ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2016, eleven people sat down together around a table at Medical Museion, a university museum and interdisciplinary research group at the University of Copenhagen, with the aim of making an exhibition together. 1 At the initial meeting, the group had little more than a thematic starting point: the rapidly growing scientific research interaction between gut, brain, and bacteria, alongside the long history of investigations into our “gut feelings.” Beyond this, the team had a space to fill, a newly renovated basement in the museum, and a title: Mind the Gut. Alongside curatorial staff from the museum, the group consisted of three artists and two biomedical scientists, chosen from a pool of 155 applicants that responded to an open call for collaborators. 2 The project was an experiment that aimed to find out what would happen when both artists and scientists were given access to the “total medium” of the exhibition, working with in-house curators from the very start. The entire team was to be involved in everything from the overall approach and framing, to the selection of cases and themes, installation design, and marketing messages. 3 We found gut-brain-bacteria interaction research to be a poignant case study for this kind of experiment, as it involves complex, unsettled science focused on a sophisticated, environmentally entangled body, where science-society relations are easy to see and fast-evolving.
