Questions for a prebiotic broth

Questions for a prebiotic broth

In the simplest terms, “primordial soup” refers to the reactive, heterogenous mixture that supposedly was the origin of all life on earth. The theory has been largely discredited (life more likely originated from warm oceanic vents rather than a “soup”), however the image of a bubbling pot of materials forming life as we know it feels fruitful in a way separate from the faulty science. The sense of oneness and coziness that comes from distilling our common origin to something as colloquial as a soup is, in my layperson’s opinion, unparalleled by even a robust understanding of DNA and the exchanges of energy that create life. To be a person of the soup is to understand your connection to all living things with a sense of closeness and warmth. At the same time, becoming a soup person opens the door to nightmarish possibilities when considering the confines of the pot, the heat, and how likely it is for a soup without a chef to meld deliciously. To lightly puncture this great unknown, here are a series of questions for a prebiotic broth:

What if we never left the theorized Primordial Soup pot? Better yet, what if we did leave but accidentally returned? How can we leave again? Do we even want to? Perhaps the entropy of the swirling soup pot is our home state? Should we then aspire to live even more soupily? Maybe we already are. What about spillage? Is a soup without a vessel still a soup? Maybe, without our conscious knowledge, we are becoming a whole new kind of soup; our potential and capacity for doing better acting as the imaginal discs that keep things moving as our environment liquifies and thickens…

Or could it be, simply, that as soup people, there is levity to be found in embracing the randomness of our big bowl of inextricable goo?

Is that what this is?

Working in tandem with these questions are a series of sculptures, themselves unanswerable propositions for an unknowable life force. Each piece brings together natural and unnatural materials, with an emphasis on fabricated connectivity and a hardening of something once soft and soupy. My goal is to create evolving recipes using unlikely ingredients. My hope is that they exude their own generative reactions that move towards kinship and convergence against all odds.

Made, exhibited and then disgarded at Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan in November 2022
A new version will be made in Canada using found objects from the Grand River.

two bowls
vellum, paint pen, cuttlebone, tape, medical cloth

immersion blender
drift wood, vellum, plaster, tiles,
shell, acrylite, shovel, plant matter, pastel

arbitrary scoop mechanism #1
velum, styrofoam, claw, handmade paper, pen

crouton
bouy, rope, sky stickers

Trickster inventory
box, plaster, stones, cement, wood, clay, shells, sky stickers, found ceramics

thick chunks
roofing tile, drift wood, plaster, watercolour pots, shell

spoon clinks or how it is to swirl uninterupted
drift wood, plaster, plastic gift bag, wooden stool, 3D printing material, bowl, seawater, vellum, pastel, sand