A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain

With: Alexandre Caretti, Zoë June Grant, Lou Masduraud, Rayane Mcirdi, José Miguel del Pozo and Chloé Vanderstraeten curated by Sandrine Desmoulin, Maria Claudia Gamboa, Sarah Menu and Richard Neyroud

—CRAC Alsace is a large body. Like articulated arms, two hallways open onto the former high school classrooms. This building, which we care for on a daily basis, is like a member of the art center’s team. The notion of inhabiting has emerged from this affective relationship.
—As a living being, the CRAC is home to other organisms: artists, visitors and members of the team who are continuously transforming it. It's a living place, where the artworks and ideas that emerge from these encounters mushroom from within, promising a renewal that's yet to come.
—This power of organic transmutation is comparable to that of the mushroom, a species that is both plant and animal and renews its environment thanks to its collective intelligence. It is kept alive by a network of living filaments that circulate nutrients along the fungal body: the mycelium. 
—Even before the artists arrived, CRAC Alsace's mycelium was already beginning to germinate in the form of ties being forged within the former school’s wider educational community. Alexandre Caretti has collected traces of the affective networks that once inhabited this site, which we have inherited today. But what happens when a place’s conditions prevent the development of this network? 
—Rayane Mcirdi observes this disconnection on the scale of a city which, fragmented by gentrification, hinders communal life. Yet, the residents he films squat their neighborhoods’ dark corners and, in spite of the circumstances, gather to preserve a shared daily life.
—This resilience recalls the story of the matsutake. In The Mushroom at the End of the World*, Anna Tsing refers to this mushroom as the first living creature to grow in the landscape destroyed by the 1945 atomic explosion in Hiroshima. It later developed in the industrially ravaged Oregon forest, reactivating new forms of plant and human organization.
—How do mycelia physically manifest in the spaces of the art center?
—Similar to spores, lodged in the architecture of the CRAC, artworks grow like excrescences. Zoë June Grant builds domestic furniture that she installs near the ceilings, as if in a house turned upside down. Embedded in doors, Lou Masduraud makes spyholes through which we can discover hidden places, while feeling observed. Perhaps it's the CRAC itself that's watching us, brought to life thanks to Chloé Vanderstraeten’s sculpted paper organs. A disconcerting sensation emerges when faced with this place, which is no longer entirely familiar. Seeking to integrate into a country that is not his own, José Miguel del Pozo translates this disorientation into a feeling of uncanniness, evoking the attitude of a body trying to adapt in an inhospitable world.
—Stimulated by this plurality of visions, the CRAC is a house whose mutation incites us to rethink our habits, which can cause discomfort. This multidirectional force may be disconcerting, but it's also one that opens the mind to change, to transformation. In his diary, John Cage wrote: “A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.”**
—This surprising turn of phrase resonates with the multi-cellular energy of the artists, their artworks, the visitors and the team. Since the exhibition was first conceived, these words have encouraged us to welcome the unexpected with curiosity and to continue to cultivate CRAC Alsace’s mycelium.

Words which you’re used to going in one direction can go in at least two directions. They can be used to set your mind floating.***

Conversation between the members of CRAC Alsace’s team.

*Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton University Press, 2015.
**John Cage, A Mycological Foray: Variations on Mushrooms, Atelier Éditions, 2020.
*** Ibid.

Supported by Pro Helvetia—Swiss Arts Council.