Abstract: This article revisits the exhibition Biotopia – Art in the Wet Zone (that the author curated in 2010 for the Utzon Centre in Aalborg, Denmark) and the companion essay “Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone” (presented as a keynote at UCLA Art & Science Lab) (2011) to propose a renewed conception of polymathy suited to negotiate the ecological, political and epistemic challenges of the (effects of the) Anthropocene. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s Politics of Nature and Gaia framework, as well as Michel Serres’s notion of the parasite, the paper argues that expertise is no longer the province of solitary “Renaissance” geniuses but a joint effort of emergent collective forms of practice distributed across human and non-human actors. The analysis traces how the exhibition’s living installations blurred disciplinary borders, fostered distributed authorship and foregrounded ethical negotiations around biosafety, care and agency. It then shows how the 2011 essay translated those curatorial insights into a call for “art in the wet zone,” inspired by Roy Ascott, where the medium’s vitality continually disrupts neat categories of art, science and politics. By situating these two projects within intersectional debates—especially those informed by feminist and de-colonial critiques—the article contends that polymathy must become inclusive, reflexive and responsive to structural inequities. Ultimately, the paper advances a model of “disruptive collectivity” in which parasitic interruptions, Gaian entanglements and community laboratories co-produce knowledge, aesthetics and ethics. Such a model, the article concludes, is indispensable for addressing techno-scientific controversies, ecological precarity and the urgent need for democratised, participatory forms of expertise.
Keywords: Bio art; Polymathy; Bruno Latour; Michel Serres; Politics of Nature; Gaia; The Parasite; Intersectionality; Collective practice; Anthropocene
1. Introduction
In 2010, the exhibition Biotopia marked a vivid intersection of artistic inquiry, biological experimentation, and cultural commentary. It offered an environment that invited audiences to question their assumptions about the “natural” world, about scientific interventions, and about the blurred boundaries between the organic and the technological. A year later, the essay “Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone” (Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 2011) extended the conceptual underpinnings of the exhibition into a written framework. Together, the show and the essay mapped out a distinct approach to artistic practice that embraced the complexities of living systems, the unpredictability of biological processes, and the entangled relationships that shape how we perceive life and non-life.
Over a decade later, this paper revisits both Biotopia and “Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone,” but from a somewhat different vantage point. It reflects upon how such bio-artistic and techno-scientific works can be understood within broader socio-political and philosophical currents, particularly with respect to the concept (and practice) of polymathy. By polymathy, I refer to the cultivation of knowledge across multiple disciplines, skill sets, and epistemic frameworks, but also to the willingness to traverse disciplinary silos and even established power structures that traditionally determine what counts as “expertise.” This polymathic impulse resonates with the fluid, hybrid, and cross-disciplinary nature of bio art, where artists find themselves engaged with laboratory procedures, philosophical debates, ecological activism, anthropological fieldwork, and diverse forms of collaboration that challenge the conventional boundaries between artist, scientist, curator, and the participating public.
In dialogue with polymathy, this essay also brings into the conversation two significant figures: Bruno Latour and Michel Serres. Latour’s notion of the Politics of Nature and his later articulations of Gaia (as a rethinking of our planetary condition) radically reconsider the roles that different forms of knowledge and actors—human and nonhuman—play in shaping our collective existence. Serres’s The Parasite, on the other hand, destabilizes assumptions about communication, exchange, and power by foregrounding the role of the “parasite” as a figure that interrupts, reshapes, and creates new forms of meaning. While Latour encourages us to think about how to integrate the voices of nonhuman agents into the political sphere, Serres points to the necessity of interruption and transformation in any system of information and exchange. Both philosophers help us question the conventional structures of mastery and highlight the importance of openness, multiplicity, and perpetual negotiation.
As I explore Biotopia and “Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone” with these frameworks in mind, I aim to demonstrate that the essence of bio art—its fluid, evolving, and transdisciplinary character—has profound implications for rethinking expertise. The works and ideas born in these “wet zones” encourage us not only to collaborate across disciplines but also to question the very integrity of boundaries that define them. This in turn necessitates a deeper, more nuanced approach to polymathy, one that recognises expertise as neither solitary nor unchallenged, but as collective, dynamic, and deeply embedded in ecological and cultural contexts. Such a polymathy, I argue, is inclusive and intersectional: it acknowledges the need to listen to multiple viewpoints, including those of marginalised communities, to nonhuman actors, and to the disruptions that reveal structural inequities in our socio-political spheres.
