“Parallel Biology”

Rachel Armstrong

Armstrong Gallery | Kent, OH
September 8–October 14, 2020

// “Parallel Biology discusses the possibility of other trajectories of life than those we recognize as “biology” today. An experimental work in terms of its philosophy and methods, it explores potential toolsets through which new expressions and modes of liveliness can be invoked. Testing the limits of what is already possible, this exhibition by Rachel Armstrong interrogates our expectations of the living world beyond established frameworks and understanding to provoke new kinds of vital synthesis. Considering the spectrum of lively events, or “bare life”, that made possible the transition from inert to animated matter, alternative starting points for biodesign are selected for investigations, which draw inspiration from Steven Jay Gould’s thought experiment, who asked how different biology would be if the tape of life was replayed from any point since life’s origin.

Confronting our preconceptions of nature and biology, the selected works depict a range of projects and experiments that interrogate the potency of the living world through parallel perspectives. In keeping with the tradition of Experimental Architecture, the impacts of new technologies on architecture, design, and modes of inhabitation are explored - but with a distinctively ecological and life promoting focus. Each investigation applies new materialist principles so that every provocation seeks new alliances with other bodies through living materials and technologies, where the separation between matter, being and space is blurred and confused.

From planetary forces that desire correspondence with our world to lively expressions of soft matter that do not meet the criteria of “life”, unruly nonhuman cities that lurk at the edges of our conurbations and shape-shifting bodies that only partially appear to be human. the compelling strangeness of parallel biology not only challenges notions of the biological but also asks what it means to be alive at a time of ecocide.

Organized through a parallel evolutionary timeline, seven stations reveal parallel biologies in: Living Reflections of Venice; Temptations of the Nonlinear Ladder; Moon Writing; Venus Writing; Liquid Life; Soft Living Matter, and Stratospheric Dialogues that span the gallery space.”

text: Jean Jaminet

design & installation team: Jean Jaminet and Ryan Lane with Jonathan Bonezzi

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