The aim of the NEXUS Collective is to provide an open platform for young creatives from diverse disciplines to connect and learn from one another. Through transdisciplinary collaboration, both on individual projects and long-term initiatives, a wide variety of projects can emerge. As a collective, we continuously learn and evolve through our exchange with each other.
This website is developing organically into a living archive and a space for sharing ideas and creative impulses. With a transdisciplinary and holistic approach, it seeks to provide diverse insights into key cultural, social, and ecological issues of our time, and to spark unexpected connections between topics, ideas, and practices.
Basel/Zurich 2024
(1) Nexus comes from Latin and means: connection, link, intertwining, to bind together, network.
The interactive exhibition was part of the bachelor's thesis by Mira Mercan and Fabienne Schoch:
The exhibition draws attention to microbiotic life, highlighting its necessity and our own interconnection with it. Only because we cannot see them, we are nevertheless surrounded by them every day and inseparably connected to them. Approximately half of the cells in our bodies are human, while the rest belong to other tiny organisms that share our bodies and, above all, our intestines. This altered self-image challenges our anthropocentric, Western notions of a clearly defined, autonomous human being.
Here at the Wettsteinhäuschen, we try to spark this way of thinking. Through a multi-part, largely edible room installation during the spring equinox, we want to invite to pause, look around, perceive with your whole body and all your senses, and connect with yourself and other creatures (or, according to Haraway, critters).
Fermentation plays a central role in the exhibition, as it can make things that are invisible to the human eye a multi-sensory experience. The transformative effect of microorganisms is noticeable in the change in taste and increased digestibility of food.
The microbial decomposition that occurs during fermentation also takes place outside of preserving jars and is essential for the emergence and disappearance of life. Decay should be understood as a central component of cyclical processes, as it enables new forms of becoming, rather than being the end point of a linear timeline. For us, decay also refers to a transformative process that supports social practices of care, sharing and collaborative learning. It is important to us to understand entanglements as basic preconditions for all forms of life, contrary to a Darwinian ‘one against all’ ideology.
Ghosts = more-than-human protagonists of stories through which ecosystems emerge and disappear.
Mira Mercan, Fabienne Schoch