Microbial Futures Lab in BENU Pharmacy Budapest Astoria, 2024, PLACCC Festival

Photo: Attila Balogh

Microbial Futures Lab is a traveling laboratory, a constantly expanding collection of future medicines, treatments, rites and narratives reflecting on the well-being of human and more-than-human lifeforms.

The project is rooted in the collaboration with the researchers of the Microbial Childhood Collaboratory (MCC) and inspired by a research of two of our ecologist members, Marja Roslund and Mira Grönroos, and their collegues. Working closely with urban daycares, they tested and concluded that contact with microbially rich natural materials can diversify human skin microbiota, and greening daycare yards can decrease relative abundance of potentially pathogenic bacteria in soil, positively affecting children’s skin microbiota and immune system function. The findings can lead us to conclusions not only about children’s health but also human and more-than-human health itself, shedding light on how much we depend on our environment, how much human and more-than-human lifeforms are intertwined. All bodies are interconnected microbial ecosystems, living and breathing habitats of tiny organisms: bodies of cities, bodies of waters, air, soil, and our own human bodies are inseperable.