«Pregnancy is not the creation of a new human being, but the «holobiont» community, which the mother has always been, is passed on to a new holobiont. This means, of course, that babies stem primarily from their mothers – and not so much from their fathers.» Salome Rodeck, Researcher in Cultural Studies
Salome Rodeck is a researcher, pursuing her doctorate at the ZfL (Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research) on the topic «Symbiotic Worlds. Theories and practices of coexistence in Lynn Margulis and Donna Haraway.» In it, she examines how the biological phenomenon of symbiosis is initially depicted as a fundamental principle of life on earth – only to then become a guiding metaphor for critical and utopian demands on political and philosophical spheres of society.
Lynn Margulis was married to Carl Sagan for several years before he curated NASA’s Golden Record. Their son Dorion will say later: «My father, whose program Cosmos was in its the time the most seen television show in the world, was undoubtedly a great and charismatic scientific educator. But he essentially made cool and sexy ideas developed in the Renaissance. In terms of original science, it’s clear that my mother’s contributions were greater.»
Rodeck says: «We are many. We are holobionts. A collective of living beings. Life is cooperative and humans are just one species among many on this living organism Earth».
We talk about what this does to the individual when it is already many by itself. We talk about reproduction and intoxication – and how to put holobionts on a Golden Record.
This conversation was held in German.
Further links to topics of the dialogue
Donna Haraway (wiki)
Lynn Margulis (wiki)
Holobiont (wiki)
Gaia-Hypothese (wiki)
Blue Marble (wiki)
Matrix (movie)
Links to streaming platforms
Welcome to THE GOLDEN RECORD STUDIOS – It’s high time for a new world selfie! 45 years ago, NASA sent its «Golden Records» into the depths of space in the hope that distant intelligences would be able to get an idea of humanity this way. Back then, a small group of Americans curated an embellished selfie for the entire Earth: Photos as if with a retro filter, music between European classical music and Azerbaijani bagpipes, as well as nature sounds in poor sound quality – our as yet unknown alien friends will get a pretty weird impression of us. Fortunately, since the 1970s, not only the view of the world, but also the view out of the world has changed significantly.
In our podcast series THE GOLDEN RECORD STUDIOS, exosociologists, anthropologists and other alien artists put their heads together with us for this experiment to produce new recordings: How do we want to be remembered? How do we welcome alien intelligences? Which colonial structures do we have to say goodbye to in order to secure the existence of the human species? And is freezing after death really the smartest way to travel into the future? THE GOLDEN RECORD STUDIOS are an open invitation to listen in and think along, infused with sounds and music. On the first level, we deal with various questions arising from the Golden Records project. But you soon realise that we are dealing with very contemporary and local issues via the figure of the alien or the message to space.
Hosts: Alexandra Lauck und Lukas Matthaei
Creative Producer: Fabian Kuehlein
Music: Chris Umney
Produced by matthaei&konsorten 2023