Anicka Yi: Biologizing the Machine (Tentacular Trouble) 

Production | Exhibition Grant

Biologizing the Machine (Tentacular Trouble), is an installation of protean sculptures by artist Anicka Yi, included in the 58^th Venice Biennale, May You Live in Interesting Times. These sculptures are undergirded by what the artists describes as the “biopolitics of senses” or the ways in which machines facilitate sensory experiences. Yi’s Venice installation makes use of the motif of the biofilm—a sticky, slimy, tactile material that adheres to manmade surfaces and forms dense, multispecies architectures. Yi relates this biofilm materiality to Venice, a city under pressure to prevent the buildup of marine muck and slime. While our environmental and human future remains precarious, Biologizing the Machine serves as a promising, if volatile, avenue for co-adaptation, co-invention, and multiform becoming.