Alec Vivier-Reynaud – Du Mycélium aux pratiques symbiotiques (From mycelium to symbiotic practices)
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- Category: Book
- Topic: Nature & Plants
- Publisher: Self-published
- Country: France
- Language: French
- Release: 2023
- Cover: Softcover
- Binding: Perfect
- Size: 11 x 16.5 cm
- Copies: 40
Cover embossing, Faux-CMJN + Black riso printing, Cover + inserts screen printing
It would be tempting to follow the logical curve of evolution, but the mycelium is not just a parenthesis in history. Fungal cosmology offers some very positive perspectives to explore. As a child, my footsteps often met those of these growths on the forest floor. My grandmother and I used to walk among them every day. I could see them with my own eyes, these [worlds-in-the-making] that surround us. Mycelium infuses all kinds of landscapes, reclaiming life to redistribute it, disassembling and reconstructing nature. It profoundly disrupts modes of existence and reformulates the foundations of biological life, shaping ecosystems and putting us back into tangles of interdependence.
A biological embodiment of symbiosis, it delights in links with others, and transgresses them regardless of frontiers. Always weaving at the crossroads of worlds, it continues to shape the ecosystems of tomorrow. Unchangeable by nature, the mushroom is never captured, at least always in one of its states and part of its never-ending transformation. It is a symbol of the dynamism of time: it grows on charred soil, helps trees to regrow, populates our plates and creates precarious latent commons.
Nevertheless, it remains a little-known and extremely blurred entity in the collective imagination, as we only know its emerging part, which spontaneously appears during our country walks. Like a virus, we constantly assign it negative connotations such as parasite, infection or living monster. In reality, it is through contamination that new forms of life can emerge, and here we are talking more about symbiosis. Yet the mycelium is no more the shaper of symbioses than we are. That's where seeing through the fungal prism allows us to understand our relationships differently. The infinitesimal is not a scale, it is subjectively designated as negligible. The infinitesimal therefore has no impact on a system, an ecosystem or an environment that we define as functional and viable.
What if the role of the mycelium allowed us to approach the notion of incidence differently? What if going toe-to-toe with the mycelium could help us to reconsider and open up our modes of existence? How can the inclusion of living organisms contribute to the design disciplines and bring them into a mutually reinforcing dynamic?
About Alec Vivier-Reynaud:
Alec Vivier-Reynaud is a multidisciplinary graphic designer based between Paris and Caen. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, he now develops a generous practice that leads him to design unique books and editorial productions, as well as creating posters, visual identities and functional scenographies. At the intersection of biology and graphic design, his biodesign research proposes a new paradigm where images become living entities. In collaboration with the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, this research tangibly interacts with and collaborates with the fungal ecosystems surrounding us. Within this new perspective, he notably invents "mycography," a new bio-printing process using biological inks made from micro-fungi.