Ursula Biemann's work "Twenty One Percent" offers a poetic-radical approach to this. Amidst the oxygen-rich forest, a science fiction actress (Mo Diener) manipulates a variety of ingredients: minerals, forest fruits, liquids, and other substances. Some of them are known as potential human food, others are not. Spanning from the cosmos to the kitchen, the video is an exploration of the capacity of chemical elements. It focuses on the materiality and processes by which human and other organic bodies are kept alive, intensifying relationships with the diverse, living world in which all living things are integrated in a circular way.

 

Materials cannot be reused indefinitely, as their quality and quantity decreases with each cycle. Therefore, the overall material consumption must also be reduced. Lower resource consumption combined with innovation offers possible solutions. Marika Verploegh and Theanne Schiros, a shoemaker/designer and a scientist, take this approach further with their microbial, cyclical sneaker. The entire manufacturing process is sustainable and value-preserving. Verploegh and Schiros found and adapted the processes that make the novel material bendable and workable from ancient indigenous cultural techniques. The microbial sneaker, created in collaboration with Public School: for OnexOne, a New York brand rooted in circularity, is a transcultural ambassador, an object that symbolizes the shift away from "fast fashion" toward a fashion culture of sustainability. This symbol is understood by a young generation from New York to Nairobi, from Bern to Lima. Current scientific research, design and craftsmanship work hand in hand to make natural processes applicable to fashion.

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The material innovation and technology  was achieved by Theanne Schiros in scientific partnership with Prof. Helen Lu and Romare Antrobus of Columbia University Biomedical Engineering. Schiros was partnered with Public School NY, a brand known for its focus on circularity and sustainable production. They developed a sneaker which is fully biodegradable and colored with natural dyes. Bespoke shoemaker, Anne Marika Verploegh Chassé, built the sneakers.

 

Collaborative, transcultural and transdisciplinary thinking is also at the heart of Theanne Schiros' search for natural dyes. She joins with traditional artisans from Kindia, Guinea, to learn directly from nature. The process was documented by photographer Jon Brown for the project "6876KM." Writer and poet David Kaiza explores a place in Kampala, Uganda, the Ekilawuli Glass Recycling Community Art Centre, which combines these approaches in an artistic-creative way and tries to find new approaches for a circular society through the recycling process.