DESCENT INTO THE FUNGAL

two-channel video (8’45’’; 5’51’’), installation, objects (2016-2017)

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Descent into the Fungal is a two-channel video and a sculptural installation. The mushroom/sculptural element is site-specific and is grown from readymade mushroom blocks sold by mushroom farmers. They are given two weeks to mature and follow their natural cycle, bringing the natural element directly into the white cube. One video channel is situated within a scientific method of thinking — the artist thinks about issues of symbiosis and the ways in which fungal networks are intertwined with their surroundings. Here, the natural becomes the digital and vice-versa. The other video is from the perspective of the mushroom — it has its own language, albeit compressed and digitised in nature. The video presents fungi as a conscious being, giving personality and human-like behaviour to it. Presented on a green-screen background void of any surroundings, this channel contrasts with the documentary side and shows the fungus as its own sentient self. The two channels are displayed facing each other, leaving the viewer situated between the "scientific" and the "mushroom speak".

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Pete Belkin, Kadist Foundation

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In a situation of the disruption of global order there is a renewed need to reflect on forms of collectivity, on the inner logic of their formation, their vitality and their impact. Andrey Shental's Descent into the Fungal is dedicated to the planetary power of mushrooms. The narrative is divided into two storylines. The main one is a popular presentation of basic scientific facts and latest discoveries in the field of mycology. This storyline is interleaved with utterances of the fungal bodies themselves, which declaim something akin to their own particular credo or manifesto. This combination results in it becoming clear that the relationships the fungi foster with their surroundings (mycorhiza, parasitism, saprotrophy and endophytia) refer unambiguously to contemporary political programmes. In addressing the human audience, the turbantop, hard-skinned puffball, saffron milk cap and other fungi present revolutionary scenarios and a programme for a future world order on non-human grounds, anticipating the struggle against human capitalism. In addition, the film plays with the homology between mushrooms and the internet. The natural becomes the digital, and vice versa.

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Sreda Magazine

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[...] materialisation, in our view, could follow a different trajectory – the disarticulation of anthropocentric hospitality and the recognition of non-human agency, the non-human core of human hospitality (e.g. the planetary hospitality of Gaia). In a similar vein, Timothy Morton poses the question: "Am I a mere carrier of the multitude of bacteria that populate my microbiome? Or are they the ones that give me shelter? Who is the host and who is the parasite?" The same idea can be found in Andrey Shental's Descent into the Fungal: the human body cannot always distinguish between its own cell and that of a fungus.

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Karen Sarkisov, Hosting the Inhuman catalogue

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artistic director: Aleksei Orlov
3D generalist: Alexander Pannier
music: Anastasia Tolchneva (aka Lovozero)

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