garden

Mosses were among the first species to live on Earth, but will they be the last? What can humans learn from mosses about caring for life on Earth? “I Moss You” is a fabulation of three moss species and a rotifer that are sent into space for human menstrual care. Through a microscope, we get closer to the moss ecologies as they tell their stories and have conversations about past-present-future life on Earth and in space, centered on topics of menstrual health, sex and gender, technology and environmental justice. From the unexpected fact that sphagnum moss is used as sanitary napkins, as taught by bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, the film zooms in on neglected care relations between mosses and menstruation, and rotifers and vulvas. By fabulating mosses as celestial bodies wetted with stories and voices of their own, the film questions man’s desire to penetrate the atmosphere and dominate nature in space, such as in scientific experiments of growing moss at the international space station and testing the near immortality of micro-animals in outer space. Instead, the film invites us to speculate on what the interspecies relation of the moss-rotifer-vulva may tell us about caring for life on Earth. The title of the film hints at temporalities of social distance and artificial closeness, and what might be missed through extending time and space in lightyears and moon cycles in the search for something else. More importantly, the title is a tribute to the numerous times that the artist’s smartphone has insisted on autocorrecting I miss you to I moss you

I moss you, Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard © 2022

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Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard

I Moss You

Three moss species and a rotifer are sent into space for human menstrual care. Moss as a celestial body could be a projection of man’s perspective and desire to control and dominate nature in space. What might the cohabitation of moss, rotifer and vulva tell us about caring for life on Earth?