Collectivity, inclusivity, and intersectionality become foundational pillars in this reimagining of polymathy. Traditional polymathy has often been associated with the “Renaissance man,” an archetype that invokes a particular historical and cultural lineage. Yet in a world of accelerating crises—ecological, political, and social—the notion of polymathy must evolve beyond the celebration of a solitary genius mind, pivoting toward forms of knowledge that are cooperative, fluid, and responsive to myriad voices. Artistic practice rooted in bio media further complicates this, reminding us that knowledge cannot be purely cerebral; it is also material, organic, and contingent upon life’s processes.
This essay, therefore, is structured around a desire to reflect upon Biotopia and Bio Media Art while weaving in the intellectual provocations of Bruno Latour and Michel Serres. Following this introduction, I revisit the conceptual, artistic, and practical dimensions of Biotopia, assessing how it engendered a space for collaborative thinking and polymathic endeavors. I then recount key themes from “Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone,” illustrating how those ideas resonate with and expand the conceptual scope of the exhibition. Next, I delve into the concept of polymathy, interrogating it in light of contemporary demands for intersectionality and inclusivity. Building on these foundations, I highlight Latour’s theories about the Politics of Nature and Gaia, as well as Serres’s exploration of parasitic relations, to demonstrate how knowledge, power, and expertise might be reframed as dynamic, collaborative, and always open to disruption.
In the final sections, I argue for a more collective, intersectional, and inclusive approach to knowledge production, one that is deeply informed by the example of bio art and by the complexities of living systems. From this vantage point, we can see how efforts to expand or redefine our “expertise”—be it scientific, artistic, or otherwise—must embrace the “parasites” that question our assumptions and the nonhumans that demand representation. Indeed, if we are to thrive under Gaia’s uncertain conditions, our polymathy must not only accept multiplicity but actively nurture it.
2.Revisiting Biotopia (2010)
When Biotopia opened in 2010, it emerged against a backdrop of growing international interest in bio art and the broader intersections of biology, ecology, and artistic practice. The exhibition’s title suggested both a utopian and heterotopian dimension. On the one hand, it invoked the possibility of a space in which biological processes and human creativity might coexist symbiotically, providing a renewed sense of wonder at living matter. On the other hand, it carried an undertone of critique, as if to ask whether any humanly engineered biological environment could truly be described as “utopian,” given the ecological crises already unfolding worldwide.
From the moment visitors entered the exhibition space, they were confronted with artworks that blurred the lines between living organisms, scientific apparatuses, and interactive media. Some installations invited viewers to observe or even manipulate microbial cultures, while others demonstrated the confluence of new media technology with organic matter. Through such experiences, audiences were invited not merely to look at art but to engage with the processes, transformations, and emergent behaviors inherent to living (and semi-living) systems. The emphasis on the “wet zone” of biology—the messy, moist, and generative realm of cells, fluids, tissues, and micro-organisms—was unmistakable.
In many ways, Biotopia was a curated environment intended to stimulate a form of direct, bodily experience and intellectual curiosity. Rather than presenting a series of static artworks, it aspired to be something akin to a laboratory, a living exhibition where the audience could witness, and sometimes even partake in, the manipulation of biological media. There was a certain radical openness in this approach: it welcomed contributions and interpretations from scientists, philosophers, ethicists, anthropologists, and members of the general public who might have little prior experience with laboratory protocols.
At the level of curation, one of the driving ideas was to illustrate that art grounded in biological materials transcends familiar definitions of installation, sculpture, or performance. Traditional aesthetic categories often fail to capture the ongoing, event-like quality of an artwork that literally grows or transforms in front of spectators. For instance, cultures of microorganisms introduced on the exhibition’s opening day might look completely different a week later, allowing the artwork to morph over time and thus generating new layers of meaning. This aspect of continual becoming resonates with the notion that knowledge itself is never static: it evolves through interaction, questioning, and a kind of creative parasitism, where one discipline intrudes upon another.
This dynamic was evidenced by the dialogues that grew out of Biotopia. Scientists who were used to strictly controlled laboratory conditions found themselves in a more chaotic environment, where the aesthetic, conceptual, and experiential dimensions of biological experiments took precedence. Artists, on the other hand, realized that they were venturing into territory where specialized knowledge of techniques—microbiology, cell culture, genetic engineering—was necessary to realize their visions. The result was a blurring of roles, or at the very least a heightened awareness of how knowledge and skill flow across communities. It was not unusual to see lab technicians explaining experimental protocols to artists, who would then incorporate these new insights in playful or critical ways that might push the boundaries of what is ordinarily deemed acceptable or ethical. Conversely, the scientists encountered fresh perspectives on their tools and theories, perspectives influenced by aesthetic, ethical, and cultural questions that are often marginalised in a purely scientific context.
