We Exist of More Foreign Cells Than Native Ones - Andrew Carnie

This is a clip from our conversation with Andrew Carnie. Like to know more? Find the whole conversation here on "The art of co-existence" podcast!

Hosted by: Daphne Frühmann
Editing: Axel Frühmann
Music: Mark Oomen
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

You're about to listen to a short clip from a previous conversation. For the full episode, go to our podcast channel. But it's uh also something that that you seem to want to do. Like there is this notion of self that you have in all your work. So you're very interested in exploring what it means to be human and how we relate to ourselves and the world around us. But then you are scared of having a scan of your own brain. So there is something that you you want to keep a distance. You don't want to get into it too deep or yes, full of full of contradictions.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Maybe maybe I'm comfortable enough now that when I that I wouldn't worry, and maybe it's something I should take up because it would be a very interesting material to work with. But definitely I've I you know what one of the things I realized in my work was that I moved from this kind of looking at specific topics, and then I did begin to realize that what I was looking at was how how we see ourselves through science as a very important thing. That actually, if we could understand ourselves more, then we might treat each other better and with more consideration. Um, because we're not we're not individuals. We are that we're not bounded at the skin. We are we are so interconnected with other people in how we're formed and our behaviors. You know, so we're talking about the cats of Hubble and Wiesel and there was the environment. But but take away other people from individuals, humans being brought up, then our our brains would develop completely differently. I mean, it's a bit like, yeah, the whole the whole brain is a kind of socializing and constructed as socializing that's so important that some people consider is a kind of you know an issue when you have autism, that that socialization aspect of the brain is not working. And some people uh hypothesize that that's part of what the condition is, that you don't have the kind of streamlining, some of the apostosis doesn't happen in in in terms of the socialization. Of course, I'm I'm I'm making these statements again. I'm not making them as a scientist, but as an artist. Yeah, and sometimes I uh yeah, I'm sure I get things wrong.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Well, and then that's forgiven because you are still the artist, just don't don't claim that it's your research and that that it's your that it's your truth.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah, that and and and that's how I see it. Whenever I describe myself, I am clear that I'm an artist and not a scientist, because because I am going to make those alterations to the work that suit the work best more than the science. I'm working in that way of trying to convey communicate things that are about us as human beings.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Can I uh go back to what you said a few sentences before? Because I think you say that really beautifully that we are not bounded at the skin. Can you explain what you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Well, that's that's somebody else's kind of statement. From basically from pheromones, we are reacting with other people chemically. You know, there's the suggestions around immunology that we are um uh you know, choose partners based based on smell and and fit. So that they might have a jigsaw being put together of the immune system, proposals that like kissing is a way of kind of understanding what your partner is like and whether there is a fit, kiss and things like that. So we're interacting.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Um and all those interactions you say um also make you who you are. So you're not bounded in just your body. So when you say bounded at the skin, you mean you are not you because of just your body and what happens inside your absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Yes, and and also now, you know what you know, some of the other work I've done has been with you know heart transplant at a heart transplant team, and definitely then who who are you if you've got a transplanted heart that's somebody else's? And this brings up many, many questions about integrity. And I think all all the time we go on with that when we're whatever form of transplant happens, then then it's questioning who you are. And we are interchanging and exchanging continuously. When we when we go and stay with a friend or whatever, we are taking in and refreshing our biome, our gut biome is being altered by how who we are. I mean, you know, if we um you know, immunologists say actually interestingly that you know, some of the things that are useful for the immune system is to have a pet and a dog, uh, for instance, because we we take in some of the the microbiome from them. Kissing is important, you know, being being in those relations and exchanging and building this immune system. It guess it makes me worry about where we are with cleanliness sometimes. You know, child child cleanliness, because children basically probably do need to eat bits of earth and things around in their environment to be to have this m microbiome fed.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, to to grow it, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

