Post-Compost: Interspecies co-creation and the spectrality of fake food

Post-Compost is a practice-based research project that explores interspecies co-creation through the ecological, cognitive and cultural logics of decomposition. Through performing the aesthetics of the scientific method, the project juxtaposes ‘real’ and ‘fake’ compost – natural food waste and Styrofoam-filled food – within an experimental biomimicry system aided by non-human agents: Zophobas morio (colloquially, the superworm) and Pestalotiopsis microspora (a plastic-eating fungus). These species, which have been studied for their capacity to digest synthetic materials such as Styrofoam and polyurethane, are mobilized here to propose gut-level and mycelial forms of the bioremediation of synthetic matter into living systems. Through a speculative artistic methodology that claims no true empiricism, what remains ‘post-compost’ after the superworms consume the Styrofoam are both faeces-as-substrate and hollow fake food skins as the precursors to future fungal structures. Drawing upon the post-humanities, Derrida’s notion of hauntology and the psychology of defamiliarization, this project frames a theoretical yet materially grounded aesthetic reaction to the anthropogenic plastic waste crisis.