Big Bacteria for Micro-Humans. Bacteria as an archeological - ecological nexus for an integrative form of health and heritage research

This article sketches out some aspects of an integrated mode of health and heritage research, in reference to the research network entitled Big Bacteria. Its aim is to establish an interdisciplinary research platform between the natural and the health sciences the arts and the humanities, in order to strengthen the latter in the light of rapid biotechnological advances and related worldviews. The text presents necessary methodological bridges and a model case with ambition to advance the “transitory” resort between the Arts and the Sciences entitled Micro-Humanities. Its minimal goal is to supplement the visual culture approach with the one based on material culture. Since bacterium as res vivens exhibits a form of organization that is responsible for interpreting and changing the processes it is involved in, it serves as central model for individuation, agency and selfhood, observing and interpreting systems. Being the oldest, smallest, most abundant and structurally simplest organisms, bacteria are ubiquitous, diverse and variant, as well as vital for all other life forms. They require to be treated not only as indispensable motives, metaphors and models of knowledge, but also as material, medium and methods for its acquiring as well. As their taxonomy unambiguously suggests, bacteria are the facts of the permanently changing and sensing living matter. The contribution focuses on an important case of the bacteria’s agency to be systematized and related to the research on bioremediation and biodeterioration (breakdown of materials by microbial action).