Hybris

Revenge

In antiquity, revenge was regarded as a matter handled by women. Known entities of vengeance, gods of revenge and personifications of retribution and justice are all female figures. For instance, the goddesses of Olympus were renowned for their intrigue and for maneuvering their enemies and adversaries into bizarre situations from which there was no escape.

The belief that women could not pose a threat to a fearless hero has led to the downfall of many male figures in mythological history. An example of this is Samson, who regarded the three brutal attacks on his life as a game played by his beloved Delilah.

The man who proved invincible in mano-a-mano combat fails in a duel against a woman. The reason for this is that men often succumb to a deceptive judgment based on the assumption that women are weak, sweet, and lacking in character. This image is systematically disseminated and leads to a misjudgment regarding the abilities and strengths of women.

Even in ancient Greek society, the social and legal status of women was greatly restricted, as they were not legally or financially independent. Only through marriage to an Athenian citizen did a woman obtain the status of a citizen and, consequently, certain rights and the opportunity to participate in political decisions. Due to gender-specific education, societal role expectations, and disadvantages faced by women in education and employment, criminal behavior is less frequently observed in women than in men. These differences are not surprising, as women in many cultures still face social control mechanisms that also prevent or limit criminal actions. Women were subject to these mechanisms even in antiquity. Only under specific circumstances, which required the interaction of multiple factors, did women break with these norms and take actions of revenge themselves. Even today, it is observed that women are more likely to resort to illness or depression than to commit crimes. Under specific conditions and circumstances, however, women can direct their aggressions against the perpetrators who triggered them, rather than typically against themselves. ¹

Scientific Objective

In 2015, the idea to biologically treat polystyrene and feed it to mealworms emerged in the USA, but it was never implemented on a large scale.  The question of what to do with the resulting mealworm excretions remained unanswered. This project aims to address precisely this question. Mealworms convert bromine-containing Styrodur insulation into a harmless product suitable for applications in the construction industry and art, such as sculptural materials. This could redirect a portion of the tons of Styrofoam waste generated annually, which is currently only thermally disposed of, towards meaningful recycling opportunities. The transformation of Styrodur by mealworms is feasible even at room temperature, with optimal conditions at 20°C and 50% humidity, resulting in less CO2 emissions compared to Styrodur incineration, as some carbon is bound into biomass. The primary goals are twofold: firstly, to find a biological solution for processing Styrodur insulation, aiming to utilize mealworm excretions, pelletized after digestion by bacteria in the mealworms' digestive tracts, as granular aggregate for lightweight concrete, creating a novel recycled building material. Secondly, to investigate whether the mealworm excretions, in dust-like form, can serve as a filler in a cement-free binder, specifically a geopolymer.

Artistic Objective

By combining different binders with mealworm excrement, innovative materials are created, suitable for use as building materials or lightweight aggregates. These materials enable the creation of sculptures through various manufacturing processes.

Role of Fraunhofer IBP

Dr. Volker Thome leads the "Mineral Materials and Building Material Recycling" department at IBP and has over 20 years of experience in material development. For HYBRIS, his department provides laboratory and measurement times for the required equipment such as micro-computer tomography, X-ray analysis, mechanical testing, and mixers with pelletizing dishes.

Transformation Potential

When polystyrene insulation is thermally treated in waste incineration plants, large amounts of CO2 are emitted. Bromine-containing flame retardants are released into the air and enter the environment. Glued insulation panels cannot be incinerated and must be disposed of in landfills. However, the half-life of polystyrenes is approximately 5000 years. By using mealworm excretions, previously consuming and processing the insulation material, a building material with higher compressive strength than Styrodur is created. Thus, the project aims not only to environmentally dispose of problematic insulation waste but also to reintroduce the material into the construction material cycle. The mealworm excrement is used as lightweight aggregate or filler to fill gaps between the aggregate grains and as an additive for binders to positively influence their flow properties.

Economic Viability

The processing of two waste products with low energy consumption is a highly economical way to generate recycled building materials and simultaneously manage the accumulated construction debris from polystyrene-containing thermal insulation composite systems. This approach conserves the environment and resources by saving significant amounts of CO2, utilizing waste instead of landfilling it, and conserving primary raw materials.

Milestones

Planned Implementation

Before suitable binders can be found for the excrement mixture, the composition of the mealworm excretions must be analyzed. These excretions are chemically and mineralogically examined in the laboratory of the institute. The analyses provide insights into which binders might be suitable for the project. With a larger quantity of mealworm excretions produced in the studio, initial mixing experiments with various binders, including cement-free binders such as geopolymers, are conducted. Excretions are pelletized through suitable pelletization after these initial mixing experiments. Both products are then examined for their mechanical properties at the IBP. After the analyses, the first experiments follow. Suitable mixtures are shaped, while different mixing processes are tested.

Sculpture in its purest form always starts from the whole, subtracts, and reduces. The mealworms in the HYBRIS installation also work subtractively. Yana Zschiedrich works additively: she combines apparatuses, various materials with mealworms into an installation - I call it a system. In this setting, both the mealworms and the artist create different images that come together to form something larger.

Abstractly speaking, I understand an image as something through which we can identify (recognize) something. What we believe to recognize doesn't necessarily have to be depicted in the image. Generally, recognizing something in images that is not depicted and identifying the absent as meaning is a characteristic of human cognition. We owe to the visual arts the ability to provide such experiences to perceiving humans. The outstanding importance of images as a cultural technique lies in the fact that within the image, another image can also be contained, which can be interpreted by us. In this specific form, it is a deeply human imagination to link real and fictional truths in a way that we can share with other humans, but hardly with other living beings. Apparently, there are at least as many realities as there are species.

