Gut Reactions: The Microbiome and Human Nature
· exhibition
Alex May took part in Gut Reactions at Princeton, a two-day environmental humanities event that brought art interventions, dialogue, and symposium discussion to questions around the microbiome and human life.
Alex May took part in Gut Reactions: The Microbiome and Human Nature at Princeton University on 30 and 31 March 2016, as part of The Multispecies Salon: Environmental Humanities Dialogues organised through the Princeton Environmental Institute. Staged at Butler College, Studio ‘34 Cafe, the event brought together discussion, art, and environmental humanities research around the ways microbial life shapes human bodies, homes, and ideas of nature.
The first day combined a keynote lecture with a reception and art interventions by Anna Dumitriu, Alex May, and Kathy High. The second day moved into a symposium format, with panels on microbial ecologies, microbiopolitics, mind control, and human-microbe dynamics. That structure mattered because it positioned May’s contribution inside a broader conversation about sensing, surveillance, embodiment, and the changing cultural meaning of invisible life.
In relation to May’s wider practice, the event sits at a point where digital art, biology, and public discourse were being drawn tightly together. Rather than isolating technology as a separate subject, Gut Reactions placed it within questions of ecological entanglement, bodily experience, and the systems through which life is observed, interpreted, and made socially legible.