Biotopia thus became a microcosm for exploring the ways that knowledge is generated collaboratively. Traditional notions of expertise—wherein the scientist is the authority on biology, the artist is the authority on aesthetics, and so forth—were frequently undermined by new forms of shared discovery and improvised solutions. A visitor might witness an artist, a scientist, and a museum visitor collectively troubleshooting how to keep a microbe culture alive under unusual conditions. This improvisational quality underscored a key idea that would later be developed in Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone: biological media forces us to reckon with living processes that can defy our expectations and disrupt our categories, pushing us toward novel forms of engagement that transcend established silos of knowledge.
While Biotopia was undeniably an aesthetic experience, it also carried political, ethical, and ecological implications. At a time when synthetic biology was gaining traction and climate change was becoming ever more pressing, the exhibition served as a lens onto the socio-political ramifications of tinkering with life at the molecular level. How should we as a society navigate these emergent frontiers? Who has the authority, and on what basis, to decide which manipulations of life are permissible and which are not? The works in Biotopia did not necessarily provide definitive answers, but they made these questions visible and compelling, creating a space for conversation that could involve not only the specialized voices of scientists and ethicists but also laypeople, activists, and others.
Through this confluence of experiences, Biotopia epitomized an “art in the wet zone,” one that demanded a polymathic sensibility from everyone involved. Curators had to be part scientist, part ethicist, part artist; artists had to navigate new scientific methods and materials, while scientists had to adapt their knowledge to the unpredictability of an art exhibition. Visitors, too, were invited to adopt a more inquisitive, transdisciplinary mindset. The seeds of this polymathic orientation, planted during Biotopia, would flourish in the textual articulation of these ideas in Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone.
3. Revisiting “Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone” (2011)
If Biotopia functioned as a lived, immersive, and collaborative environment, Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone, published the following year, provided an opportunity to systematize the insights gleaned from that experience. The essay delved into the theoretical and philosophical dimensions of working with living systems as art, articulating a vision of artistic practice that is necessarily interdisciplinary—and, crucially, intertwined with questions of ethics, ontology, and politics.
One of the central premises of Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone was that art making with biological media cannot be reduced to the mere appropriation of scientific tools or protocols. Rather, the essay contended that such art undertakes a radical rethinking of media itself. In the realm of painting, sculpture, or even digital media, the notion of a “medium” tends to be associated with inert materials or software frameworks that the artist manipulates. In biological art, by contrast, the medium is alive. It possesses its own agency, potentialities, and vulnerabilities. This requires a profound shift in the artist’s stance: no longer a unilateral “creator,” the artist becomes a kind of co-creator, working alongside living matter that can respond, adapt, or perish, depending on conditions both internal to the artwork and external in the environment.
The essay further proposed that the use of living media brings issues of scale to the fore. Working at microscopic or molecular levels (e.g., bacterial cultures, cell lines, DNA) is not only technologically intricate but also epistemically challenging. It compels us to confront living systems that are invisible to the naked eye but deeply interwoven with our daily lives, from the bacteria in our gut to the viruses that can reshape global health. Artistic engagement at these scales thus becomes an investigation into the hidden infrastructures of life, an invitation to think critically about how we understand our own bodies and the ecological networks that sustain (and threaten) us.
Another major theme was the ethical dimension of bio art. Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone pointed out that biological artistry cannot escape ethical scrutiny, since it inevitably engages with questions of life, death, and manipulation of organisms. The essay did not propose a one-size-fits-all ethical framework but rather highlighted the need for ongoing, reflexive dialogue among artists, scientists, ethicists, and the broader public. In other words, ethical considerations in bio art are not afterthoughts or external constraints—they are intrinsic to the artistic process itself.
This stance on ethics ties neatly into the polymathic approach that has now become a central concern of our revisitation. Ethical reflection in bio art requires knowledge of regulatory frameworks, insight into the biology of the organisms involved, understanding of public perceptions and cultural contexts, and an aesthetic sensitivity to how best to communicate these issues through the artwork. One cannot excel in one domain—say, scientific knowledge—while neglecting the others. The essay thus argued for an integrative approach to knowledge, one that not only crosses disciplinary lines but also maintains critical self-awareness of how power operates in different institutional settings (academia, biotech companies, cultural institutions, governmental bodies, and so forth).
Within that context, Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone confronted the politics of representation in bio art. By working with living organisms, artists often found themselves unearthing or revealing power dynamics that structure how we treat nonhuman life. For instance, some works might critique the commodification of transgenic organisms, while others might highlight the precarious status of endangered species. By making these issues tangible—often through direct sensorial or emotional engagement—bio artists stimulated audiences to rethink their own roles and responsibilities in the ecological web. This again resonates with the notion that knowledge must be both broad-based and intersectional if it is to be truly transformative.
