Our Spring 2022 Studio & Research resident duo Goldin+Senneby’s talk departs with zoologist Elie Metchnikoff piercing a citrus thorn into a starfish larva in 1882. This act pushed the legal concept of immunity into biology and introduced a violent new metaphor for imagining how living organisms coexist in this world. Goldin+Senneby revisit this moment from the perspective of living with an autoimmune condition.

Goldin+Senneby are Stockholm-based and have been working jointly since 2004. This presentation is part of our For Your Reference series, in which our residents share an important reference–whether a book, a film, person, plant, concept, or object–that propels their current mode of thinking and feeling.

This talk is co-presented with Triple Canopy.

Goldin+Senneby, Starfish and Citrus Thorn ImI(immune from judicial severity), 2021. Courtesy of the artists and Nome Gallery, Berlin.