Golem, Sofia Osbanova and Anna Kaplan
Blue clay, projection of images of clay microorganisms, nutrient medium based in selective MacConkey and Hektoen agar medium The revision of human centrality in relation to the actual reality provokes the need to redefine long standing notions of corporeality and materiality. On the one hand, by questioning our "self" — the possibility of an autonomous existence — we accept the "alienness" of our own flesh and the significance of non-human agents in its composition. On the other, by applying the category of corporeality categories to nature, we reanimate matter. Thus, we stop perceiving it not as an empty and inert object, but see it as a living body with its own needs, claims, and actions. The figure of the Golem is a narcissistic myth invented by humans who are driven by desire to become a master of matter — to revive it, subdue and control. The clay giant is the embodiment of hybrid corporeality — a synthesis of the human and the non-human, the vital and the dead. However, the heterogeneous (in Donna Haraway terms) nature of the Golem goes beyond the scope of the cabbalistic myth. Golem's materiality is not in itself lifeless. On the contrary, clay is the result of a geochemical cycle, the interaction of living and non-living agents: rocks, climate, bacteria, plants, etc. Bacteria that live on the surface of clay particles are equal agents of this vital collectivity. And if, according to biologist Lynn Margulies, "we are walking, talking minerals'' then the clay figure is a static, silent vitality.