Finally, the essay considered the aesthetic dimension of bio art, acknowledging that, despite the urgent and sometimes disquieting content, these works remain part of a visual, sensory, and conceptual tradition that engages with beauty, awe, curiosity, and wonder. The wet zone is a zone of life in all its messy exuberance, and art can amplify the emotional impact of encountering that life. The ephemeral qualities, the visible transformations, and the sense of co-creative emergence endow bio art with a unique capacity to provoke profound affective responses. It is in this interplay of aesthetics, biology, technology, and ethics that the polymathic character of the practice becomes vividly apparent.
4. Polymathy in Creative and Artistic Practice
In popular imagination, the polymath is often invoked as an exceptional individual, typically exemplified by figures like Leonardo da Vinci or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who attained mastery across multiple disciplines. This archetype carries a deeply ingrained cultural prestige. The “Renaissance man”—and it is almost always a man in these narratives—stands as a paragon of intellectual brilliance, creativity, and curiosity.
Yet, viewed through the lens of contemporary social and ecological crises, this individualized conception of polymathy has significant limitations. First and foremost, it tends to rest upon the assumption that knowledge exists in neatly bounded disciplines, and that the polymath’s achievement lies in transcending those boundaries through personal genius. While it is true that some individuals do traverse multiple fields, this heroic framing can obscure the roles that collaboration, mentorship, and collective infrastructure play in shaping anyone’s intellectual development. Indeed, as we saw in Biotopia, the fluid crossing of disciplinary lines did not hinge on a single heroic figure but rather on an environment designed to foster collaborative engagement. The aim was not to celebrate individual virtuosity but to create networks where knowledge could circulate in unexpected ways and yield emergent insights.
Moreover, the conventional image of the polymath can be elitist. Historically, it has been tied to those with access to extensive resources—time, capital, libraries, technologies, and social networks—that allow for sustained engagement with multiple domains of expertise. This leaves out individuals or communities that, due to socio-economic constraints, systemic prejudices, or geographic marginalization, do not have the same opportunities to cultivate varied interests or talents. In a world that increasingly calls for intersectional perspectives, a polymathy that centers a single privileged subject feels inadequate. It runs the risk of reinforcing existing hierarchies and ignoring the collective nature of knowledge building.
Bio art offers a contrasting model of polymathy—one that is less about individual mastery and more about interdependent knowledge-making. The complex collaborations that took place among artists, scientists, technicians, curators, and visitors highlight a form of distributed expertise. Each participant brought unique insights or skills, and the real polymathic moment occurred not in a single genius’s mind but in the collaborative interplay among multiple actors. This aligns with the perspective of Michel Serres in The Parasite: knowledge (and communication) is never a pristine, one-way transmission; it is always interrupted, re-routed, and reshaped by various participants, all of whom act as “parasites” to one another. Far from being a negative phenomenon, these parasitic interruptions generate the creative spark that pushes collective understanding forward.
Another relevant factor in rethinking polymathy is the temporal dimension. In the era of rapid technological and social change, the “completeness” of one’s mastery in any single discipline is increasingly short-lived. Knowledge proliferates at breakneck speed, complicating any attempt to remain an expert in one’s chosen field—let alone multiple fields. A polymathy suited to today’s world must be adaptive, flexible, and ever open to learning and unlearning. It might be better understood as a set of dispositions—curiosity, humility, collaborative spirit, willingness to risk failure—than as a body of knowledge or a personal attribute. In this sense, the “art in the wet zone” becomes a metaphor for the intellectual fluidity and openness required to navigate an evolving knowledge ecosystem.
At the same time, we must also recognise that a polymathic approach can facilitate creative solutions to global crises. By drawing on methods and perspectives from diverse fields—ecology, microbiology, design, cultural studies, activism—artists and scientists can craft responses that are both technically robust and culturally resonant. The synergy arising from these cross-pollinations is vital if we are to grapple with challenges like climate change, pandemics, and social injustice. What bio art shows is that these solutions cannot be top-down, nor can they be the product of disciplinary insularity. They demand a mode of inquiry that is situated in real-world conditions—ecological, social, cultural—and that acknowledges the myriad factors shaping complex systems.
Finally, a contemporary polymathy must also grapple with ethical and political questions. Engaging multiple domains of knowledge means encountering multiple value systems, power structures, and potential points of conflict. For instance, the laboratory ethics of a research scientist might clash with the creative license of an artist, or a corporate funding model might raise concerns about commodification of life forms. Navigating these tensions requires more than just intellectual breadth; it calls for robust mechanisms of accountability, a willingness to question one’s own assumptions, and an ethos of care that extends beyond the human.
