The Center for the Living Things is the research pata-institution founded in 2016, in order to examine, collect and popularise the knowledge concerning new humanotic nature forms. All exhibits gathered in the Institute’s col- lection are abandoned objects, used and no longer needed commodities – wastes of human overproduction, which have become the natural environment for many living organizms. Specimens were found in illegal waste dumping site, where the transgression of man-derived objects and plant tissues take place. These hybrids of plants and ar- tificial objects are difficult to classify, as they are contemporaneously animate and inanimate. Exhibits collected in Center for the Living Things can’t be conventionally classified. Recently, wastes have been taking over behaviours from living matter. In the process of overproduction , ceaseless demand of constant update of possessed goods is the reason why most of unnecessary products seem to be out of control. Center for the Living Things is aimed to describe mechanisms appearing in the sphere of rejection and uselessness. In this sphere, products are no longer tools used by people. Products participates in almost every process that occurs in biosphere, hence we can’t definitively devide economic or social processes from so-called natural process.

More at: www.centerforlivingthings.com

“Bones of all man”, installation view, Center of Contemporary Arts, Toruń, 2016

Photograph of the found object from the series: “Center for the Living Things”, 100×70, 2016

Old greenhouse; seat of the institute in the Botanical Garden in Poznań.