From Mutualism to parasitism
Ho Yeun Jeoung
Goldsmiths CCA (Center for Contemporary Arts) was inaugurated in 2021 as a new public art gallery within the Grade II-listed former Victorian bathhouse. As the first significant public building project in Deptford in the history of the development of local government in this area of London.[1] The Laurie Grove Bath, built in 1898, has played a central public role for Lewisham’s local people. The main building, previously a public swimming pool, is now used as studio spaces for the Art Department’s students. The building of Goldsmiths CCA, adjacent to the main building, was used as slipper baths and public laundries. The gallery spaces were designed to preserve the historicity of the Bath by keeping and making more accessible the water tanks and service areas. Goldsmiths CCA puts forth their goal as an art institution within the university, which is to “enhance Goldsmiths’ reputation for excellence and innovation in the arts.”[2] It also says that “CCA will engage with the student population of Goldsmiths University and draw on the research excellence of the college, creating a feedback loop between emergent and established practices and academia.”[3]
Here, we can clearly see the emphasis on the relationship between Goldsmiths University and the CCA. Unlike other art institutions that stand independently, the Goldsmiths CCA cannot be separated from the university. Both spatially and conceptually, the Goldsmiths CCA is in a symbiotic relationship with Goldsmiths University. Symbiosis, meaning to live together, is a close relationship between two different species. It can be subdivided into two relationships: parasitism and mutualism. The word parasite has its origins in Greek parasitos. Sitos means ‘grain, bread, and food’ while the prefix para indicates ‘alongside, beyond; altered; contrary; irregular, abnormal’. Bluntly, parasite means to ‘feed beside', and stemming from this, the scientific meaning of the word is an animal or plant that lives on or in and at the expense of another. Usually, we view parasites negatively as entities lacking solidarity or independence. Unlike mutualism, where both the host and the guest can benefit, parasitism feeds off the host. But looking back at the Greek origin, the prefix also connotes ‘altered’, ‘contrary’, or ‘irregular’. It is not just the act of being beside the host but also altering it in contravention of the host’s original system.
Michel Serres, in his book Parasite, closely examines this ‘altering’ characteristic of parasites by saying that “The parasite invents something new. Since he does not eat like everyone else, he builds a new logic.”[4] Goldsmiths University, in their Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year 2023, clearly states their mission as follows: Achieving academic excellence, Radical and innovative thinking, Respecting the individual, Promoting access and diversity, Supporting our students and staff, Creating change locally and globally. These goals seem to be aligned with the mottos of Goldsmiths CCA: hosting “world-class exhibitions by international artists and providing a space for established and emergent practices” while reaching out beyond the university through staging a series of exhibitions and events with multiple entry points, appealing to the inhabitants of Lewisham, London, and internationally. Mutualism seems to be taking place here between the university and the CCA.
This kind of mutualism exists between the university and the students, the university, and the staff members. The university hosts its members within its infrastructure. Students and staff become guests. Usually, this relationship stays mutual if the host and the guest are facing the same goal. But looking at the current ‘The Transformation Programme', the university Senior Management Team seems to establish a power relationship between the host and the guest. They are trying to justify the transformation programme, including the 130 full-time equivalent compulsory redundancies and the restructure of the current Academic Department, merging the departments together without providing details and reasons behind the restructure, reducing the 3 schools and 18 departments to 2 faculties and 8 schools. Again, looking at the Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year 2023, the Goldsmiths Senior Management Team justifies their actions as ‘Building an Efficient and Effective Infrastructure’. In the report, they evaluate the “Recovery Programme, which launched in 2021, a change management program that aimed to reduce annual costs by £9.0 million by 2022–23. By the end of 2022–23, the Programme had achieved £7.6 million in cost reduction. The college’s cash position continued to improve in 2022–23 because of the savings found, but at a lower rate than the prior year. This improved cash position increases our ability to weather current and future challenges. Details are shown in the table below. The reduction in cash inflow was due to a combination of internal and external factors, primarily the settlement of amounts provided for in 2021–22. This included £2.1 million related to the Strike Assessment Award Scheme and a lower level of deposits and advance receipts from students towards their 2023–24 tuition fees.” The core goals and values of the educational institution cannot be seen here; what we see are the financial statistics. The restructure, proposed to address the deficit in cash balance, is now framed as a new future for the growth of the university. Andrew Hagman said that “infrastructure projects typically hinge upon significant investments in anticipation of future conditions manifesting; they are inherently speculative visions in the futurist and financial senses.” The framing that SMT uses, such as the words ‘recovery'’ two years ago and ‘transformation’ this year, as indicated by Hagman, seems to be promising a speculative and hopeful vision for a better future.