Thus, by revisiting Biotopia and Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone, we see how bio art not only encourages but arguably necessitates such a polymathic stance. It fosters spaces of co-learning in which participants from various backgrounds engage in ongoing dialogue about scientific methods, ethical considerations, public communication, aesthetic expression, and ecological impact. This is a living example of how polymathy can be practiced collectively, thereby challenging the stereotype of the solitary genius and opening new avenues for inclusive, intersectional knowledge production.
In summary, this rethinking of polymathy—spurred by the experiences of Biotopia, the theoretical insights of Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone, and the creative disruptions that characterize bio art—points us toward a future in which expertise is shared, fluid, and deeply contextual. In the subsequent sections, I will bring Bruno Latour’s Politics of Nature and Gaia, as well as Michel Serres’s concept of the parasite, into direct conversation with these ideas. This theoretical cross-fertilization will help elucidate how polymathy can further challenge traditional frameworks of knowledge, embrace the nonhuman, and cultivate ethical and collective forms of inquiry.
5. Bruno Latour’s Politics of Nature and Gaia
To deepen our rethinking of polymathy—especially in the realm of bio art and the “wet zone”—we now turn to the work of Bruno Latour, whose contributions to science and technology studies (STS), actor-network theory, and political ecology have reshaped how we consider the entanglements of humans, nonhumans, and knowledge. Latour has long challenged the notion that nature and culture are separate realms. Instead, he insists we recognise that what we call “nature” is neither a stable background nor a mere resource; rather, it is a dynamic partner in ongoing negotiations. This premise is especially relevant to the transdisciplinary ethos we have been exploring, in which the boundaries of expertise and the partition between “art” and “science” are perpetually in flux.
5.1. Politics of Nature: Moving Beyond the Fact/Value Divide
In his seminal work Politics of Nature, Bruno Latour questions the modernist assumption that we can cordon off facts (the domain of science) from values (the domain of politics). According to this traditional view, scientists are entrusted with discovering objective truths about nature, while politicians and other social actors deal with subjective matters of governance. Latour calls for dismantling this rigid fact/value divide, arguing that all knowledge is inherently political because it both shapes and is shaped by human and nonhuman alliances.
Such an outlook resonates strongly with the experiences recounted in Biotopia and Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone. In these contexts, an artist tinkering with living cells is not just engaging in aesthetics; they are also performing a political act that foregrounds how we treat living beings, how we authorize certain manipulations over others, and how we include—or exclude—various stakeholders from the conversation. A petri dish, it turns out, is never just a petri dish; it is an arena of ethical, ecological, and societal negotiation. By collapsing the fact/value dichotomy, Latour’s Politics of Nature compels us to see these negotiations as constitutive of our collective reality, rather than as optional ethical footnotes.
Latour also critiques the traditional idea of “nature” as something external that must be discovered and represented by specialists. Instead, he envisions a more democratic process in which all those affected by environmental or scientific controversies—human and nonhuman alike—should have a voice. This expanded political arena is where we begin to see the seeds of a broader, more inclusive polymathy take shape. If we accept that living organisms, ecosystems, machines, and cultural norms are all actors with distinct forms of agency, then our concept of expertise must adapt.
Traditional expert roles, while still valuable, become part of a larger repertoire of voices. The vantage point of an artist or a curator might be just as crucial to understanding a biological experiment as that of a microbiologist. Indeed, the microbe itself—through its behaviors and life processes—contributes vital insights, albeit in a “language” we must learn to interpret.
5.2. Gaia as a Collective: Rethinking Planetary Conditions
Bruno Latour’s later writings, especially in Facing Gaia, delve more deeply into ecological and planetary concerns. Borrowing from James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis—though not without critical revisions—Latour frames Gaia as a name for the complex, entangled system that includes but is not limited to the Earth’s biosphere. Gaia is neither a goddess nor a stable equilibrium; rather, it refers to a precarious, interdependent set of processes that sustain life on Earth. Far from being a unifying or harmonious vision, Gaia represents a constellation of dynamic tensions and feedback loops in which humans play a prominent—and often disruptive—role.
In this view, Gaia is not an inert backdrop to human activity but an active participant in planetary politics. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and the emergence of new pathogens illustrate how Gaia “reacts” to anthropogenic pressures—not with intention or morality, but through observable consequences. Latour’s central claim is that we are no longer external observers of the planet—we are now geological agents shaping its systems. This new reality, often framed as the Anthropocene, necessitates a profound rethinking of our political and epistemological frameworks.
Polymathy, in this context, must extend beyond the mastery of human domains to embrace an awareness that nonhuman actants are intrinsic to what we traditionally define as “politics,” “society,” or “culture.”
