MYCELIUM NETWORK SOCIETY
STWST at this year's Taipei Biennale
11. Taipeh Biennale 2018: 17. Nov 2018 to 10. März 2019
Taipeh Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan

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PRESS LINKS: MNS at Artforum MNS at Universes Art MNS at E-flux

Text in der Versorgerin #119 - MNS - Rehearsal Of A Network, by Shu Lea Cheang

Text in der Versorgerin #120 - Die Mycelium Network Society, by STWST
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Mycelium Network Society (MNS) is a Stadtwerkstatt (Linz, Austria) and cycleX (Andes, New York) initiative to connect rhizomic mycelium network nodes. The MNS thematizes mushrooms, spores and mycelia as artistically intended, alternative information networks.

The Mycelium Network Society will be presented at the 11th Taipei Biennial from 17 November 2018 to 10 March 2019. The Taipei Biennial will run under the title “Post Nature - A Museum as an Ecosystem”. For this exhibition MNS will present a Patulin structure with 17 atoms in which Lingzhi myceliums are cultivated and custom made electronics and circuit boards are installed to transmit the various physical properties such as moisture and temperature from the mushroom growth.

11. Taipeh Biennale 2018: Post-Nature - A Museum as an Ecosystem

A prototype of an atom from the Patulin structure was showns as a preview at STWST48x4 SLEEP_Mycelium Network Society im Sept in Linz.

Details to MNS: Mycelium Network Society was launched with an exhibition and a panel discussion at ecologies excursion at transmediale2017 in Berlin, followed 2017 by residency artists working with mycelium culture at Eleonore and exhibited at STWST48x3 in Linz. In 2018, Stadtwerkstatt will present the MNS-work “Patulin” at Taipei Biennale - and presents its artictic debate with network, art and information. With this work Stadtwerkstatt also takes up several threads between alternative media art history and denied art mechanisms. For years 2018-2020, MNS proposes to branch out Mycelium Network Society a la franchise mode. MNS is reaching out to alternative art spaces and bio(hack)labs to adopt a network. To become a node of MNS, to set a division that focuses on artists who work with mycelium, fungus, spores as an 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, MNS considers analogue aspects of the inter-node communications. MNS asks 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, MNS hopes to publish a book that includes all nodes’ activities.

2018 theses nodes are with STWST and cycleX at MNS: 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.

Zur Mycelium Network Society: 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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http://myceliumNS.net
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Text in Versorgerin #119 - MNS - Rehearsal Of A Network, by Shu Lea Cheang



STWST at Biennale-Taipeh with additional support from: