Self-Secluding Earth: Tracing Bioart Through Heidegger’s Notion of Place

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According to Heidegger, the act of revealing the earth is inseparable from its tendency to withdraw. “To set-forth the earth means to bring it into the Open as the self-secluding.”1

Bioart is an artistic practice that merges biotechnology with creative expression, working with living organisms such as bacteria, yeast, and even human cells to explore new materialities. Edward Steichen and Salvador Dali are considered to be the ones who used biomaterials in their artworks.2 As an art practice with almost a hundred years past, it diverts into unexpected realms, merging with technological advancements.

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I first encountered Damla Yalçın’s work during her residency at Gate 27 in March 2024, when her exploration of bioart immediately caught my attention. Reading her project proposal, I was struck by her unique approach—merging textile traditions with living materials to explore the boundaries between craft, industry, and nature. As an artist with a master’s degree in textiles, her approach reflected a flux between art and industry, uncovering the relationship between crafts and the arts.

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Her artistic practice focuses on Martin Heidegger’s concept of place. He claims that place gains meaning with human dwelling, which requires a constant focus on being in it, an exchange between the place and the human experience. The artist produced the artworks on display at the exhibition, a house, in which I live, using a biomaterial shortened to SCOBY, meaning a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. She developed her own places out of this organic material while testing its boundaries.

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The formation of SCOBY requires a simple procedure: mixing tea warm enough to allow the yeast and bacteria to work and sugar sufficient to feed the yeast and bacteria. The fermentation process not only produces the drinkable, fuzzy, and refreshing tea, but it also forms a microorganism on top of the container, alluding to the human flesh. The organism reacts to the surrounding conditions, such as cleanliness or pollutedness of the immediate surroundings, the existence of other bacteria, yeast, and molds, and the shape and vibration of the container it is left to ferment.

 

All these elements move or join the fermentation process and form a unique micro-earth through a flesh- looking microorganism, which is also left in a static phase. One can trace these elements on the surface of the flesh, the remains of dust, mold, and many unexpected materials, such as a piece of thread or hair, along with occasional cracks. The yeast's embodiment process reflects the phases through its never-ending cycle of reproduction. With each layer, the yeast thickens while gaining strength and durability, interacting with its own environment unconsciously yet with a peculiar intelligence. It will then be dried out and oiled to shape up.

 

The microorganism “lets the earth be an earth”3 —seemingly static yet inseparable from its inherent dynamism. Through her installations, the artist sets up a world out of the rifts of the earth on which a place​ will soon be set up, too. The place takes shape through installations, forming a house-like structure with distinct rooms and passages. The audience can see that the works created a place within the exhibition place and interact with the yeast and its acetous or essential oiled smell while dwelling in this transience of the exhibition place.

 

Damla Yalçın suggests a different perspective of Heidegger’s notion of place by inviting the viewer to an experience shaped by SCOBY and its own life cycle. She also opens a space for comparing human and place interactions over the relationship between SCOBY and the container in which it is fermented. The SCOBY became a metaphor for Heidegger’s earth, containing every-thing in tacitly. This exhibition marks a pivotal moment in Yalçın’s artistic journey, as she fully embraces bio art’s potential to redefine our relationship with place, material, and life itself.

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1 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," Poetry, Language, Thought. 1971. Harper & Row. Translated b: Albert Hofstadter, p. 46.

2 Kuan Yen-Ting, An Introduction to the History and Development of Bio Art, https://mag.clab.org.tw/clabo-article/development-and-context-of-bio-art/?lang=en

3 Ibid,. p. 45.