Abstract

ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities volume 22 number 2 june 2017 he aesthetics of biological art are the aes- T thetics of change. No single perfect moment exists – no universal truth. Every moment is distinct and unpredictable. I am a scavenger: a feminist, an artist, a scien- tist. What, how, why, matter to me. Like an ant, I palp and stroke/sniff at the edges to discover what is good to take back to the nest. Like a cat, I bask in the fascinating and disdain the disin- terested. Like a dog, I roll in the rotten and run off with thrown sticks. I am formed from the exhalation of cyanobacteria and by millennia of evolution. My body seethes and pulses with hundreds of other species, fashioned and trans- figured by tiny lives and deaths, host to a thriv- tarsh bates ing ecology. A host is the animal or plant that is the environment for or sustains the life of a parasite or commensal organism. Hosting entails a response-ability to the stranger. We are the the human as trans*ecology environment for and sustain the lives of Candida albicans; we provide food and shelter. In French, a host is