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Set up like a jaw. Gnathic. Run your tongue over your teeth. Most adults have 32. It is warm, nutrient-rich, continuously bathed with saliva; a pH of between 6.75 and 7.25. Ivory towers protruding from wet mass of human gum that had been intended to be scrubbed polished and sanitized. We believed in the pure autonomous body. Distinct from the the onslaught of bacterial-other we believed continually threatening its entrance into us. But the mouth is warm. It is, according to the USDA, center in temperature at which not to place food. The "Danger Zone." Harbors a diverse, abundant and complex microbial community. And different species thrive on the front of our teeth than on the reverse. Plaque is resultant the corruption of the mouth’s homeostasis. When your teeth feel furry. More than 600 bacterial species comprise the plaque microflora that exists on surfaces within the oral cavity and, like belly button's lint, bacterially so diverse it is more unique than fingerprints. Teeth are more like timbers green in the ocean. In November 2014 headlines declare, "A ten second kiss transfers 80 million bacteria." A journalist discovers his belly-button contains bacteria not found outside the soil of Japan. The man has never been to Japan. And Japanese sake is poured by researchers down lab rat's noses to introduce lactobacillus into their artificially bacterially amok sinuses. The social practice of kissing derives from parental feeding through mouth-to-mouth regurgitation between mother and child, which like the vaginal birth's bacterial transference, populate the infant’s sterile gastrointestinal tract, aiding in a diverse gut flora and against colonization by large numbers of E. coli and streptococci found in most feces. Fixed appliances like orthodontic hardware cemented to teeth increases the habitat for bacteria, and after eating an Oreo smiling revealed teeth covered in chewed black goo. There are “good bacteria” and “bad bacteria.” Complete your own at-home fecal transplant with a Youtube instructional. Make sure you lay down a trash bag or tarp. The rats insufflating sake did clear their sinusitis. That we are not ourselves. No object is itself. But collections of sedimented energies, desires, biomes, utilities and images. Rubbermaid Brutes were shaped by a human with desires that are latent in the curve of its lip. The last centuries' want for objects maintaining autonomy and austerity caused problems in the long run attempting their clean self. The definition of clean is going to be entirely different in 20 years. Traditional native methods of burying rotting fish in the dirt to ferment has much lower chance of causing food sickness than doing the same in sterile plastic buckets. Food Grade plastic which is not impermeable and food-safe such the LLDPE of Rubbermaid Brute TM creates anaerobic conditions favorable to botulism. Looks like a teether. The exhibition title: quasi-homonymic and homologous parent and parrot, social reproduction and each becoming the other. Lupo's sculptures are like these things.
See too: Nancy Lupo at 1857