PRODUCERS-PARASITES-HOSTS
(ON CHEATING) (2014)

Installation in Pakhuis Wilhelmina, Amsterdam (2014).
6-channel sound, gouache, photographs.

The installation comprises gouache painted directly onto the wall, two photographs, and a six-channel sound piece playing, radio-like, around the space with the voices of Tony Curzon Price (economist and former editor of “openDemocracy”), Toby Kiers (URC Prof. of Mutualistic Interactions, VU University Amsterdam), Albert Menkveld (URC Prof. of Finance, VU University Amsterdam) and Gregory Wyatt (Oxford University). In this ‘collaged conversation’, the participants ponder the centipede game, financial bubbles, algorithmic trading, cultures of trust, cheating, relatedness, and non-cognitive decision-making.

The gouache wall-paintings are based on photographs I took of hairy-carrot root cultures and fungi experiments at Kiers’ lab at VU University. The two photographs show two different petri dishes containing hairy carrot and fungi experiments (photos: Daniel Engelmoer, Dept of Ecological Science, VU University Amsterdam). These experiments investigate symbioses between plants and fungi; the degree to which and under what conditions they trade nutrients and the outcomes of these markets.