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Working in speculative design, a branch of art and design that focuses on authoring new futures now, artist Elizabeth Demaray is creating an installation titled Cookbook for When the Sun Goes Out while at Zone2Source in Amsterdam from August 8th to November 7th 2024.

The installation features a plastomach, which is a term the artist coined that combines the words “plastic” and “stomach.” This living sculpture is in the shape of a giant stomach and actually eats plastic by virtue of living fungi. Supported by plastic sourced from the immediate environment, this work of art and science collaboration is based upon research from the John Dighton Lab at Rutgers University in the US which shows that white rot fungi such as reishi, turkey tail and shiitake mushrooms can eat and metabolise plastic debris. Utilising the unique capabilities of this family of fungi Demaray sees her open-source plastomach design as a potential way that humans may be able to re-envision the consumer waste cycle of plastic debris by expanding the habitat of white rot fungi into our domestic living spaces.

The Plastomach is installed in our office and can be viewed on Mondays and Thursdays, or anytime from outside the window of the Rietveld Pavillion.

About
Elizabeth Demaray is the recipient of the National Studio Award at the New York Museum of Modern Art/P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center and the Welcome to the Anthropocene Exhibition Award from the Association of Environmental Science Studies. Demaray is a professor of fine art at Rutgers University in the United States and founder of LABitate, Center for Art and Science Collaboration, at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ which considers new ways of living in the built environment. Her current projects can be seen at elizbethdemaray.org and on Instagram @elizdemaray.