Amanda Selinder is fascinated by the mushroom species. Especially perhaps the green elf cup (Chlorociboria aeruginascens), which actually looks like a small blue-green bowl. Her interest and fascination arose when, studying at the Academy of Art and Design (HDK) in Gothenburg, she discovered the art form bioart, through an exchange with an art school in the United States.
“That school had a lab with its own biologist to assist students. I wanted to be that biologist.”
So instead of going home and studying the Master of Fine Arts programme, which was the idea, she instead did a BSc in biology at Uppsala.
“A good decision in retrospect, but at the time everyone probably thought I was a little crazy. And what’s fun with biology in art is that you reach an additional audience: mushroom nerds.”
High stumps and fungal communities
A project where biology and art come together; the artistic design of Corson, seemed tailored for a bioartist like Amanda Selinder. And her proposal won the contract. When Amanda walked around on campus thinking about her assignment, the many high stumps caught her curiosity. What had happened here?
“I spent a summer researching, reading about elm disease, ash dieback disease, about the fungus that in symbiosis with the elm bark beetle spreads elm disease. About the fungal community that is found inside leaves’ cell tissue and which is one of several contributing factors to the survival of some trees.”
A mushrooming project
It all resulted in an artistic project, but divided into two parts.
The endophytic fungi now emerging in beautiful patterns in the lab originate from the ash trees that are still alive along Corson. The fungal communities will be photographed and then projected on the ground between Studenthuset and Zenit Building, i.e. the area known in the Corson project as Studentlunden. The technique used is called gobo. There will be 15 projections in total, each measuring 6–7 metres in diameter.
“The light installation will be displayed at night, and each image will slowly fade in and out,” Amanda Selinder explains. “The fungi grow on the ground, people passing by are surrounded by them, as we are all the time. Mushrooms are found everywhere among us, even though they are so small that they can’t be seen with the naked eye.”
Those who have visited the Posthumanities Hub exhibition, which was shown at Linköping University Library, have been able to get an idea of what the installation might look like. Here, Amanda Selinder, who is a textile artist by training, has dyed abstract patterns onto fabric using mushroom pigments.
Traces of an elm
The second part of the project is three elm sculptures. The elm used in the artwork is one of the gigantic, dead alms felled at Linköping Cathedral. It is now given new life at Corson. The elm will be divided into fragments and placed in formations at three locations along Corson. Each formation is several metres long. The wood fragments are placed in concrete moulds, using recycled concrete, but before it has solidified, to be moulded into the concrete itself. Over time, the elm will follow its natural course and decompose depending on the surrounding environment and the species of fungi established in the wood. After 10–50 years, or perhaps even longer, the elm fragment will have decomposed and disappeared. The memory of an elm and all its accompanying species in reused concrete from a bygone era will remain.
Learning from collaborations
“I like working in collaboration with others,” says Amanda Selinder. “I know a lot about mushrooms but not as much about light installations, for example. You learn so much from other professionals.”
In this project, Amanda has collaborated with everyone from light designers, concrete workers, arborists and carpenters to architects and researchers at Tema Environmental Change and the Posthumanities Hub.
The light installation will be projected on the ground in Studentlunden, between Studenthuset and Zenit Building. The elm sculptures will end up on either side of it, north and south of Studentlunden. This will happen during different stages of the remodelling, where the final stage is planned to be completed by the end of 2027.
It has not yet been decided whether there will be an inauguration of these works of art and, if so, whether there may in fact be two inaugurations.
“The remodelling of Corson will take so long that you may have time to get used to the first work of art before the second part is finished,” says Amanda Selinder, before hurrying back to her mushrooms in Tema Building.