Pilze und Dekomposition in der künstlerischen Praxis – Zur Heterogenese agentieller Ästhetiken
Essay by Ilka Becker
In: Annika Schlitte, Markus Verne, Gregor Wedekind (eds.): Die Handlungsmacht ästhetischer Objekte, Berlin: De Gruyter 2021, pp. 25–52
This essay explores the mycoaesthetic agency of decomposition processes in art since 20th century. The focus is on artworks in which living fungal organisms are involved as material-semiotic agents in artistic modes of production, as in the work of Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Rauschenberg, Dieter Roth, Pierre Huyghe, Claire Pentecost, or Jae Rhim Lee. In this way, they are involved in the formation of a paradigm that the author calls “agential aesthetics”.