Biotopia and the broader practice of bio media art anticipated this Gaian perspective by placing living matter at the center of artistic exploration. The evolving, ephemeral, and sometimes uncontrollable nature of biological media forces us to confront the reality that humans are embedded within the living systems they attempt to study, represent, or manipulate. Gaia scales this insight to the planetary level, reminding us that every exhibition, artwork, or scientific experiment is entangled with global processes—rippling through soils, oceans, climates, microbial communities, and human societies.
Latour’s emphasis on the interweaving of science, politics, and ecology suggests a radical shift in how we approach knowledge-making:
As a collective negotiation among heterogeneous actors. This underpins a rethinking of polymathy that is not about amassing expertise in multiple subjects within a single mind but about developing interdisciplinary and interspecies dialogues that enable more holistic, responsive, and ethically grounded understandings of the world. While historically the polymath might have been seen as a singular intellect synthesizing knowledge from various libraries, the new polymathic ethos in the age of Gaia might be better described as a networked practice, one that welcomes partial perspectives from scientists, artists, microbes, ecosystems, and more.
6. Michel Serres and The Parasite
Complementing Latour’s call for an inclusive politics of nature, Michel Serres’s philosophical oeuvre injects a radical sense of disruption and novelty into our conceptions of communication, knowledge, and social relations. In The Parasite, Serres explores the figure of the “parasite” as a key to understanding how systems function—or fail to function. The parasite interrupts, diverts, and rearranges; it feeds off hosts while simultaneously instigating new forms of organization. This notion parallels the unpredictable, transgressive energy present in bio art, where the intrusion of living matter into the realm of gallery or museum space continuously reconfigures expectations.
6.1. The Parasite as a Mode of Invention
Traditionally, the term “parasite” carries negative connotations: an organism or entity that lives off another, offering nothing of value in return. Serres, however, destabilizes this simplistic picture. He notes that parasitism is ubiquitous in natural, technological, and social systems. From viruses infecting cells to social actors “interrupting” a conversation, parasitic relations are inevitable. The parasite is not just an opportunistic freeloader but also a creative force, one that disrupts established orders and compels systems to adapt or reconfigure.
This insight can illuminate the polymathic collaboration witnessed in Biotopia. When artists invade laboratory spaces—or when Scientists insert their instruments into an art installation—there is an element of parasitism: each discipline is “using” the other’s resources (concepts, networks, funding, legitimacy) for its own ends. Yet this parasitism can generate novel connections that neither discipline would arrive at alone. The interplay of different languages—visual, scientific, conceptual—can yield innovative approaches to thinking about living media. Far from being a detrimental phenomenon, these mutual interruptions become catalysts for discovery, the impetus for new forms of knowing that cut across established boundaries.
6.2. Noise, Translation, and Collective Understanding
Central to Serres’s argument is the role of noise in communication. In conventional terms, noise is seen as a disturbance that corrupts a signal. But Serres suggests that noise is also the source of transformation, a creative friction that forces communicators to adjust and invent new modes of expression. In a complex system—be it an ecosystem or a collaborative research group—noise can lead to mistakes, but those mistakes sometimes open doors to unexpected pathways of thought or practice.
For instance, in the context of bio art, the unpredictability of working with living cells might introduce “noise” into artistic production: microbial cultures may die unexpectedly, mutate in ways the artist did not anticipate, or respond to subtle environmental shifts. Each disruption can be a moment of translation, prompting the artist to reinterpret the work or to alter the conditions of display. Similarly, a scientist offering a protocol to an artist might find the protocol “misused,” leading to outcomes that traditional lab procedures would have avoided. Far from being purely detrimental, such deviations can broaden the horizon of possibility.
From the perspective of polymathy, this suggests that multiple forms of expertise need not always collaborate harmoniously in a carefully orchestrated plan. Rather, they collide, clash, and sometimes hinder each other. Yet these hurdles force participants to adapt, reframe their assumptions, and expand their conceptual toolkits. Serres’s parasitic model thereby
underscores how creative breakthroughs often require an element of chaos or disturbance. The resulting “collective understanding” is never final or complete; it is perpetually in flux, co-evolving with the actors and contexts that shape it.
6.3. The Parasite and Ethical Complexity
Alongside its generative capacity, parasitism also carries moral and ethical complexity. When is parasitism a form of exploitation, and when is it a necessary disturbance for systemic renewal? In Biotopia, for instance, living organisms were placed in environments that served the aesthetic or conceptual aims of artists. One might argue that the organisms were being “used” for human cultural ends. Conversely, the presence of microbes might have “used” the exhibition to reach new ecological niches, or to highlight the vulnerability of certain life forms to human intervention. These dynamics raise questions about accountability, reciprocity, and care—questions that are never fully resolved but that must be persistently revisited.
