During her residency at the Fundaziun Nairs in 2024, the artist Lena Violetta Leitner designed “training stations” for an institution called the Para(rt)sitic Protection Society (PPS). She has further developed this project for her solo exhibition in Nairs. PPS sees itself as an agency for parasites of all kinds and focuses on those organisms that are normally perceived as disruptive, harmful or parasitic. Drawing on scientific findings, Leitner uses parasitism as a metaphor to question societal notions of order, productivity and value, and to devise alternative forms of coexistence. On the ground floor of the Fundaziun Nairs, PPS itself functions as a parasitic organism that embeds itself within the institution’s existing infrastructure, adopting and altering its corporate identity. Various interactive stations invite visitors to get involved. PPS’s influence on its host is already evident at the information terminal at the entrance: the
Fundaziun Nairs becomes the Mutaziun Nairs, an allusion to the term mutation, which in biology refers to a permanent change in genetic material. A playful approach to language is evident time and again throughout the exhibition: for example, PPS transforms the advertising slogan “The fat years are over” from the FITIN gym chain into “The soft years are back”.
Three parasites, each of which, in its own way, turns prevailing (gender) order on its head, guide visitors through all the stations: the female isopod Cymothoa exigua, which attaches itself to the tongue of its host fish and takes over its function, encourages visitors to raise their own voices and take up more space. Cuscuta, a rootless plant that interconnects several host plants, contrasts capitalist competition with collective cooperation. And Wolbachia, a bacterium that resides in the egg cell of its female insect host and enables reproduction without fertilisation, encourages visitors to break free from what they have inherited and learnt. Visitors who actively engage with the exhibition by interacting with the chatbot at the computer station, taking some time out and using the fitness equipment are encouraged to rethink their own relationships with humans and other living beings – and perhaps to shape them in a more cooperative, caring and equitable way.