aerobic topologies:

In an assemblage of different media, Carolin Melia Brendel explores the power of air by linking different onto-epistemologies of the spatial that are conditioned by air. The book is based on the collaborative artistic work of Helena McFadzean and Carolin Melia Brendel, Aerobic Topologies I-XVII, for which they worked with symbiotic bacterial and yeast cultures that incorporate their spatial conditions into their development through aerobic fermentation. Documentary artifacts and traces of opposing forms of knowledge that were important for the artistic process-microbial, aerobic, logistical, infrastructural, geographical and entrepreneurial-are taken up again, viewed historically, critically juxtaposed and thus placed in a material-discursive relationship of tension, similar to a vibrational movement. Between the pages of the book, a resistant space unfolds against anthropocentric paradigms of knowledge production. It questions the analytical activity of drawing boundaries as an epistemological condition and sabotages attributions of agency and authorship. It gives rise to methodological speculation about transdisciplinary intra-action and onto-epistemological actions under the disciplinary label of "artistic research". "The way in which Brendel relates her academic text to the artistic work is characterized by a sensitivity and analytical acuity that makes it an outstanding work and an example of artistic research in the best and most complex sense." Andreas Spiegl, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna