Dirty Money

Our physical bodies both unify us as our one common experience and represent our immense diversity as individual beings. Each of us has our own unique biological Imprint and we leave traces of ourselves wherever we go. Recently we are more aware that ever before of these traces we all leave behind, fearing what they may contain and trying to minimise their dispersion.

In early January 2020, before the realisation of a global viral pandemic, I designed a public engagement project at TATE Gallery, London. Participants were asked to play with coins that triggered sounds when touched, composing their own exclusive soundscapes. Hundreds of individuals touched the coins each leaving their unique set of bacteria behind.
I then swabbed each coin and cultured the bacteria present to create a new collaborative artwork, where each individual participant contributed a piece of themselves to the final outcome of the piece. How long will it be until we can unite our microbial diversity so freely again?