Mycelium Academy

The Mycelium Academy adapts art as its framework to propose situational, game-like multi-sensory learning, alongside cross-cultural and interdisciplinary co-learning strategies. The myceliem refers to the complex system formed by fungal mycelia in the soil interacting with various species to transmit messages, communicate, and exchange and redistribute nutrients, forming diverse symbiotic and parasitic cross-species community relationships. These systems also display various mutually beneficial computational abilities, serving as a metaphorical space and platform for symbiotic and cooperative learning.

The series of activities interweave intellectual and affective layers through the proposals, research, and guidance of different collaborators and artists. 24 hrs Sleep Experiment: Hibernation into the Mycelium World employs biological experimental methods to let participants experience special states of sleep, rest, and hibernate while exploring the physiological and socio-cultural potential of human hibernation, aiming to balance natural rhythms by adjusting body perception and metabolic rates. Let’s Become Fungal uses reading group, foraging, tasting, and crafting to understand the ecology of fungi and inspire potential fungal life practices. Mind-Skin Code: On Our 36,000 Fungal Sexes explores the space of haptic language and knowledge production, using the reproductive traits of fungi to emphasize the importance of tactile information through physical exercises and vector analysis to depict the inner and outer aspects of collective empathy. On Waters and Mind-Skin Code: The Silent Hands take place in the unique natural setting of Bosque Pehuén, a forest conservation area in Chile, where participants engage in multi-sensory development, meditation practices, and the imagining and building of symbiotic relationships. The final event of the year, Southern Co-op, uses a research-based board game to invite participants to revisit the colonial era of Japanese-ruled Taiwan, experiencing the tensions between politics, economics, and environmental ecology through competition in planting, processing, and development, reflecting on the meaning of human and nature coexisting cooperatively.

These workshops emphasize bodily participation and sensory development while borrowing from diverse knowledge systems to create new logical thought processes; using unfamiliar senses and awareness to redefine one's relationship with the world—questioning what it means to be together and what defines a community.

Moss Piglets operates and hopes that these co-learning programs will offer participants nourishing thoughts and creative actions that can ferment and regenerate within their life experiences; life itself becomes a classroom without walls, forming a dynamic process of creating situations and events.

Curator: Esther Lu

Artist and collaborator: Huang Ding-Yun, Henry Tan, Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodriguez, Chen Szu Han, Keting Chen, Weed Day, Wang Yung An, Su Yu Hsin, Wu Chi-Yu, Rikey Tenn,

Photographer: Chuang Po Yao, Wang Yung An, Esther Lu, Josefina Astoraga

Special thanks to Christina Liu, Maya Errazuriz, Bernardita Perez

Venue: Bo Zhu Villa, the Place x there, Grassland, Treasure Hill, Kishu An Forest of Literature

The program is sponsored by National Culture and Arts Foundation