Rebecca Romani on Alice Könitz’s “Fungus Garden.”
Termite season has traditionally been a cause for concern in California, with its wooden framed homes. The termites swarm in late summer and early Fall throughout the state, and soon, what once was solid woodwork is paper-thin. Artist Alice Könitz casts the destructive critters in a new light in her visually complex installation at the Lazy Eye Gallery in Yucca Valley in southern California. Könitz's latest work, "Fungus Garden," draws in visitors, involving them in her meditation [1] on architectural structure as home and symbiosis in the form of the mushrooms cultivated by the termites Könitz invokes. Fungus Garden is also a trauma response to the ferocious 2020 California wildfires that inspired it.
Könitz has created a glass-based installation (tetrahedrons) to contain the mycelium she is growing in a decommissioned pumphouse. The installation suggests a historical past and a dawning future while addressing the symbiotic relationship between the termites and the fungus that feeds them. The construct is shared with visitors via several visual devices that allow for a voyeuristic experience, not unlike early films experienced in Nickelodeons. However, Fungus Garden also raises some questions. It is inspired by burrowing termites but is sans termites. The symbiosis portrayed is real, but between which entities?
Fungus Garden
Könitz looks at the symbiotic relationship between termites and mushrooms [2] by creating nine glass tetrahedrons (12” on each side) with metal fasteners as grow boxes for the mycelium. Once filled with mycelium and substrate — made of grain spawn, a base to propagate mushrooms— the structures were sealed with glass disks to keep the moisture in. The glass tetrahedrons reside in a six-foot, black, rectangular wooden structure with holes cut out for airflow and to allow for viewing. The structure also protects the mycelium from drops in temperature by helping maintain the room temperature between 70-80 degrees F, which is considered ideal for the growth of this specific fungus. To ensure temperature control, Könitz has pierced the right side of the pumphouse with a copper pipe encased in a glass tube — in turn, attached to a fan — to draw solar-warmed air into the structure. But this proved unnecessary, as the warm air naturally found its way in. Visitors can walk around the installation and peek through the holes at the tetrahedrons and the silently growing fungus, like viewers watching silent films during the Nickelodeon era [4].
There is something oddly serendipitous about the installation being housed in a decommissioned pumphouse at the Lazy Eye Gallery. The pumphouse, a relic of an older, peculiarly rural Californian technology, engages Könitz's interest in architecture as a location of home and a site of innovation. Könitz uses the pumphouse as the "housing" for her termite-inspired installation while at the same time adjusting the installation to the internal geography of the structure. [5] It is an eccentric use of internal geography as Könitz also sets up inner protective structures to house the growing mycelium and encourage its development, creating a symbiotic arrangement between herself and the mycelium.
Könitz comes to this installation through two complementary paths. Her body of work has consistently looked at sculptural form and how architectural form and environment affect our/nature's existence. Könitz has said in a written communication: "I look at my environment, be it the built environment, which more or less intentionally determines how we live our lives—the social conventions of architecture, built structures, etc.— or the natural environment. My work develops from working with materials in the studio; it often relates to direct experiences of my environment mixed with other information." [6] Works large and small, from installations along a freeway to mini sculptures and maquettes in a mall setting, engage questions of the usage of found objects, the greater environment, and the social forces that interact with them. Some of Könitz's past work, such as "Public Sculpture," set in a donut shop (Holte) [7], is a playful collaboration between the shop and the sentient beings who move through it. Other installations, like Glendale Freeway Raffle (a freeway installation), engage a slight reworking of the land (through their installation) and the varied, unscripted collaborations of those who drive by or walk up to it. [8] In the case of Fungus Garden, Könitz has expanded her interaction with a structure by nesting containers within containers while exercising close control of the airflow and temperature (in favor of the mushroom combs), positioning herself as the overarching creator and master propagator of the fungi within as well as the orchestrator of any interactions with visitors that may occur.
This close attention to detail and control of the growing fungi suggests a trauma response in the form of an artistic installation. Könitz's personal experiences during the disastrous "Bobcat" wildfire in 2020 in Southern California, where she lives and works, left a strong impression of anxiety and a loss of control of/confidence in her surroundings. It is almost as if creating an environment only she tightly controls, can Könitz begin to exorcize the anxiety caused by the fires. Könitz has mentioned that the air quality during the fires became almost unbearable, leading to breathing issues. [9 ]As a result, her environmental interests shifted to examine how airflow and temperature patterns can be harnessed and adjusted through a constructed site to create a hospitable environment, a need both humans and the animal world have in common.
