Mycelium Network Society (MNS) imagines an underground network situated in a post-internet mudland and powered by fungus, spores, culture, kitchen, radio, transmission, installations, workshops and performances. Departing from the pursuits of magic mushroom, MNS charts a state of hyper-hallucination to collective fungal consciousness, investigates the fungi culture, its network capacity to communicate and process information. As an after nature’s network, MNS commands its own domain in human-disturbed forests - sprouting across the moisture of rich soils, expanding its colonies, sharing informations, networking co-habitants across borders. In our withered ecosphere, we seek out mycelium to lead us out of the ruins, to construct political tactics, to salvage economic meltdown, to persist in constant molecular communication a la mycelium mode.
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Mycelium Network Society was launched with an exhibition and a panel discussion at ecologies excursion at transmediale2017 in Berlin, followed by 3 residency artists working with mycelium culture at Eleonore and exhibited at STWST48x3 in Linz. For years 2018-2020, we propose to branch out Mycelium Network Society a la franchise mode. We are reaching out to alternative art spaces and bio(hack)labs to adopt a network, to become a node of Mycelium Network Society, to set a division that focuses on artists who work with mycelium, fungus, spores as art and network medium and with the artists to organize workshops, residencies and exhibitions. The node who cultivates own local mycelium network remains independent and autonomous in it's operation, agrees to share informations, resources and be part of larger global mycelium network. In addition, we consider analogue aspects of the inter-node communications. We ask the nodes to harvest spores from local mushrooms and make spore prints for node to node spores exchange via post, to collect spores towards a global spores release party in 2020 when we hope to publish a book that includes all nodes’ activities.
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By Spring 2018, we have eight nodes joined.
APO-33 Nantes, France
furtherfield London, UK
Coalesce: Center for Bilogical Art Buffalo, USA
Squeaky Wheel film and media art center Buffalo, USA
The Santuary for Independent Media | Nature Lab Troy, USA
GENSPACE New York City, USA
DIMENSION PLUS, Taipei, Taiwan
竹圍工作室|Bamboo curtain studio, Taipei, Taiwan

DOCUMENTATION - from end of october here.
Text in Versorgerin #119: Mycelium Network Society - Shu Lea Cheang