‘Living with fungi’ project is a speculative future narrative created collaboratively with Mathilde Lasnier and it is a multispecies worldbuilding practice. The narrative talks about a non-anthropocentric future scenario in which human- fungi and plastic relationship is discussed. These characters are chosen to criticize the anthropocentric consumerist lifestyle, their effects on nonhuman and the growing waste problem worldwide. The story bases itself from scientific research on fungi species who are capable of decomposing plastic material by fully digesting them. They are called Pestalotiopsis Microspora (PM) and currently some companies are experimenting with them to alter their genes and make them digest plastic faster so they can be economically profitable. To ground the project further, several hands-on experiments were done collaboratively, and we were able to grow P.M. fungi at our homes and domestic environments in which we shared our environments in real-life. 

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By building on this research, in the future speculation, these types of fungi species spread uncontrollably because of ambitious experiments and enters the domestic environments where plastic waste is found immensely. The fungi occupation in people’s homes forces them to find ways of cohabitation of the domestic environments with them. Cohabitation requires adapting to each other, thinking about who benefits and how in the relationship and ends in a symbiosis-like relationship through the plastic material. Building on this future speculative narrative, the project proceeds with prop-making. This prop attempts to give a hypothesis on how this relationship and environment would look. The prop is the animation of an imagined scene in this narrative where human, fungi and plastic meet on a table. Also, bringing the ‘fika’ ritual of Swedish people, we bring everyone together at a table.