While conducting her research, the artist says she discovered certain groups of termites have developed a symbiotic relationship with the fungus they cultivate, which, in turn, feeds the colony [10]. According to Könitz, the termites modify their mounds, creating structures that support the fungus combs. Again, this connects with Könitz's interest in architecture and how it shapes animal and human relationships to their environment; what functions as home, workspace, and society at this particular moment in time and space. Könitz emphasizes that Fungus Garden was not developed to specifically respond to the pumphouse but did have to work within the space provided.
Assemblage à la surrealist Joseph Cornell echoes in Könitz's ecologically based practice of repurposing elements she finds, such as glass that she reworks to fit various forms. Cornell [11], a pioneer of assemblage art, created intricate boxes filled with found objects to create surreal tableaux [12]. In The Smithsonian, Joshua Korenblat says of Cornell: "Linear time disappears in favor of a poetic meditation upon the object, and within it, a curious juxtaposition of imagery." The use of glass also leads to considering Könitz's choice of structures to house her captive mushrooms.
For Könitz, the triangle/tetrahedron shape is one of her preferred forms because she likes it "as a simple means to create a volume which can be stacked to create a regular but somewhat complex volume." [13 ]According to Holte, while Könitz's tetrahedrons reappear throughout her body of work, so do pop references to LA's Hollywood roots. In Fungus Garden, the tetrahedrons are housed in a structure with round holes for air circulation and viewing. Although nothing turns, the structure is also a reminder of the early Nickelodeons, commercial viewers through which one could watch a silent film. The holes in the structure further imply a voyeuristic quality [14] to the installation- visitors can see each other as well as peek in on the mycelium, silently growing in their isolation, a reminder, as postmodernist Ruscha [15 ] has suggested, that art is both public and private at the same time, with the spaces eliding. In this case, the visitor is enlisted as witness and observer, thus completing a layered sense of symbiosis- the mycelium is dependent on Könitz's arrangement, Könitz is dependent on the visitors to provide unscripted variations in airflow, the visitors are dependent on Könitz, the mycelium and each other for some voyeuristic entertainment.
Much of Fungus Garden invokes something. Although there are neither termites nor termite mounds in the installation, everything seems to be shorthand for the mound-building termites Könitz has studied and their cultivation of mushrooms. The glass tetrahedrons are stand-ins for the tunnels and structures the termites build to house their fungus, the black box is the exterior covering of the termite mounds, the pump house with its entrances, exits, and pipes piercing its walls, is the greater world with its vagaries of temperature and airflow.
The only constant living thing in Fungus Garden is the growing fungus. Könitz herself is, in a sense, a stand-in for the termite caretakers/cultivators, while visitors contribute a certain degree of uncertainty, not unlike the natural world, as their movements around and through the gallery create unscripted airflow within the structure. The mushrooms, usually dependent on a termite colony, now depend on Könitz, who, like the termites, has designed EVERYTHING for the comfort and propagation of the mycelium. The idea of the mycelium running the show through the symbiotic pairing with a caretaking entity might come as a surprise. However, as Jared Diamond points out in Guns, Germs, and Steel [16], such symbiotic arrangements frequently appear in nature's history with Man. For example, according to Diamond, grasses have depended on human interest and husbandry to propagate and increase their footprint, leaving the trees disadvantaged. Over the development of human agrarian practices, meadows and prairies spring up as trees are pushed more and more to the edges in favor of rice, wheat, etc. By feeding Man/termites, the subaltern grasses/fungus enjoy a cushy setup.
Fungus Garden, to borrow from Robert Smithson [17], is also something of a non-site, displaced as it is in geography and time. The termites and mounds that Könitz references do not exist in California — mound-building termites live in damper areas like South America and Australia, for example. Ironically, this installation is housed in a decommissioned wooden pumphouse — almost 100 years old — in an area with no mound termites and is known for its historical fire seasons.
What is also unexpected about Könitz's installation is that it carries a sense of futurism while cohabitating with the past. The pumphouse is outdated technology, while the growing mycelium speaks to current research that shows that termite mushrooms (Journal of Fungi) [18] have a future as building material such as insulation since the mushroom dries into something spongy yet strong.
This raises another question: symbiosis suggests at least two participants; it is easy to see what the mushrooms are getting out of this — a bed to grow uninterrupted — but who/what are the other participant(s)?