How do mealworms experience their reality as larvae of the mealworm beetle? Mealworms are worms that apparently like to inhabit flour, so they are also found in pasta, cookies, and other baked goods. They are also considered a healthy source of protein and are increasingly becoming a human food, being approved as food insects in the EU. The fact that mealworms also like Styrodur has only recently been scientifically researched. Like all other living beings, they transform something existing into something else: they also have metabolism and reproduce. In HYBRIS, they eat something "bad" and excrete something "good": non-biodegradable Styrodur (flame-retardant polystyrene) is transformed by them into flawless, biodegradable excrement. Did the metabolists of the Japanese architectural avant-garde already have this in mind in the late 1950s when they used the term „shinchintaisha“ as a symbol for the essential exchange of material and energy between organism and environment? Are we now seeing architectures with facades made of mealworm excrement following the architectural utopias of floating houses and capsule skyscrapers on an urban scale?

The use of excrements and their artistic added value had already been demonstrated by Piero Manzoni in 1961 with "Merda d'artista," in which he chose the shortest path and preserved, numbered, and sold his own excrements as artist's shit in ninety cans. Initially, he sold thirty grams of excrement for thirty grams of gold. The price has increased since then. Excrement can become high-quality art and not just fertilizer.

But can the production of excrement as well as the excrement itself in the same context also be art and then solve a global, glaring environmental problem in the face of the advanced climate crisis? This is precisely where HYBRIS by Yana Zschiedrich comes in.

But first... the excretions - the feces - they contain no more toxins and are biologically fully degradable. So, is the compost healthier than what produced it? Can inorganic material become organic at all? Does it work with microplastics too? Yes, there are also indications that unicellular bacteria apparently metabolize artificial substances more easily than natural organic substances, such as dead plant material.¹
In Yana Zschiedrich's installation and artistic research project, swarms of mealworms are kept in a specially optimized breeding facility, in a closed world. Here, feeding serves solely for digestion and excretion. With the precision of a machine, the swarm of mealworms fulfills this task. And in doing so, Styrofoam reliefs are produced, whose forms are predetermined by the artist and reminiscent of Greek marble slabs. So far so good - the mass follows eagerly, but not unconditionally. The production only works as long as the living conditions are optimal. If they are not, variations arise that have their own formal charm. We call these "Happy Accidents", but in case of major errors such as a continuous drop in room temperature - the mass stagnates. It becomes sluggish and stops production! The artist is challenged to do justice to each individual mealworm, as well as to the swarm as a whole. The power dynamics shift according to the characteristics of "crowd" described by Elias Canetti in "Crowds and Power".2 Maintaining optimal conditions meticulously means working against artistic failure for Yana Zschiedrich. The functional units of the system always mix with the conditions and actions of the mealworms and the artist, serving as a kind of testimony to the overall balance. The overall system is never clear-cut, never constant, remaining fragile because changing parameters always fluctuate it between tipping points. The mealworms in HYBRIS react highly sensitively to their living conditions, and accordingly, the images they carve out are also open-ended. The facility is the world of the mealworms. Artists also react like seismographs to changes in their world.
Yana Zschiedrich's mealworms certainly do not understand the significance of the predetermined paths they carve out of the Styrofoam. This is because they have different sensory fields3 than we humans - they cannot interpret our images. However, this does not necessarily mean that they do not feel anything; rather, they likely experience something within their own sensory field. We do not know this and understand nothing of it. For the mealworms, this is probably also irrelevant. They do not know what they are doing for us, but they apparently do it willingly for themselves, based on their evolutionarily programmed self-preservation instinct. But can't we find parallels to art-making precisely here, whenever we attribute intrinsic motivation to artists in their creative process? Art-making as a practice that does not need to be justified, but is simply carried out because there is a desire to do so from internal drive?
All elements of the installation, such as buckets, machinery, steam, coloration, and lighting, the selection of image templates, which are inscribed into the Styrofoam plates, the numerous material transformations, the "coexistence" and "interaction" between mealworms, meanings, and the artist's intentions - all of this leads to the nesting of various perspectives on HYBRIS and can be read as a polyphonic composition - as a manifold image.
Yana Zschiedrich introduces extended methods of participation with her urgent demand for a nature-oriented material world on one hand and her artistic-aesthetic practice on the other. As an applied researcher, she experiments with quasi-scientific methods, but as an artist and architect, she cannot remain objective. Like the mealworms, she is one of many shaping subjects. She is not an external creator. She is not a third-order observer - she is not a mealworm, but somehow still in the midst of it all - a part of the swarm, the mass, and the installation.
With HYBRIS, the relevance of visual art and its methods in a research-oriented and science-adjacent environment is questioned, albeit subtly and persistently. In addition to the deep desire to solve an environmental problem, this project involves an aesthetic practice to which almost everything is subordinate: design, selection, placement, and communication of the apparatuses. In contrast, the mass of organic worms is not exclusively subject to functional aspects in their selection. Yana Zschiedrich composes the entire appearance of the installation as a picture in every new version - functional necessities mix with deliberate aesthetic choices, which in turn exert subtle influence in the functional overall system. The installation itself and the perspectives of the meta-level of the overall project lead to a "more" than just "being-in-the-world": to a commitment to "being-involved-in-the-world." A specific mixture of knowledge production occurs here. It may certainly have scientific relevance, but it remains part of an artistic work.

The blending of functional, aesthetic, scientific, and quasi-scientific elements into a meta-level formulates the larger picture of HYBRIS as a complex project, where there is always something new to discover, much like in a good picture. And even if the experimental setup of HYBRIS were to succeed and no more toxic styrofoam needed to be produced, what would the mealworms then eat to produce their healthy excrements?

Nature is indeed the creator of all things, but the soul is considered the creator of all expression. The thing and the expression are always somehow interconnected. And here we are again at the big picture: HYBRIS.