Introducing Baum & Leahy 

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Baum & Leahy is an international studio exploring biophilic, collaboratively-driven artistic creation through interactive installation, art direction, scenography and experience design. Collaborating with practitioners across disciplines, they open up, question and sensorialise scientific research into tactile, participatory experiences. Through research-led worldmaking and material storytelling, their work allows the beholder a proximity to alternative realities, melting between the feasible and fantastical.

Previous collaborations with Research Fellow Joana Formosinho 

Our third and final Artistic Fellows joined us in March 2024 for 12 months. Baum & Leahy have been collaborating with CBSS research fellow Joana Formosinho since 2020, when they were matched by curators at the Medical Museion in Copenhagen to create an artwork building on Joana’s research into the figure of the holobiont for ‘The World is in You’ exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. This sparked an ongoing artistic-research investigation between Baum & Leahy and Joana Formosinho into what it means to be a holobiont – a micro and macro assemblage of multispecies cells being constantly refigured and negotiated by internal and environmental dynamics. They have collaborated on Cometabolise: A holobiont dinner (2021), Sensing Holobiont (2022) and Gutscapes: a meditation for eating and being with microbes (2023) – which was created within CBSS for the Being Human Festival 2023.

Further information on the collaborations 

Cometabolise: A holobiont dinner (2021) (link to Baum & Leahy site)

Sensing Holobiont (2022) (link to medicinsk museion site)

Gutscapes: a meditation for eating and being with microbes (2023) (link to Being Human site)

Plans for the fellowship 

During their fellowship at CBSS, Baum & Leahy will build on their collaboration with Joana Formosinho, to explore further what imaginaries of the holobiont can be constructed through artscience, and how this relates to the idea of environmental microbial justice.

Specifically, they will explore the ‘sociobiome’ – how socioeconomic status,urbanisation and globalisation affects gut microbiome and subsequently overall health, and the resulting ‘silent microbiome crisis’ – the unseen global decline of microbial diversity. Together with Joana Formosinho, they are exploring the material construction of the human holobiont body, focusing on the gut mucosa, an intricately structured biological system which also contains within it narratives of socioeconomic and environmental (in)justices. 

Baum & Leahy will also explore the figure of the holobiont in the wide and varied research of CBSS members, exploring how this often overlooked, microbial-human being is present and relevant in each social landscape. Throughout their fellowship they will explore artistic methods and new forms of communication and engagement to animate and sensorialise CBSS’s vision to generate transformative knowledge of contemporary biomedicine and healthcare through a wide range of research in the social sciences and health humanities.

Video Introduction 

Below is a video of Baum & Leahy and Joana Formosinho introducing themselves and their collaborative interests they are exploring at CBSS. The video was created by our Employ.Ed Video Production Interns, Sam Kennard and Connie Chen.

Read transcript (download txt. file)

For more information about Baum & Leahy’s work, please see their website and Instagram pages and watch this space for more news.

Further information 

Baum & Leahy website

Baum & Leahy on Instagram

Reciprocal Inclusion of Microbiomes and Environmental Justice Contributes Solutions to Global Environmental Health Challenges - PMC (nih.gov)  (link to National Library of Medicine site)

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