Get Married with your Living Dress

Mycelium wedding dress on view at the interspecies wedding chapel

The gown can be visited in a small wedding chapel in the Hara Hachi Bu Village. In the chapel, non-human life forms can marry humans. For Hendriks, his favorite non-human life is the mycelium of the oyster mushroom (Pleurotus cornucopiae). Fashion designer Conny Groenewegen will contribute to the designing of the dress. It will be composed of mycelium-filled cotton athletic socks because, as Hendriks puts it, " White athletic socks look a little like the fungal threads that make up mycelium and at the same time are a nutritious meal for the fungus." Moreover, Hendriks has a large quantity of socks available that will be used in the production of a mycelium tower in the center of the village: "We are building a pigeon tower with the waste material of oyster mushroom grower John Verbruggen from Erp. Such a tower attracts enormous biodiversity, edible fungi grow on it, and the tower gives a nice picture of the cycle." It's temporary, living architecture for non-human life." "Getting married is a joke, of course, but a joke that does something to your consciousness for a while."

Hara Hachi Bu Village

The mycelium wedding dress is part of Mediamatic's contribution to Hara Hachi Bu Village, organized by MU. In this village, a temporary collective of artists, designers, musicians and tinkerers will practice stepping back to make room for the other and for other forms of thinking, feeling, designing and making. Hara haha bu means: Eat until you are 80% full. So don't eat until you can't eat anymore, but eat until you are no longer hungry. It is the advice people give each other at the beginning of a meal on the Japanese island of Okinawa. It's an invitation to reserve a little space, for the other person, for example.