Weaving-Unfolding-Transforming
Intro
Choreographed in an atmosphere of engineered darkness, spotlights pick out translucent boxes floating at eye level (Fig. 1). Inside, the light reveals a series of loser threads and denser clusters, forming familiar yet unearthly-looking constructions. It takes a moment for the observer to identify these startlingly complex and delicate networks as spider webs (Fig. 2). However, how these Hybrid Webs (2012-ongoing) have come into existence, remains an enigma.
Since the Argentinian architect and artist Tomás Saraceno (b. 1973) discovered the entangled universe of spun threads twelve years ago, he created a tremendous amount of spider web-related works to raise awareness of their multisensory worlds. One of them is the Hybrid Web series, built by different spider species from geographically remote locations and thus won’t exist without Saraceno’s intervention. Hidden from the observer, however, are the techniques of aestheticization which complete this transformation.
In the following essay, I will give an insight into the production process of these complex spider webs through the lens of New Materialism. Spearheaded by philosopher and feminist theoretician Rosi Braidotti (2002), the scholar claims that New Materialism understands nonhumans within their complex environment rather than identifying them as inanimate matter, a tool or metaphor. To date, Saraceno's spider works have largely been discussed in research and exhibitions under the network theory. (1) However, networks are extremely poor metaphors since they favour linear reading over messy forms of worldmaking (2). The turn to matter asks for a new understanding of how to create, write, display and talk about art. (3) Therefore, spiders and their webs are the protagonists of my following endeavour.
Weaving
After coming across the webbed Umwelt of the eight-legged creatures in Tomás Saraceno's oeuvre, I was eager to learn as much as possible about the spider and her (4) spun habitat. The following peek into the world of spiders comes from my working experiences and observations in the Arachnid Research Laboratory (ARL) (Fig. 3). (5)
The ARL, a sub-department of Saraceno’s studio, is an interwoven network of creative potential and scientific discovery. Since its conception, the ARL has been home to multiple spider species from across the world, from solitary spiders to those who live in colonies. In the ARL, working in an artificially tropical climate, biologists, artists, and other spider enthusiasts, including me, care for spiders and assist in their production process. Daily the Spider Team takes protocols of each web: their building progress, conspicuous features (e.g., form, size, etc.), etc. The spiders spin their webs in carbon fibre cube-shaped frames of different sizes. They are organised on shelves surrounded by water, which maintains the environment’s humidity levels and attempts to dissuade the spiders from escaping – with varying degrees of success (Fig. 4). (6) Thus, no walls separate the spider’s open living spaces from the workplace of the Spider Team; they work among the webs. This performance between human and nonhuman workers uncovers a constant attunement to each other’s world.
When observing a weaving spider, it seems like she is drawing in the air. Indeed, the wind decides where the spider will anchor her first thread released from her spinnerets. She starts with a fine rectangular mesh to create a horizontal orb web (Fig. 5). Afterwards, she builds the aligned tent with non-sticky silk, a network of supporting threads suspended above (Fig. 6). When she finishes her web, she positions herself upside down in the middle while having each leg on a radiating thread (Fig. 7).
