Living in a time where definitions of health and disease are distorted to an extent that leaves most of us feeling confused, overwhelmed, isolated, disconnected and angry, this symposium aims to take a deep dive into our collective predicament through co-sensing with GUT MATTERS, aiming to expand our metabolic literacies. The gut, guardian of our immune system, host of our intuition and site of awe-inspiring complex ecologies blurs the boundaries between what we call our body and what we call the world. On occasion of her solo exhibition at Kunsthal Gent in this symposium, Dani Bershan and invited guests Sarah Amsler, Dani d’Emilia, Irena Radmanovic and Red Vaughan Tremmel will bring together findings from their respective and multilayered fields of practice: performance, queer etymology, decolonial studies, eco-poetics, body/land somatic work, non-western medicine, history and queer studies to take a closer look at metabolisms together.

What happens in a political environment where conventional ambitions for amelioration or repair lie gutted, where we cannot stomach the status quo anymore?

What does a commitment to finetune and co-sense with the complex metabolic ecologies and processes that the gut offers to us reveal about our relationships with Earth’s and humanities’ evolution? About holes and uncertainties, about love, grief and letting go, about multitudes, responsibilities, agencies and social movements and about our infinite entanglements with the beautiful, the broken, the ugly and the fucked up?  What do the vastness, diversity and unmanageable complexity of the gut biome, amongst other things, offer as a non-metaphorical example of what can and does happen inside holes? Holes are full of aliveness, full of – causal and acausal – awe-inspiring complexity, full of constant conversion of one thing into another, leading to inexorable new growth and constant transformation.

Metabolic literacies encompass the invisible microbial and mycelial threads that connect us to everything that exists, they are a possibility to be moved by, through and with the world and all its beings, to rehearse listening and paying attention to what already is – and what wants to be recognized for – always already being in touch with us.

In these acute times of extinction, GUT MATTERS asks us to be intimate with what happens when we break down mass into energy, and how we are present with the web of relations that makes these processes possible. Our metabolic literacies are mirrors of our health: how we live, how we love, how we kill and how we relate to each other and all beings on this planet in the midst of this poly-crisis. They insist that we matter and everything matters through us, beyond destructive illusions of subjectivities and separateness. They are an appeal to be(come) what we inquire. They are an invitation to humble (and/or blow-up) our minds and co-speciate with our guts, our intuition, our wisdom, instead. And to co-sense and listen into the complexity of millions of microbial tongues and languages that each co-create the immense web of entangled multitudes in intimate, erotic relation with one another we call life. Metabolic literacies are literacies that embrace, make and consist of holes.

Come and spend a full experiential and experimental journey with us including conversations, somatic experiences, lectures, poetry, immersive reflection, body work, meals and drinks starting at VIERNULVIER saturday morning and afternoon and ending at Kunsthal on saturday evening. Please see the full program below and book your tickets here.