Holobiont Collaboratory is this thing you are looking at – an online platform – and also an ongoing experiment in collaboration across social sciences, natural sciences and the arts. We come together to explore how microbial knowledges might help industrialised humans (who are also partly microbial) think, sense and ultimately live well within the livingness of the world. 

The complex ‘we’ that is this Holobiont Collaboratory holds itself accountable to multiple forms of coherence. Artistic coherence, scientific coherence and—at the forefront of our many-mind, the coherence of situated intervention. Coherences emerging out of negotiations between practices. We work locally—in multiple places at multiple times—to create spaces for meaningful encounters with a more-than-human self. 

Holobiont
An individual consortium of multiple organisms living together in one place (usually what is known as “body”) maintained through inter-dependent metabolisms. A multi-scalar, multi-genomic, continuously changing process that is perceived to be an individual. You, me and every living organism.

Collaboratory 
An assemblage of the multiple organisms that produce experiments through creative symbiosis. Their practices interfere to create novel coherences, but do not merge. A site for experimenting, immersing and reflecting— across artistic and academic knowledges. An artsciences lab.

*Both Holobionts and Collaboratories are ongoing processes, their continuous transformation in dialogue with place and others is intrinsic to their vitality. 

Holobiont Collaboratory produces encounters with the more-than-human body through the concept of holobiont. Our aim is not to explain or clarify this strange shapeshifter of a concept—or become akin to an educational tool. Instead, we experiment with situated interventions in thinking, sensing, imagining and transforming holobiontness in the Anthropocene.

Holobiont Collaboratory was initiated by researcher Joana Formosinho and artist duo Baum & Leahy working within networks of multidisciplinary collaborations. Supported by CBSS artistic fellowship.