Enya Burger
guided by memories
December 5, 2024 – February 15, 2025In guided by memories, Enya Burger uses the slime mold Physarum polycephalum as a central artistic medium. This organism, positioned between fungus, animal, and plant, forms complex networks, adapts to its environment, and illustrates the interplay between natural and digital systems, as well as concepts such as intelligence and adaptability. Although the slime mold has only been intensively studied for about 15 years, it has been mentioned in Nordic myths since the 16th century, which describe its formation process as magical. Burger uses this organism to combine scientific and mythological approaches with technological realities, to question existing structures, and to raise new perspectives on the relationship between humans, the environment, and social and urban systems.
The incubator cultivates and monitors a slime mold, with its growth being recorded in real-time. The data is processed and modulates sounds that are played through speakers in converted butter churns. These data are wirelessly transmitted and appear in the labyrinth, where they become audible as sonic representations of the biological process. The layout of the labyrinth recalls scientific experiments in Petri dishes and alludes to the fusion of technology and natural systems in research. These sounds expand the visual experience with an acoustic dimension, enhancing the collective spatial experience. Burger refers to this as the "sonification of a mythological memory," and by combining different perception levels, the art experience becomes a bodily-sensory one. This intensifies the reflection on the perception of intelligence and technology, as the installation imprints itself not only on cognitive memory but also on physical memory.
The slime mold has become a model organism in science due to its remarkable problem-solving abilities. By storing and retrieving memories, as the exhibition's title suggests, it can navigate complex mazes, identify dead ends, and then reorient itself. Its ability to discover new and efficient paths is used in experiments to better understand decision-making mechanisms and adaptive behavioral strategies. These cognitive abilities provide insights into simple organisms and serve as inspiration for the development of artificial intelligence and self-organizing systems.
Other works in the exhibition come from the series Sample Residue, Slime is Memory, and the Loupe Series. Sample Residue addresses power structures in hegemonic knowledge production and questions digital inclusion and its societal impacts. The engravings on Petri dishes and sample holders reflect the emergence of slime and include historical gender associations, where women were blamed for the appearance of slime and linked to witchcraft. These objects merge scientific and mythological elements and serve not for scientific knowledge acquisition but for artistic research, uniting different forms of knowledge.
In Slime is Memory, the artist poetically explores the metaphorical and physical properties of the slime mold. The term slime is associated with adaptability, invisible presence, decay, and memory. The slime mold is portrayed as an organism that exists between life and death, simultaneously collective-intelligent and chaotic and repulsive. The work presents the slime mold as a source of knowledge and memory, exploring the tension between biological existence and digital systems. The intense yellow color corresponds to the slime mold itself, which the artist directly transferred from the Petri dish to the paper using a brush.
The Loupe Series consists of aluminum plates with UV printing, including displays in deep frames. In the work Milk Hare, a hole cutout with an attached magnifying glass provides a view of a display showing mythological scenes of a ‘milk-hare’ that vomits slime out of greed. The UV prints feature microscopic images of the slime mold. The works alter scale, make the invisible visible, and emphasize the filtering effect of perception through optical tools, technologies, and cultural narratives. They connect scientific and mythological narratives and address the act of seeing both literally and metaphorically. In doing so, they shed light on hidden dimensions of growth and transformation—the continuous change in nature, society, and knowledge production. The empiricist philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) argued that knowledge is based on sensory impressions, yet he distinguished between primary qualities, which exist independently of the observer, and secondary qualities, which arise only through perception. He showed that perception does not convey reality itself, but merely its representation. Through the Loupe Series, the artist questions the hierarchy between scientific and mythological knowledge, attributing equal significance to both in the construction of reality and asserting that forms of knowledge cannot be reduced to ‘truth’ and ‘fiction.’
Enya Burger's transdisciplinary practice questions the late-capitalist ideology of progress, as well as the notion that technological innovations are necessary and unstoppable. Scientific knowledge and its practical applications have only partly advanced humanity, often leading to devastating outcomes responsible for global inequality and crises. The slime mold is presented as a paradigm of alternative knowledge systems, offering new approaches to adaptability and transformation. The exhibition makes clear that, alongside rational knowledge, openness to mythological knowledge and the unforeseen is necessary to develop sustainable solutions to the pressing challenges of the present. Inspired by the extraordinary memory capacity of the slime mold, guided by memories serves as a reminder of the importance of memory –both biological and cultural– as a fundamental foundation for knowledge production.
– Text von Teresa Retzer
Enya Burger (*1996, lives and works in Düsseldorf) graduated in 2024 from the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied under Prof. Gregor Schneider. Prior to that, she studied under Prof. Marcel Odenbach, and graduated as a “master student” in 2021. In 2024, Burger was awarded the 78th International Bergische Art Prize.
Her works have been exhibited, among others, in the Philara Collection (2023), Kunstmuseum Solingen (2024), Philipp von Rosen Gallery, and at New Positions Art Cologne (2024).