But this promise is hollow, self-contradicting the values of Goldsmiths University that were also put forth on the same page of the Annual Report document. The values underlying the university, the collective and accumulative structures of feeling of the students and the staff, are overrun by monetary values. As Felix Guattari says, “Capitalism has long been understood to have taken hold of our species from the inside.”[5] The infrastructure supporting neo-liberal values within universities has set up an up an uneven distribution of power between the host (the university) and the guest (participating members). Now the reciprocal relationship changes from mutualism to parasitism. The host “chases everyone out so that he can be the master of the house,”[6] just like Goldsmiths University’s redundancies to chase out 130 members of staff. However, the guest, the parasite, is not a passive being. Quoting Michel Serres once again, “Parasite is an inclination toward trouble, to the change of phase of a system.”[7] Even though parasites are usually regarded as relatively small species that feed from the host, they can “change the state of the collective system” even though “it is not a revolution, not even a reform; it is a little difference, a minimal action.”[8] Parasites become active forms of change. “The parasite is an exciter. Far from transforming a system, changing its nature, its form, its elements, its relations, and its pathways, the parasite makes it change states differentially. It inclines it. It makes the equilibrium of the energetic distribution fluctuate. It dopes it. It irritates it. It inflames it. Often this inclination has no effect. But it can produce gigantic ones by chain reactions or reproduction.”[9] As parasites, we inhabit the university, irritating it and changing its nature. Our mode of resistance is to “excite” the system. “Excite” by touching the level of feelings, emotions, historicity, and memories that underlie within the university. spatially, consciously, and collectively. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore says, “The infrastructure of feeling is then consciousness-foundation, sturdy but not static, that underlies our capacity to select, to recognize viscerally (no less than prudently) immanent possibility as we select and reselect liberatory lineages.”[10] Spatially, consciously, and collectively, the Transformation Programme, the restructure of the material infrastructure can be parasitized by finding modes of resistance and freedom within the infrastructure of feeling.
“The parasite intervenes, enters the system as an element of fluctuation. It excites it or incites it; it puts it into motion, or it paralyzes it. It changes its state, changes its energetic state, its displacement sand condensations.”[11] Until “The parasited, abused, cheated body no longer reacts, it accepts.”[12]
[1] https://sites.gold.ac.uk/goldsmithshistory/the-artesian-well-of-contemporary-art-laurie-grove-baths/
[2] https://goldsmithscca.art/about/
[3] Ibid.
[4] Michel Serres. Parasite, trans. Lawrence R. Schehr. Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1982. 35
[5] Bassam El Baroni. “Introduction: Infrapolitics after Infrastructure Space.” In Between Material And The Possible, edited by Bassam El Baroni. London: Sternberg Press & Oldenburg: Edith-Russ-Haus. 2022. 29.
[6] Michel Serres. Parasite, trans. Lawrence R. Schehr. Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1982. 202.
[7] Ibid. 191.
[8] Ibid. 192.
[9] Ibid. 191.
[10] https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/5387-ruth-wilson-gilmore-on-the-infrastructure-of-feeling
[11] Ibid. 191.
[12] Ibid. 202.