It's a way of growing your microbiome to Yeah, and there's definitely differences between people that are born by cesarean and vaginal birth. The stress of vaginal birth and the exchange of the microbiome at that point is really important, and it's what it's now why babies are often swabbed if they've been born by cesarean to give them that that microbiome. These are very important things. It's absolutely fascinating. Yeah. That we're structuring. But it's not just about our relationship to humans, it's a real our relationship to the environment, because also we've discovered now that um you know, walking, you know, gardening is really important to exchange um and improve our microbiome. But walk walking in nature is basically good for us, is refreshing that microbiome, which is so important, which seems to be so fundamental in terms of our you know, sensitive, our immune system. And I think we, you know, one of the other really important topics for me of late is this kind of notion that our microbiome and these things that influence so much in the gut. I mean, there's a natural story for it, because these are the things that were that as early primitive beings, we were in the sea and we were surrounded by our food source and all of the things that we re-interacted with, the things that were good and bad. And we did testing through our immune system as to that. But as we move from, you know, to exploit the land mass, we have taken that sea with us in a way, and that's what it is in our gut. Our gut is really not inside us, it's part of outside, and I find that fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Tell me, tell us, tell us a bit more about this project that you are currently working on. The what what what is the title of it and what is it that you're exploring with that microbiome?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Well, yeah, I keep I keep flipping between titles. I mean, I I I you know for myself, I have titles that I write on the bits of paper where I'm recording those. So I kind of talk about it for myself as the the the river flowing through us or the ocean, the sea that we carry with us. And I think they're kind of really important because I think that that's that's what it is. We we're taking this community of bacteria with us that are so vitally important. And what we need to give one of the things I think that that I think is fundamental in our understanding itself is that we are conglomerates and that we are basically hoteliers to the things inside us. We have hospitality that we need to give to our microbiome. We need to look after it, you know, in terms of not maybe not too much sugar, in terms of eating kind of things that are kind of um well, like like kombucha and things like that, material materials that are kind of vinegar-based. And um and that's that that's that's important.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I wanted to ask you something about a specific work. You you've mentioned it now, I think, two times already, about your um uh the art project. And I wanna what I'm curious about in this one is that you also say that when science produces sets of data, artists can then explore the human, the human domain of it and how it can change you. And I feel that maybe in your art project, that is something that you've been doing there, there as well, is that you were looking more to the human side of things and you were going much further than just the data in it. Can you can you tell us um in this specific project where the science stops and then where you as the artist continued?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

It's a it's a difficult boundary, yes. But but definitely in the heart project, um there was this sense of people being connected and how connected they were, and and and the and the kind of psychological effects of of all of that. So that the team I was working with were in in Toronto in Canada, um, at the Toronto General Hospital, and what project I worked on for eight or ten years following uh originally people that had had transplants, and how they I guess they regarded um the notion of being hybridity and the kind of pressures that the society put on those people as as to whether they've changed.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

What do you mean with this hybridity?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Well, in in terms of they have uh, you know, part of somebody else uh lying and functioning fully inside them. Um with it with it with its set of DNA. There's evidence that some of the DNA spreads throughout the body. They, you know, it it is it is other in normal senses. We would consider it other, but it combines with us. And I think that we that that that's a really important thing. And when we talk about the microbiome, this again is other, and all of those bacteria change our state of thinking or being. They definitely the microbiome is connected with being depressed and lots of other conditions. So they chemically they can they can alter us and change.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

You're really coexisting with them in that sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, absolutely. We we are these collections of things. I mean, um, right back from the beginning, the the the thing that drives our energy is the mitochondria. And the mitochondria has a completely different set of it's not not a human DNA, it's not our DNA. So when you begin to look at it, that's really important. In fact, if you if you measure the human body, the bacteria's DNA, there's more DNA, more types or forms of it than our own human DNA in us. So if you were simply to mash somebody up, measure the DNA, you would somebody might think that we were bacteria rather than human. I mean, I think that's really fascinating. And um by by by volume of there's I think it's there's 30, we have 30 trillion human cells, but inside us, on average, there are 38 trillion bacterial cells in us, which is just like wow, that's incredible. Um I mean, in that sense, that's why I think this kind of sense of self has to change. We we're we're we're biology, we're we're not independent of the world. We're we're interconnected so deeply with the world. And I think these were things that began to arise in the in the in the heart project, or further kind of for me to understand.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

You are listening to a short clip from a previous conversation. For the full episode, go to our podcast channel. Thank you for listening to the Art of Coexistence, a podcast produced by our Celian publisher, editing by Oxel Frumann, music by Mark Oman, and hosted by me, Dr. Human. Find us on your favorite podcast app and give us a follow, like, subscribe, and or share, and we'll see you again soon.