Text elaborated by the Institute for Postnatural Studies that continues the line of research that arose thanks to the participation in the residency "El Aire Tiene Peso" at MediaLab Prado, developed together with the mediator and researcher Silvia Teixeira.

The project Postnatural gardening. Ecological practices for interspecies care conceived for the Agorà space at MUSE — Musee delle Scienze in Trento, intends to review the relationships between human cultures and plant worlds, inviting us to shift our anthropocentric gazes on herbs, trees, their flowers and fruits, mushrooms and lichens and to embrace inclusive horizontal visions towards all more-than-human beings, creating interspecies alliances based on empathy and coexistence.

This research traces the relations between hygiene, microbes and domestic design through the concept of sterilisation, shifting from a one-sided concern with human health to a postnatural perspective in which relationships between species come to the fore. To achieve a post-anthropocentric approach toward contemporary design, we propose looking at contemporary philosophers and scientists such as Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, and Lynn Margulis to stop perceiving microorganisms as a threat in design and instead see them as our allies for interdisciplinary practices of co-designing.