Despite the general idea of evolution being a process of constant improvement of the species, this is not at all a linear process, whose previous stages that remain alive until today are “less evolved”, less capable, or even less complex. Evolution is a process of constant diversification of life, an absolutely creative life whose origin and purpose is in itself, and whose constant exploration of possibilities is in turn constitutive of it.

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With Margulis, we learned that not only do organisms cooperate between each other to stay alive, to maintain their species over time -as Darwin presented it and was developed in greater depth in Kropotkin’s Mutual aid-, but also that the association of diverse life forms leads to the generation of new forms of life. That is to say, life not only becomes increasingly diversified but also generates processes of synthesis, it interconnects between these diverse forms to generate other more, and more complex ones.

The cyborg as symbiosis is for me the space for the hybridization of two life forms that after a long process of transformation meet again. A symbiogenesis by Bacteria, ancestors of life on earth, and a life form that has been one of the creations of humanity, artificial life, in this specific case, the internet as an artificial system with life-like behavior.

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The encounter of these two forms of life, completely outside the strong capitalist idea of an Internet of Bacteria that considers them efficient supports of information, could become a symbiotic encounter of growing indeterminacy.

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In the context of various conversations in the Suratómica network, after a wonderful encounter and dialogue with Carlos Maldonado’s ideas about the most recent understandings of the Living, together with Juan Diego Rivera, Carlos Acosta, and Daniela Brill, we set out to understand the phenomena of life, the ways for life to break through, as technologies of the living, biotechnologies. This in a space we called Collaboration and other technologies of the Living (Colaboración y otras tecnologías de lo vivo) (2021).

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Understanding life and, in turn, nature as that which is creative (Hernández, 2020), I want to propose a slightly more humble look at the technologies that we create as human beings, as technologies created by nature itself, through us, which as in nature itself, sometimes enable life and sometimes do not. Today we make enormous efforts to try to put aside this idea of how incredibly intelligent, evolved, or capable we humans are, “the pinnacle of evolution”. But at the same time, we still think that our technologies are extraordinary.

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They are as extraordinary and diverse as those created by all other living organisms.

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Thus, there are two ideas that we can preferably avoid in understanding these media that we have created or are willing to create. The first of these is the illusion of control that we believe we have over the created technologies, whether they are the ones we consider to be clear, such as those for everyday uses, or the ones that scare us the most, those of artificial life and intelligence, or those of gene engineering. The second is that capitalist western approach that understands technologies as solutions to certain problems. The understanding of the world and of life itself as a matter of problems and solutions. Problems for which once we have developed the appropriate technology, ...

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Such an understanding -the technologies that we create being part of a process of diversification and exploration of nature creating through us- can lead us to consider perhaps in a closer and more horizontal way those relations with other forms of life and their biotechnologies. Thus, those of us who approach this comprehension, in a moment of inexhaustible crisis, deep fears, and much suffering, do trust life. I mean, we know that the complexity of life that has made its way through the contingent, the randomness, the indeterminate, the unexpected, will continue to do so. With human form or with other forms. With a multiplicity of associated organisms in the form of humans or associated in other forms, such as the superorganism which bacteria are, or the mycelium, wonderful entities.

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The knowledge and other forms of life that respond to the “what can we do?” question, although it is invisible to many, are decentralized, diversified in innumerable human and other living organisms’ communities, interspecies or inter-living-entities, whose weave as a network becomes increasingly complex and resistant. From the increasingly diverse feminist, or anti-racist, or anti-colonial, or anti-speciesist groups, to the cyanobacteria increasing their population rapidly in the sea, or the plants and animals moving to different climatic floors, the plants and plagues that sabotage monocultures, the seeds that fall from the hands of humans and other animals to diversify monocultures, ruderal plants, fungal communities doing bioremediation in spaces where oil has been spilled, or of course, bacterial resistance.

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With the previously shared idea that biotechnologies and living systems that have emerged from human creation processes, as nature itself’s creation processes, I want to propose an encounter between the internet as a living system and bacteria, which is not the understanding of a human high-level technology that connects with this living system, but the dialogue between living organisms that explore the possibilities of a symbiosis.

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My exploration as an artist is that of the possibility to create the bridge, the interface. However, the biggest difficulty is avoiding the determination of the possibilities that occur with the design of an interface. Here, the biggest question is: how to put these forms of life into dialogue without controlling the process?

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Existing technologies determine the one-way relations in which bacteria are smooth hard drives and nimble processors. How can these relations be different? Is there any chance that the internet and bacteria could cooperate to evolve into other life forms? How have we dialogued with other forms of life during our history as humans and not as westerns?

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In Suratómica the exploration continues about other ways of knowing, other ways to understand or comprehend, that can deal with not knowing, that can deal with the indeterminate, especially when knowing in a certain way, and this is frequently the case, implies stepping over the other ways of knowing or living. Because for the dominant forms of knowledge, knowing, knowledge, truth, and so on, are above ritual, mediation.

QFL is an exploration of those indeterminate ways of knowing. A way of creating that seeks to embrace living behavior as such. That calls for other politics/other relations with the living. A hybridization of ideas, disciplines, media, methodologies, and organisms.

For the inter-living-entities resistances to continue to break through together with the indisciplinary creative processes.