With(in)
Fabric, bioplastic, glass, wool, soil, Cordyceps mycelium, wood, plastic vinyl
2025
Cordyceps fungi grow inside insects, altering their hosts’ behavior, killing them, and redistributing nutrients back into the cycle. When cultivated, they are grown in isolation on rice substrate. With(in) imagines Cordyceps militaris’ quest to reunite with their insect partners, a cycle that human intervention and sterile cultivation has interrupted. In an attempt to re-situate Cordyceps within a web of relationships, mycelium in nutrient broth is pumped into the terrarium’s soil. Scientific frameworks are challenged: control is relinquished, contamination is embraced, nothing is in isolation. Through collaboration, complexity, intuition, and interspecies dialogue, life and death can be seen as a cycle of being and becoming, and of bodies within bodies.
Cordyceps Chicken Soup
Cordyceps militaris, mushroom medley, chicken bones, ginger, water, shaoxing wine, salt, hot pot, soup ladle, bowl, you
Cordyceps have long been used in Chinese traditional medicine to boost Qi (vital energy) and enhance longevity. The compound cordycepin has strong anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and immune-modulating properties, and is most concentrated in the fruiting body of the fungus. When the fungus grows out of the insect larvae, their host is killed; however, death is not an ultimate end, but a transitional phase, continuing the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.