Kimberly d’ Amazing
Black Box: Starring Physarum polycephalum a slime mould non player

Medium: cardboard, paper, lights, balsa wood, recycled electronics, slime mould
Description : Boxes in art go back a long way. But dioramas, dollhouses, tableaus, miniatures and perspective boxes are not the only examples of how a container can be made to unify a set of disparate objects. A box can also delineate the boundaries of an idea, and so hold tiny pocket universes of their own. In the 20th century, Dada and Fluxus artists developed sets of artistic tools for overturning everyday life and everyday ways of thinking, and placed them around cities to be found by passers-by. These kits for personal happenings were designed to flumox, to confound rationality, to work on unfamiliar logics, and ultimately to radicalise the holder into becoming an outsider artist themselves. These dioramas won’t be grand as all that, and we’re not allowed to leave luggage in public places any more, but hopefully they will serve to continue the tradition of the box as a temporary, discombobulating, alternate reality. In this case one of a slime mould.

Kim is the name given to a particular patch of empty space, a human-shaped void that wanders among us as a person, a 165cm tall absence of the world. These days, scientists say that total nothingness still contains virtual potential, that the force of a vacuum causes nano-whatsits to pop in and out of existence in micro-jiffies, and that the big bang came from something similar. These are tiny bangs of Kim.

Self Poitrait Credit: Kimberly d’Amazing

Detail of Black Box Starring Physarum polycephalum a slime mould non player (2018) Image Credit: Nancy Mauro-Flude

Black Box Starring Physarum polycephalum a slime mould non player (2018) Image Credit: Nancy Mauro-Flude