What is happening is a 3-way symbiotic structure or layered arrangement. One layer is Könitz. For Könitz, the act of caring for the mycelium and engaging in witnessing as a communal act [19] (audience observing through holes in the black wooden structure) is akin to a sacrament of self-healing (trauma from the fires), and the breaking of cycles of ecological and social destruction caused by decades of annual fire seasons. The second layer is the mycelium growing in its matrix, responding to Könitz's careful husbandry and curation of the installation. Könitz incorporates viewers into the communal act as a minor tertiary layer of symbiosis, minor in that the viewers have no intentional, direct relationship with the mycelium and are merely passing through, moving air, and contributing to shifts in temperature with their bodies. The viewers are enlisted as witnesses (voyeurs) to the experiment while being incorporated into the presentation through their very presence. Their movement through the space displaces the air and subtly changes the temperature, directly affecting the growing mushroom comb and engaging the various physical layers of the installation.
What visitors will see in her installation is a suggestion that through careful husbandry, there is a way out of the wreckage of the annual fire season made more vicious through human mismanagement and global warming. As proof, Könitz can offer up the cyclical growing of the mycelium and the comb left behind as the mycelium finishes its life cycle and turns into a potentially useful object (adaptable as insulation) or even a relic to be exhibited in an installation of the next growing cycle. In addition, while Könitz benefits from the presence of visitors (airflow and temperature fluctuation), visitors get to indirectly meditate on their own experiences of California fire seasons and, perhaps, think more mindfully about their own choices of structures and living spaces as they cultivate their lives.
Rebecca Romani, September 2024.
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References:
[1] The meditation is “shared” in that the audience must enter the exhibition space to observe and interact with the installation.
[2] These termites are found in numerous places, raising the mushrooms (known as termite mushrooms) for food. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9863917/
[5] Holte (Alice Könitz, pgs. 6-55)
[6] Email communication Könitz and R. Romani 05/18/24.
[7] Holte in both Alice Könitz (pgs. 6-55) and Holte, Michael Ned. “OPENINGS: ALICE KÖNITZ.” Artforum, 1 June 2008, www.artforum.com/features/openings-alice-konitz-188430/.
[8] Holte in Alice Könitz, pgs. 8-10.
[9] in personal communication (phone) and email exchange, Alice Könitz and R. Romani, Könitz and R. Romani 05/18/24.
[10] Termite mushrooms https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9863917/
[11] Sommers, Joan, Drake, Ascha, The Joseph Cornell Box: Found Objects, Magical Worlds, Cider Mill Press, Nashville, TN, 2006
[12] https://whitney.org/collection/works/375
[13] Email communication Alice Könitz, Rebecca Romani, 05/18/24.
[14] A sense of voyeurism on the viewer's part is very much a quality of early film watching. Films shown in the nickelodeons, for example, were often travelogs and curiosities- exploiting its subjects for the pleasure of unseen viewers. In addition, early silents, such as those of Harold Lloyd, feature characters (usually men) spying on others through doorways and peepholes.
[15] Butler, Connie, Array: Alice Könitz’s Los Angeles Museum of Art in monograph, pgs. 55-83.
[16] https://www.npr.org/2005/07/11/4738014/jared-diamond-the-rise-and-fall-of-civilizations Talk of the Nation
[17] https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/provisional-theory-nonsites, (Smithson, Robert. "A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites." In Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Jack Flam. University of California Press, 1996.)
[18] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9863917/
[19] Richardson, M., & Schankweiler, K. (2020). Introduction: Affective Witnessing as Theory and Practice. Parallax, 26(3), 235–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2021.1883301
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All Images Courtesy of the Artist
Image 1 - detail of mycelium growing in tetrahedrons
Image 2 - installation views of the pumphouse (Lazy Eye Gallery)
Image 3- wooden box housing tetrahedron structure
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Alice Könitz (born in Essen, Germany; lives and works in Los Angeles)
Könitz has presented her work in numerous exhibitions, including the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the 2014 Made in LA Biennial, Galerie Nächst St. Stephan (Rosemarie Schwarzwälder), Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, the Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, and the Museum of Mülheim/Ruhr. Her work is represented by Commonwealth and Council. Könitz holds a MFA from Cal Arts and an Akademiebrief and Meisterschülerbrief from the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Awards and fellowships include the DAAD fellowship, the Förderpreis zum Ruhrpreis, the Kreativkraftpreis/Mülheim, the COLA individual artist fellowship, and the Mohn Award.
