Musings on mycelial collaborations and (perma)culture

By Natalia Borissova

What possible intelligent natural systems can we look to for guidance and inspiration in the patterning of our human living environments, and for sketching out a kind of positive vision for a resilient post-culture? What features of resilience in nature can we map onto our human cultural systems? Granted, there’s nothing new in assigning to the “artist” the multifunctional role of a “mushroom,” nor in trying to cultivate culture through a mycophilic lens where everything is supposed to be mushrooms and magic, but still – when talking about collaboration and culture, we can’t overlook the lowly mycelium (vegetal part of a fungus).

Looking at forestry, farming and permaculture of natural systems, mycelia links all the elements of these environments together, redistributes resources according to need, converts rock into food for other species, increases soil depth and richness (like an ingenious farmer or a mushroom-engineer). Mycelia does cardinal, life-enhancing work on a grassroots, upside-down level (like a good artist). And when the conditions are right, the mycelia’s multifarious fruits rise up overnight, feeding critters, opening minds, bestowing the world with beauty, and seeding other mycelial systems.

By analogy with mycelia as the vegetal part of a fungal culture, a “resilients-organism” (“resilium”) could be compared with a mycorrhizal fungus which spreads out widely through time and space, popping up in the most unexpected places to spark joyful illuminations. It adsorbs reality upside down, digests it externally by freely relishing enzymes of knowledge, and makes it available for other organisms to feast on. Efforts of the resilium need to be focused on the cultivation of healthy soil (aka a non-discriminative and co-creative environment), but when conditions are right, fruiting bodies emerge – flotilla feasts, mountain bear missions, remote sensing flight operations, shroomshops, augmented harvests and many other unique happenings. These fruiting materialisations respond to prevailing conditions and circumstances, and can be repeated in various forms as other creatures from all walks of life join in. The vaster the resilium, the more extravagant the fruiting bodies are that arise from the fertile undergrowth.

What layout or design of our environment-gardens could be “nature-logical”? I suggest that it is one that is “open” and links many possible components and organisms into one heterogeneous kingdom of useful relationships and mutually beneficial connections – among microbes, plants, insects, birds, mammals, and all the other inhabitants of our world, including people.

When each individual organism has multiple roles and interconnections within this kind of ecosystem, edges can be optimised and resources reused. Problems, limitations and mistakes can be embraced creatively, and the environment thrives. There is no need to impose connections from the outside, as each of the ecosystem’s parts is self-organising. The design of this interconnected, self-sustaining ecosystem differs from the conventional, monocultural approach, where the parts are mostly disconnected from each other and serve just one single purpose within the system.

If we believe that cultural communities are real and not merely constructs used for formal and pragmatic convenience, and that they can arise partly for the sake of mutual benefit among their members and come to act somewhat like whole organisms, maybe we can apply these kinds of models and principles for growing a resilium network?