I saw this in one of the daily eflux emails.  I am in general obsessed with mycelium – that is the root system of mushrooms – but really much more. It is the nerve centre of nature itself.

The title of this show is “Post-Nature—A Museum as an Ecosystem ” and it is from the 2018 Taipei Biennial.

This is interesting – museum as ecosystem- because from the avant garde the museum is well – a museum – it is a closed institution and all that is left is to reference within that closed institution.

What does it mean for a museum to be an ecosystem? What is an ecosystem anyway? What is a system vs an ecosystem?

Lets say a system is an internconnected network. It is a PRO-JECT and not a SUB-JECT/OBJ-JECT – to use Flusser’s language.  A system is an assemblage, bricolage. It has a context.

So what is an ecosystem? If a system is all about context, then we must predicate the type of system it is. In this case as eco. Eco comes from the greek Oikos – house. And is related to the terms, economics, ecology. Economics are the Laws of the House, Ecology is the logic of the house. System also comes from ancient greek – the universe/the whole made out of parts.  Ecosystem is the universe of the house – it is the habitable universe.

This changes the domain of the museum (seat of the muses) to the domain of the house, of the hearth. The logic of the oikos is not the logic of the muse.  The universe of the house is not the system of the muse.  What happens when we make this transformation – when we aestheticize the house, the oikos.