we are both will and representation. This double experience is what ties the subject precisely to us. The world is representation, through and through. We perceive everything as representation, as an object to our subject, including our own body. However, what separates our body from every other form of representation is that we also have an intimate experience of our body, which isn’t (and cannot be) exhausted by the representation. A so-called inner experience (to use Bataille’s phrase) or non-knowledge. The inner experience of the body (and thus the world) is qualitas occulta, which is something different from the world as representations. The world as representation is a world of divisions, distance and limits. Limits we draw. The inner world is limitless. Thus our individuality is constituted by this double mode of existence. Our paradoxical way of being. We exist, we exit, we step out. Out of the limitless. Into a world of objects, purpose, utility, duties, morality. Thus, our individuality is not indivisible. It bears within the participation in everything. The individual is by definition an opening, wounded. Both distance and embrace. Both limited and limitless.
Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, living the other’s death, dying the other’s life. (Heraclitus)
This paradox also reveals the openness in every other object individuated by us. An inner world not transparent to the castrated eye. Everything is wounded, a passage, a threshold. We engage in the limitless via eroticism, ecstasy, joy, love, music, art, dance, laughter. The Sabbath celebrates exactly this. However, fear, custom, laziness, habit, angst, motivates us to grab hold of the constituted world, the homogenic order. To hold on to ourselves.
Now, as already noted, this double knowledge is what ties the subject to us, which constitutes our individuality. The subject, however, is nothing. Not a representation. Not a part of the limitless. It is but a point of reference. A figment of our imagination. A fiction. A diffuse and ever-shifting vanishing point. Thus, to celebrate the ego, the subject, is to celebrate nothingness. Nihilism! It is an integral part of capitalism, neoliberalism, egoism and also many forms of individualism, since it celebrates the self-realization and uniqueness of the closed individual. But you are not unique. Your uniqueness is nothingness. An individualism that doesn’t embrace community is borderline nihilism, and a communism that doesn’t embrace the wounded individual is totalitarianism and/or fascism. This is beautifully summed up in the erotic prose of Henry Miller:
We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separate and self-hypnotized, but individual and related. (Miller)
Or as Alain Daniélou writes in his essay The Shaivite Revival from the Third to the Tenth Centuries C.E.:
The conception of monotheism, along with its aggressiveness and the audacity with which such a simplistic doctrine could be presented as progress, impressed the philosophers, who sought to adapt it, interpret it, and incorporate it. It was a phenomenon like Marxism, which clandestinely penetrated all religious thought, no one daring to point out the countertruths and the unrealistic nature of its assumptions. […] The prestige of the metaphysical absurdity that monotheism represented for traditional doctrine was to affect philosophical thought in India down to our times. The Western world was hardly interested in anything but philosophies infected by this germ. In vain, the Tantras continued to proclaim “ekashabdatmika maya: the number “one” is the soul of error.” For the Samkhya, the number “one” is collective, referring to a group or fragment, and does not exist as an absolute, since nothing exists except in relation to something else. (Daniélou)
So, to answer your question. We seek to undermine the ego, the idea of a privileged vantage point, even though it, like God, hides in the grammar, and we seek to embrace the open-ended, wounded and naked individual in the swarm, in community. So in a sense we are undermining the very subject/object structure of language.
God is dead The author is dead I am dead The swarm rises like a black sun
[or maybe it should rather be: God is death, The author is death, I am death.]
We would rather write enchantments, cast spells, make incantations, but in order to do so, we must also do some theoretical and philosophical footwork. Some awareness is needed. We seek to promote this awareness, so that we and others and we as others can manifest these sacred places.
Therefore, we seek to create collectively, to think collectively, to resist the temptations of ego-formation. We do this by writing together. Make collages. Make room for associations (as in Mycelium #2).
Obviously to get lost in the swarm is potential madness. Divine madness. Dangerous madness. Evil madness?
What is the relationship between perversion and evil?
Historically speaking the pervert is evil. Lacking truth. Lacking being. Lacking god. Evil is a metaphysical concept unlike bad or unhealthy. Horrendous deeds often seem to seek legitimization in notions of justice, the good or necessity. As Hannah Arendt noticed, there is a certain kind of banality of evil. We do dreadful things when we think we are in the right. It was both necessary and good to burn witches, since they were evil. So it seems that often evil is a judgement made from the perspective of self-righteousness, of good. Most horrendous deeds are indeed justified from perspectives of utility and purpose. The black witch at our door right now, gives us purpose, (national) identity and moral highground. So viewed from the outside the coven must be considered evil, however, within the dance, the joyous violent frenzy of the Sabbath, we are beyond good and evil.
Morality must draw its power and appeal from the sovereign aspects of life, the value of life beyond utility, therefore it must be determined by a lack of the selfsame sovereignty. Sovereignty emanates and morality feeds off this source. Sovereignty, however, transgresses judgement and is beyond good and evil. It shows no concern for anything else but the rapture or sometimes the tranquillity of being, where all is given in the instant, the trembling of being, the hesitation to disappear, sunlight upon the forest’s edge. Intense communication implies a complicity in evil. From a moral point of view, which gazes towards the future, judgement and action, sovereignty is at least complicit in evil, negating and embarrassing the call for purpose and project, while also, almost as an act of defiance and joyous taunt, making it apparent that morality must draw its power from the luminous emanating sovereign source of love.
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil – Nietzsche
This time your performance will focus on witches and the exclusion/burning of them, what perspective does Mycelium add to this concept/reality that other critics do not?
Obviously, the tradition [Sankt Hans – the symbolic burning of witches in Denmark every summer solstice] to celebrate the genocide of thousands of men and women is absurd, as many critics point out. With regards to cleanliness, we should stop this atrocious practice. However, we are not clean. We grow from the soil. Rather, we would like to burn with the witches signaling through the flames. Let the sod fall like black snow on our pale white faces.
If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames. –Artaud.
We do not embrace the witch to promote self-realization, individualistic empowerment, you-go-girl-ism. We are in a sense too privileged. The real witches of today are burning in the Mediterranean. Naked life. Legitimate pray. We are burning witches every day. The inquisition=our moral highground.
Could you talk about the politics of your practice? Is there a politics of fungi or a politics of witchcraft? Should we engage in a politics of evil? If so, how?
What makes the mycelium a political endeavor or collective is that it seeks to establish a collective outside the established or dominant orders through the symbolism of that which has historically been rejected as evil or dangerous, such as the witch and witchcraft. We see that position as having political as well as aesthetic potential. It stands as an outsider, an alternative order, that through its distance from the dominant and established, provides another-way-of-knowing the world, and how we might organize it. This other, that which is considered evil, therefore also contains a critical potential. The critique is not brought about with the ambition of seeking acceptance or inclusion; rather, it constantly is in the process of seeking the outsiderness or occulta excluded, of moving away from acceptance. Acceptance in a way becomes the death of a witch, symbolically at least.
A politics of fungi or mycelia should mimic the open ended dynamic and communicative structure of mycelium; form dynamic communities that resists the temptation to become a centralized organization. The mycelium is “a heterogenous army of hyphal troops, variously equipped for different roles and in varying degrees of communication with one another. Without a commander, other than the dictates of their environmental circumstances, these troops organize themselves into a beautifully open-ended or indeterminate dynamic structure that can continually respond to changing demands”. Since it is open-ended and dynamic, it must disregard appeal to the politics of necessity, history and utility, and formulate political poetics. If it stiffens, it dies. To uphold these grimaces of death is decadence. And they must therefore be transformed, eaten, delivered. A politics of mycelia must embrace this dynamic hunger. This includes a politics of cannibalism. The mycelium cannibalizes its own center in order to be able to manifest the fairy/witches rings. These manifestations are sacred realms, thresholds, passages from one place to another. The transgression of limits into the intimate swarm of the limitless.
Through loss man can regain the free movement of the universe, he can dance and swirl in the full rapture of those great swarms of stars. But he must, in the violent expenditure of self, perceive that he breathes in the power of death. – Bataille
As the dancers are cannibals As the generous are cannibals As the lovers are cannibals We are cannibals
Creative and political lessons to be drawn from the mycelium:
Form a heterogenous communicative open-ended structure.
Cannibalize your center – eat your ego.
Distribute excess energy to wherever the spores seek to expand.
“Jeg tror også det er derfor sproget gennemgående er ført i manifestets agiterende toneleje i Mycelium. Som en markering af alvor, af samfundsnedbrydelse, af (seksual)politisk konflikt. Der er ikke blot tale om den sidste, nye perverse trend. Der er tale om en politisk nødvendighed som finder sit perverse udspringspunkt i røvhullet: “I enden nedbrydes og sammenblandes alt. Udslettelsen af enhver forskel, at trænge ned i væren, antager en ekskremental karakter”. Røvhullet er altså det perverses sted fordi røvhullet er det sted der nivellerer alle forskelle og udskider en besudlet, tabuiseret masse. Men samtidig er det vigtigt at dette sted forbliver usikkert. Den besudlede masse må ikke helliggøres, røvhullet må så at sige aldrig blive Gud, for så falmer stedet i endnu en assimilativ overtagelse.[…] Den perverse er altså den der fører overtrædelsen til den yderste konsekvens. Derfor er røvhullet også nært forbundet med en kærlighed til “alle de udstødte”. “Kan man tænke sig noget mere anstødeligt, en større hån imod den herskende anstændighed, end fattige, bådflygtninge, sindssyge, tabere, ludere, stofmisbrugere, samfundets udstødte affald?”.
Den logik der gør sig gældende i Mycelium er derfor også en revolutionær logik, en logik der ikke acceptere gradvise tilpasninger og indordninger, men derimod taler for en totalomvæltning af de normative strukturer. Det er selvfølgelig ekskluderende overfor nomaten, men det er måske den allerede ekskluderes eneste tilbageværende rettighed? Selv at kunne vælge sine kampfæller: “Den perverse finder glæde i denne spottende hån”.”
Læs mere:
http://floret.se/kussen-og-roven/
“I also believe this is why the language throughout Mycelium is carried in the manifesto’s agitating register. As a marker of seriousness, of social disintegration, of (sexual-)political conflict. This is not merely a matter of the latest new perverse trend. It is a political necessity that finds its perverse point of origin in the asshole: ‘At the end, everything is broken down and mixed together. The annihilation of every difference, the penetration into being, assumes an excremental character.’ The asshole is thus the site of the perverse because the asshole is the place that levels all differences and excretes a defiled, tabooed mass. But at the same time it is crucial that this site remain unstable. The defiled mass must not be sanctified; the asshole must, so to speak, never become God, for then the site fades into yet another assimilative appropriation. […] The pervert, then, is the one who carries transgression to its utmost consequence. This is why the asshole is also closely connected to a love of ‘all the outcasts.’ ‘Can one imagine anything more offensive, a greater mockery of prevailing decency, than the poor, boat refugees, the mentally ill, losers, whores, drug addicts—the expelled waste of society?’
The logic at work in Mycelium is therefore also a revolutionary logic—a logic that does not accept gradual adaptations and accommodations, but instead argues for a total overturning of normative structures. This is, of course, exclusionary toward the nomad, but perhaps this is the only right that remains to the already excluded? To be able to choose one’s own comrades-in-arms: ‘The pervert finds pleasure in this mocking derision.’”
