The second issue of Parasite Art deepens the ref- lection begun in the first issue about the Parasite as an artistic strategy. It is a further attempt to establish a discourse around Parasite Art as an art genre and tactic.
Parasite Art hopes to reawaken the parasite as a discourse. The term was more often discussed in the early 2000s, on different art platforms
such as Kunstforum International (Germany), the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E Museum of Modern Art in Ljubl- jana, or Michael Rakowitz’s “paraSITE” inter- vention in New York. Recently, the idea seems to reappear in different places around the world, like in Quito, Zagreb and Berlin, creating new momentum for this publication.
Issue 1 focused on the intersection between pa- rasite strategies and political and activist action, and attempted to produce a first draft of an aesthetic theory of the parasite. Issue 2 widens the scope, digging deeper into the historical and biological meanings of the parasite and discus- ses cases and stakes of parasitism as an artistic strategy. For this issue, we invited authors from different disciplines to reflect about, and apply what we are calling parasitic strategies and tease out its emancipatory potential.
Parasitic strategies may be an attempt to escape the successive appropriation of emerging radical artistic and political practices by the market
or the cultural status quo, as Tonia Andresen argues in her piece. In the past decades, every new movement has been reabsorbed as part of the neoliberal hegemony. With parasitic strategies, we work out tactics that play with forms of appropriation, and even go along with them a for certain distance; using the resources and methods of the hegemonic apparatus in order to camouflage, while simultaneously creating frictions, disruption, and irritation.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we understand the agency of the virus and by extension, the parasite. Nearly everybody has had a vivid experience of being affected by or confronted with a parasite. The virus’s ways of settling, incubating and spreading became common knowledge on a global scale and as-
sociated with great losses. Out of this new moral position, Sabine Fabo asks if we can still see and frame the parasite as a subversive strategy. On the other hand, the pandemic made things possible again which had not been possible for
the past 50 years. There was an enormous ende- avor of states to support their citizens throughout the crisis, regardless of their economic status; between citizens, there emerged new practices
of mutual aid and solidarity. Could we then say that the parasite caused new forms of collectivity to emerge? It is morally dangerous to focus only on the socially positive aspects of the pandemic, but, like every parasite, the parasite theorist looks at the niches, and not at the dominant or obvious stance on a topic. With the case of CO- VID-19 and beyond, my essay “The Parasite ” also addresses the possibility of collective action through parasitic action.
As an artist who is also taking the role of editor in this publication, I was personally interested in
the possibility to reinterpret a moralized term or a negative metaphor, and give it new meaning. Today, the term may feel isolated, associated with only its biological meaning, but this, in and of itself, offers space to regenerate it.
I was also interested in the forms of subversion that are possible with artistic methods which are not created for an art, avant-garde or political scene, but rather, woven into society itself. What happens when art is no longer recognizable as art because it is camouflaged and becomes part of social operations within ordinary life? I am thinking about formats that do not get appro- priated as socially engaged art or social practice and transformed into social management and welfare benefits.
Another source of my personal motivation is my own artistic practice, where I have created tactics and shapes that were often difficult to describe through the theoretical approaches I found within the canon of aesthetic theory. So I must say that this magazine is also based on a
reflection about my different artistic interventions, such as “Parasite Parking” and “Penthaus à la Parasit”, and that it revolves in great part around my personal bias and interests. However, I hope that the inclusion of various authors and artists widens this personal vision and starts to stimulate a more general discourse around Parasite Art.
Finally this magazine was developed in strong exchange with the co-editor Marina Resende Santos. She edited each article and was the main exchange partner for conceptual discussi- ons about the magazine and each of the con- tributions. Like most of my artistic practice, this magazine was a collaborative creation.
This edition starts at the very roots of the term, with a genealogy of the word “parasite” and the development of its meaning throughout the centuries (Jakob Wirth), followed by a reflection on the use of parasite as a metaphor, and how metaphors, in their productive imprecision, can reduce or open up complexity (Felix Bathon). To come closer to the natural sciences’ major contribution to the term, I have interviewed Lisa Galle, biologist and curator of the exhibition “Parasites: Life undercover” at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. With Martin Bartelmus, we move towards a non-human perspective on parasites, and take artistic interventions like
“Parasite Parking” to observe thing-human-as- semblages that create new subjects in the public space and question the bias of the dominant human perspective.
Another interesting twist to the parasite question considers our own self, the process of identity-building, and the process of artistic production as potentially parasitic with regards to our own family history and sources. Out of this reflection, the artist Maire O‘Neill writes an autobiogra- phical text in an attempt to collaborate with her deceased grandfather.
The challenges to achieving collective parasite action appeared in Issue 1 – as in my own prac- tice. To address this pressing question, I discuss in an article the temporal dimensions of the parasite’s effect on a system, between immediate disruption or disease and long-term transforma- tion, and consider the forms of collective action that can be provoked by or constituted from rogue parasite action.
Parasite Art wants to use the energy of the system in order to invert it. There are numerous exam- ples of this in this magazine: through the exhaust air from subway shafts or restaurant heating systems (as in Michael Rakowitz’s “paraSITE”), through ignoring ownership and using empty parking spaces with a disregard for their usage conventions (Van Bo le Menzel), or the use of wastelands and vacant lots by different artists (as in Open Sheds Used For What?, Cecília Resen- de Santos).
Each of these interventions carry out different, small reinterpretations of public space, acting, on the one hand, with the system and its logic (camouflage), and on the other hand resisting it (irritation). When inhabiting the niche, a parasite must remain aware that its stay is temporary, and that its own life span, or its condition as irritant, have a short temporality and that every lingering involves the danger of appropriation. Perhaps this knowledge of their own limitations, the knowledge of the singularity of their niches is what unites these parasites and creates a collectivity.
Parasite Art cannot create a new vision, cannot achieve mobilization – but it can collectively destabilize and thereby provoke new, additio- nal parasitic strategies, forms of interpretation, criticism – and of course, inevitably, some new corporate appropriations.