Serres’s parasitic framework thus reminds us that transdisciplinary collaborations are not merely about harmony or synergy; they are also about negotiation, power differentials, and potential exploitation. A polymathic model that acknowledges parasitism embraces a productive tension: it recognises that new knowledge arises from friction and that ethical considerations must be woven into the very fabric of collaboration. This is particularly pertinent when living entities are involved, whether they are microorganisms in a petri dish or entire ecosystems struggling for balance under anthropogenic stress.
7. The Intersection of Latour and Serres: Toward a Disruptive Collectivity
Bringing Latour and Serres into dialogue enriches our understanding of how knowledge is produced in contexts like Biotopia or bio media art more broadly. Latour’s emphasis on a collective political ecology suggests that all actors, human and nonhuman, deserve a seat at the table. Serres’s conception of the parasite highlights that this collective is not peaceful or orderly but rife with interruptions that can spawn both creativity and conflict. Together, they map out a vision of knowledge making in which no single actor can claim sovereignty.
7.1. Collective Assemblies and Fragile Networks
Latour’s Politics of Nature calls for a “parliament of things,” a democratic assembly in which scientific facts and social values are negotiated in tandem. Yet, as Serres might remind us, no parliament can guarantee perfect communication. Every conversation is riddled with static, partial translations, and potential misunderstandings. In the realm of bio art, these difficulties are intensified by the participation of living organisms that do not speak in human language. Their “votes”—manifested in survival, growth, mutation, or decay—are frequently unpredictable. We might see, for instance, a bacterial colony refusing to thrive in an installation, thereby “vetoing” the artist’s initial vision.
What emerges is a fragile network that must be constantly maintained and reconfigured. This fragility is not necessarily a weakness. It can also be a source of resilience, as it forces participants to remain vigilant, flexible, and responsive to new inputs or perturbations. The fluid, iterative collaboration that characterizes the wet zone thrives on this precariousness, fostering an environment where unexpected alliances can form among humans, microbes, chemicals, and technologies.
7.2. Disruption as a Form of Care
It may seem counterintuitive to link “disruption” with “care,” yet Serres’s notion of parasitism and Latour’s emphasis on assembling diverse actors both point to a new understanding of how care operates in knowledge networks. Disruption can be caring insofar as it reveals blind spots, compels adaptation, and ensures that no single perspective becomes tyrannical. In a polymathic environment, disruptions keep the conversation open-ended, preventing the ossification of ideas.
For example, a molecular biologist might “disrupt” an artist’s plan by insisting on ethical guidelines for handling certain cell lines. This intervention might seem restrictive initially, but it can lead to a more thoughtful artwork, one that acknowledges and incorporates moral and scientific nuances. Conversely, an artist might disrupt the scientist’s lab procedures by introducing conceptual or aesthetic elements that do not align with standard protocols. The scientist is thereby encouraged to look at the experimental setup from a fresh vantage point, possibly discovering overlooked variables or new creative approaches. Such reciprocal care, born of friction, transforms “expertise” into a shared ethical endeavor, rather than an isolated domain of authority.
7.3. Multivocality and Intersectionality
When we speak of collectivity in knowledge production, we also need to address intersectionality—the acknowledgment that social identity categories (such as race, gender, class, ability) intersect to produce overlapping systems of disadvantage or privilege. Latour’s and Serres’s frameworks can be extended to account for these human social complexities. Although neither philosopher focuses primarily on intersectional issues, their emphasis on inclusion and disruption dovetails with the demands of intersectional thought: to question who has access to certain spaces, who is excluded, and how knowledge-making is shaped by power imbalances.
In a Biotopia-like setting, intersectionality might manifest in practical questions: Who gets to decide which organisms are used in the exhibition? Whose cultural perspectives on life and nonhuman agency are validated, and whose are ignored? How are labor and expertise recognised or compensated, especially for those whose contributions do not fit neatly into established professional categories? Polymathy, in this sense, cannot be an intellectual exercise alone; it must be deeply intertwined with social justice, ensuring that the friction of new ideas does not merely replicate existing hierarchies but actively challenges them.
8. Polymathy and Collective Practice in the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene, marked by human-induced climate change and ecological disruption, intensifies the need for transdisciplinary and interspecies collaboration. As global crises proliferate—ranging from pandemics to mass extinction events—the stakes of knowledge production have never been higher. Polymathy must evolve from a celebration of individual genius to a joint effort of emergent collective forms of practice distributed across human and non-human actors capable of addressing systemic challenges. Bio art, especially as exemplified by Biotopia, provides a microcosm for how such a joint effort of emergent collective forms of practice might operate.
