Endosymbiotic Love Calendar is an art + science collaboration between performance artists^[1] + microbiologists^[2] working together to embody a microorganism^[3] for every month of 2021.

The diverse team of 15 human animals explore themes of symbiotic and commensal relations, expanding our understanding of the diversity of gender, reproduction, sexual orientation and social behaviour in both microorganisms and humans.

We explore identity and social justice through reimagining the human from the perspective of microbes. Our collaboration is founded on a desire to form new alliances between art & science to reveal the intimate relationships between the human and non-human and the inhumane.  

The intent is to bring the specialised academic community of microbiology and feminist science studies to challenge mainstream notions of gender and play a role in understanding others and wider struggles against inequality.

The core of the project is a collaborative process creating human scale representations of  microorganisms and documenting them in a calendar – a domestic everyday object – as a familiar space to reflect on for some, unfamiliar worlds.

[1] Annalaura Alifuoco, Conway McDermott, RJ Lloyd, Tammy Reynolds

[2] Dee Walshe, Emmanuel Laplantine, Ewan Russell, Lee Haines, Natalie Beveridge, Neil Dawson, Rod Dillon, Viv Dillon, Yasmine Kumordzi

[3] Bacteriophage, Cordyceps, Cowpox, Giardia, Leishmania, Mycorrhizal fungi, Neurons, Shigella pathogen, Strombidium purpureum, Tulip breaking virus, Wolbachia, Yeasts

Funded by the Microbiology in Society Award 2020, Arts Council England