Photo: Julianna Nyíri / MKE

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, and what is in between.

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.

How can we imagine the medicines of the future in a world where our present relationship with our environment is compromised and typically defined by alienation and rituals of disinfection, fighting bacteria and viruses? What speculative visions of the future, old-new rites, treatments and medicines can we imagine if we look at the concept of health in a holistic way, if we understand it as the mutual well-being of human and more-than-human lifeforms?

Future medicines workshops

Ongoing, 2023-

During a collective writing process with members of the research team, we have developed a patient information leaflet for a speculative medicine. SymbiFarm, in a possible future, is used to treat microbial dysbiosis and a lack of immunological resilience. Since then, further narratives, medicines and treatments have been gathered and developed, and audiences have been engaged in public workshops with the purpose of shared discussions and to expand the collection with new narratives and prototypes.