Slate Symbiosis (2025)

Monson black slate pieces, lichen, microscopy, projections

Slate Symbiosis is an audio-reactive installation created in residence at Monson Arts in Monson, Maine. Microscope footage of lichen is projected on mosaicked pieces of quarried black slate, for which the town was once famous. Through a live, generative audio system, the projected footage scatters to the sound of falling slate, disrupting and reorganizing the previously established ecosystem. This piece is informed by David Griffiths' Queer Theory For Lichens, where he posits,

"lichens are queer things, and that human individuals are indeed all lichens; we are all queer multispecies consortia, always already involved in countless and unpredictable constitutive relationships at all scales."