8.1. The Limits of Specialization
While deep expertise is undoubtedly valuable, the interlinked nature of climate, health, economics, and culture often requires broader, more integrative approaches. Specialists trained in narrow domains may struggle to see the bigger picture or to translate their findings into actionable strategies that resonate with diverse communities. Polymathy—understood as a collective rather than individual capacity—enables us to piece together these disparate insights, forging holistic responses that can tackle root causes rather than merely treating symptoms.
Bio art, as we have seen, exemplifies this integrated mode of operation. Artists working with living systems must become conversant not only in biological techniques but also in regulatory frameworks, ethical debates, and aesthetic philosophies. They often collaborate with molecular biologists, ecologists, sociologists, and community organizers. In doing so, they create a living laboratory of interdisciplinary synergy that models how we might respond to broader environmental and social dilemmas.
8.2. Community Laboratories and Open Science
A further development in recent years is the rise of community laboratories, also known as “biohacker spaces” or “makerspaces,” where amateurs, artists, and scientists gather to explore biotechnology in open and collaborative ways. These spaces often adopt a DIY (do-it-yourself) or DIWO (do-it-with-others) ethic, deliberately blurring the line between professional and amateur expertise. This not only democratizes access to scientific tools but also promotes a polymathic culture in which participants learn from each other and experiment collectively.
Such community labs resonate with Latour’s call for more inclusive democratic forums of knowledge production and with Serres’ emphasis on the generative power of interruption. In a DIY bio lab, an amateur might propose an unorthodox approach that momentarily disrupts established procedures, leading the group to consider solutions that professional scientists might overlook. At the same time, the amateurs benefit from the scientific rigor brought by trained professionals. The outcome is not a unidirectional transfer of knowledge but a mutual exchange that can spark both innovation and socially conscious applications of biotechnology. These grassroots initiatives underscore the potential for polymathy when resources, tools, and knowledge are shared across conventional boundaries of discipline and social hierarchy.
8.3. Ethical and Regulatory Challenges
Of course, these open, collective approaches to knowledge-making also face substantial challenges. Biohacker spaces, for example, must navigate regulatory environments that vary widely by jurisdiction and may not be well adapted to citizen science. Moreover, the do-it-yourself ethos can sometimes clash with legitimate concerns about biosafety and biosecurity. Such tensions mirror the ethical challenges in Biotopia, where the creative freedoms of artists intersected with the need for responsible stewardship of living organisms.
A collective polymathy thus involves not only the integration of multiple skill sets but also the co-development of ethical
Frameworks that can address the complexities of contemporary biotechnologies. This means building reflexive spaces of dialogue, creating guidelines that are neither top-down nor entirely laissez-faire, and ensuring that marginalised voices are included in the debate. In other words, the practice of polymathy in the Anthropocene must be regulative as well as innovative, continually evolving in response to emerging scientific and political developments.
Finally, Revisiting Biotopia (2010) and the essay “Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone” (2011) offers a lens through which to examine how artistic practice can evolve in collaboration with scientific inquiry, ethical reflection, and political action. In the “wet zone”—where living cells, tissues, and organisms become mediums of expression—we encounter a mode of creative production that necessitates ongoing negotiation among diverse forms of expertise and competences. It is here that we see an emerging polymathy that is collective, inclusive, and intersectional, rather than anchored in solitary genius or traditional disciplinary mastery. If polymathy is to be truly collective, it must integrate the concerns and knowledge systems of the positions of those who have historically been marginalised.
Morten Søndergaard
Aalborg University & Momentum Biennial
Morten Søndergaard is an internationally acclaimed curator and Professor of Media and Sound Art at Aalborg University, Denmark. He serves as the academic director of the Erasmus Master of Excellence in Media Arts Cultures at AAU. Alongside his own artistic practice in sound, he is currently involved in sound curation at the Momentum Festival in Norway.
Søndergaard is the founder of two major international conference series: POM – Politics of the Machines (with Laura Beloff, since 2017) and ISACS – International Sound Art Curating Symposia (with Peter Weibel, 2010–2017).
He has published widely and curated numerous sound and media art exhibitions across prominent venues including Kiasma, ZKM, Rupertinum, Ars Electronica, Eyebeam in New York, the Utzon Center in Aalborg, Kunsthal Aarhus, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde.
References
Crenshaw, K. (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), pp. 139–167.
Latour, B. (2004) Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2017) Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Translated by C. Porter. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lovelock, J. (1979) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Serres, M. (2007) The Parasite. Translated by L.R. Schehr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Søndergaard, M. (2010) Biotopia – Art in the Wet Zone. Curated by Morten Søndergaard. Utzon Center / PORT 2010, Aalborg, June–October, 2010.
Søndergaard, M. (2011) ‘Bio Media Art: Art in the Wet Zone’. Keynote address delivered at Art & Science Lab, UCLA, US. Abstract published in Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 2011.