May 24, 2020 — Inside
It was odd travelling in that moment. High Alert but also calmer than normal because I didn’t have to contend with the stress and press of thousands of other people. Although it doesn’t feel like it, I think about how I could have virus swarming inside me now. I may be a danger to those who are vulnerable. People like my father who’s on chemotherapy drugs. It’s weird feeling dangerous. Not a sensation I’m used to. In the dark, two herons call to each other, one cry slightly higher pitched than the other. One in the reeds that border the lagoon, one flying, seemed to be finding its way back to the other. Stars are visible through silver streaked high altitude cloud and low puffballs tinted slight orange by the sodium lights of towns over the silhouette hill. Before all this hit, I was thinking about making a drawing of human gut flora. I probably still will. I’ve got an MRI scan of my entire body on a hard drive. It was made eleven years ago. Researchers believe that the body replaces itself with a new set of cells every seven to ten years. The scan is of my old body then. It’s estimated that there are three times more microorganisms living in the human body than there are cells. Ninety percent of human serotonin – the chemical neurotransmitter that’s believed to help regulate mood; social behaviour; appetite and digestion; sleep; memory, and sexual desire – is produced by microbiota in the human gut biome. Given that microbe generated serotonin plays such a fundamental role in the way we feel and consequently act, leads me to question – as independent life-forms, should we actually recognize our microbiota as co-authors of our actions? With an invisible community shaping agency in human society overnight, I wonder if we’re actually just vehicles in the service of these microscopic conductors. Some time ago I read an interview with a curator who said she felt the opinions of white, male, middle class, heterosexual artists were irrelevant now. I get it. We can all relate to that
#notaselfie #notanartwork #uncurated #14days #quarantine #selfportrait #mirror #reflection #introvertion #outroversion #timealone #wherenext
Éric Bolduc XYZ 