Inside the Jelly Basin
10 min. film with Sven Otte, Junya Fujita and Jakob Karpus

Jellyfish are an indicator of an ecosystem in transition. They were one of the first complex creatures on this planet but could also be among the last, as they benefit from rising temperatures and polluted seas. Little by little jellyfish are displacing all other species. The water is almost thick with jelly bodies. Their permanent process of cloning and modification, may be controlled individually but not as a whole.

Technically what appears as one jellyfish is an assemblage and symbiosis of specialized single celled organisms. As decentralized, metamorphic and queer organisms, jellyfish may be understood in opposition to a dualistic conception of the subject. Nature-culture, mind-body, man-woman create power imbalances with devastating consequences. Nowadays Biology rarely describes bodies as isolated individuals. Instead, the focus shifts to  the interaction between organisms. Jellyfish allow one to question one’s self-image as a singular entity.  The attempt to view political bodies separately from each other and not as a network led directly to a climate catastrophe and a pandemic emergency in which social isolation is no longer an omnipotent fantasy but a very real dystopia. The symbolically transparent body mutated to a psychological condition long since.