In this position, she is constantly alert, attuned to her environment, especially when locating her day’s meal. Any vibrations of passing prey or predator travel through the signal line and the audio-vibratory sensors in her leg. (7) Therefore, it is not too far-fetched to argue that the web is an extension of the spider’s sensory and cognitive system. (8) Hence, only what moves can be identified. For that reason, spiders are fed in the ARL with alive crickets and flies. The spider stretches her front legs and attunes the threads to ‘hear’ the prey. In the same way, spiders living in colonies (e.g., the Cyrtophora citricola) keep contact with other members. Hundreds of her kind inhabit the overlayed collective webs that resemble high-rise apartment blocks or entire cities (Fig. 8). Their collective way of life is mutually advantageous, as proven by their cooperation in capturing prey and raising their offspring. (9)
Another observation underlines the assumption that the spider/web (10) has to be treated and described as inseparable organisms. The web’s material specifics can differ from the spider’s physical conditions (11) and the environment’s humidity and temperature. Moreover, silky threads are living archives. (12) ll kinds of human and non-human microbes, dust particles, etc. are circulating in the ARL and will also stick to the web. It seems likely that the web’s "cognitive stickiness" (13) evolved from spiders’ ancestors' neurotransmitters. Chemicals and processes that formed the spider’s nervous system became a material with which later species build their external world. Learning and unlearning are thus interlinked in relation to our living world. New links can grow from learning, while others are cut off through lack of use. (14) This is also how I gained my knowledge about spiders. I began to identify the different spiders not by their taxonomic names, which is irrelevant when caring for spiders, but by interaction (e.g., when and in which area they prefer to weave their home or to which vibrations they react most sensitively).
In sum, for her whole life, the web is the spider’s mouth, home, and communication system. Thus, the quality of the web is vital. Due to human or nonhuman matter like airborne pollutants or carcasses, a damaged or too visible web is replaced. She eats her old web, which nourishes her with essential proteins to weave a new one. (15) Opacity and a well-tuned nervous system ensure her survival.
Many scholars from physical sciences to humanities are engaged with the web as a metaphor to make complex systems more tangible and comprehensible on a human scale. This includes descriptions of living systems, postmodern narratives, media infrastructures, and even the universe’s structure. (16) However, Saraceno is less interested in the web as a philosophical or scientific model but more in its visual and material characteristics from an artistic point of view. This becomes evident when looking into the production of the Hybrid Webs sculptures.
Unfolding
In the Hybrid Webs series, webs of several spider species overlap, whereby the frame is usually turned before the next spider is let in to observe and record how spiders orientate themselves in space. In this way, fascinating, highly aesthetic, and complex spatial structures are created that otherwise won’t exist outside the ARL. But to enter and remain in the art system, the hybrid spiderwebs must follow the same standards of value as any other art object. To be auctioned at top prices their ephemeral and fragile character must be counteracted. This is already considered during their production in the ARL. The spider and every trace of organic material woven inside the Hybrid Webs are removed neatly before they are sealed into a hermeneutic vitrine. Consequently, the webs are deprived of their function as a home, mouth, and communication system.
However, thanks to the high aestheticization of the web, the invisible and even for some people pesty structure becomes pleasant for the eye. The dramatic lighting enhances this effect in the exhibition space, creating an awed distance to the unearthly-looking constructions (Fig. 1). While the open cubes in the ARL allowed a playful interaction between humans and spiders, the glass vitrines cut these communication threads in favour of preserving the art object for an indefinite time. (17) This technique of aestheticization dissects complex bodies – meaning separating spiders from their webs and thus their cognitive system. To assign agency to nonhuman bodies, we need to address and value nonhuman labour.
Transforming
Saraceno’s Studio is not only run by multiple heads but far more by numerous eyes and legs. These are the essential workers who guarantee the artist’s success and reputation. To assign agency to nonhuman artists and avoid exploitation, the priority should be to ask for their consent. Indeed, the spiders in the ARL can refuse to work. While the Spider Team might manipulate the worksite conditions and steer the production process by turning the cube frames, the spider/web retains a fundamental agency over the structure’s aesthetic emerging from glands in their abdomens. Therefore, the human artist workers entirely rely on nonhuman’s skills. This requires thorough research of the co-artists. Especially when producing Hybrid Webs: Which spider species can share the same web? How would the next spider react to the existing construction? The production of these hybrid forms is a process of trial and error for the spiders and the Spider Team since the ARL is the first to be engaged in these questions. There aren’t any arachnological studies on cohabitation between different arachnid species. Let alone any research about spider’s well-being and their interaction in (artificial) environments. When referring to the Animal Welfare Act, only nonhumans experiencing pain and stress are protected. Invertebrates are mostly excluded from these regulations. (18) Therefore, Saraceno’s work has not been a target for animal rights activists yet. What is at stake here is not to ask if the working conditions in the ARL and exhibitions met the needs of spiders or to what degree they felt stressed; as they did, (19) but if they are treated as complex bodies.(20) It is key to focus on what those bodies grow, secrete, and create to care for them and avoid alienation and exploitation. (21) Only then invertebrates can be assigned agency and be perceived as equal partners in the production of art.
