Biotechnologies and the Web of Life

The Synthetic Sacred is a new action-research initiative curated by Lucy Rose Sollitt that explores pathways for ecological restoration amidst hybridity. For this episode, we consider biotechnologies within the context of indigineous cosmologies. Might reframing biotechnologies in the context of the sacred web of life be useful in guiding innovation towards the creation and restoration of flourishing and generative ecologies? 

When formulated within the modern paradigm the products of biotech tend towards the extraction, alienation and entrapment of life, both natural and synthetic. These tendencies disregard (willfully or otherwise) knowledge of the intricate web of life found in many indigenous cosmologies, whereby each living thing is able to fulfil its (sacred) purpose within the ecology it is part of.