One example illustrates quite vividly the ignorance towards the inseparability between spiders and their webs: Scientists attempted to mass- or artificially produce spider silk but soon realized that the properties of the silk depend entirely on the spider's spinning process. The commercial interest in spider silk remains due to its resemblance to precious metals. (22) For instance, Saraceno was invited by Bulgari to display during Milan Design Week (2019) his cosmic webs which “draw inspiration from the meteoric origins of gold.” (23) It seems that only in this highly choreographed setting the prejudice about spider webs can be converted into precious products, reducing thereby the spider to its arachnids’ bodily secretions. The spider’s body disappears in Saraceno’s oeuvre inasmuch ignoring both labour and worker. The titles of the Hybrid Webs bear neither a trace of cross-species attunements nor their genesis. The spiders become part of the art, not the work. Thus, rather than mention the spiders as equal workers, the authorship is attributed to Saraceno.
Entangled
In the ARL, the spider/web is not dissected. The production of artworks is entirely outsourced and delegated to the spider’s glands and spinnerets. In particular, the Aeolic Instrument (Fig. 9). A spider is placed on a raised pole in the studio space. When she attaches her first thread onto the stick, she can be carried by hand to the room’s opposite side, where another high bar is installed. When the first thread hangs tight between the attached bars, the spider is placed on top of it, and she will walk to the other side while spinning another thread. It could take up to two months to collect several meters of threads, each consisting of five individual ones. If the spider is exhausted, she will stop spinning or eat up the previous thread to regain strength – the process starts all over. Thus, this laborious endeavour requires the patience of both nonhuman and human worker. The play with the invisible, the nerve-racking task to work and be entangled with living bodies, is part of the artwork. This cross-species work challenges the idea of individual subjects and highlights the importance of mutual care and embodied learning. This story of productive eight-legged bodies should be told and mediated in art to become attentive to more-than-human worldmaking. As with spider/web, we should make and remake our world every day.
How do we write about the conditions of production, about processes, materials, about craft and artistic creation? How can the context flow into the description of art? With a publicly announced writing competition, the Sitterwerk Foundation searched for new forms of art description that focus on production processes and materiality. A jury selected two texts from the 37 submissions, which were awarded prize money and published on the Sitterwerk online journal.
The Arachnid Research Laboratory Weaving-Unfolding-Transforming by Beatrice Zaidenbergs is one of the winning texts. It describes the collaboration of spiders and humans in the artist's production and the collaboration between human and more-than-human, observed from an unusual perspective. A feature that fits well with the Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen, where there are also human and non-human actors. The jury judges the text to be well and eloquently written, with a narrative component despite its academic form. The author goes on to describe a well-known work of art from a new perspective, critically questioning artistic practice in the process.
The jury included Rémi Brandon (founder Soccochico and lecturer HEAD, Geneva), Deborah Keller (editor-in-chief Kunstbulletin, Zurich), Julia Künzi (art historian and curator, Bern and Zurich), Barbara Preisig (art historian and lecturer and art critic, Zurich), Laurin Schaub (ceramist and artist, Bern), Kathrin Siegrist (artist, Basel), and Bettina Zimmermann (art historian and collaborator Kesselhaus Josephsohn, Zurich and St. Gallen). The jury defined terms such as seductiveness and authenticity, intrinsic logic in form and content, conciseness and otherness as well as topicality, language and originality as criteria by which they were guided in their assessment.
