Odontodactylus scyllarus — also known as the peacock mantis shrimp — is a living being endowed with one of the most complex visual systems in the animal world. Capable of perceiving chromatic frequencies and light polarizations invisible to the human eye, its perception suggests the idea of a museum able to intercept what normally remains at the margins of visibility: marginal presences, latent temporalities, non-human languages, and situated forms of knowledge. Its ability to perceive circularly polarized light has also generated scientific studies exploring whether the mechanisms of its visual system could be replicated for reading CDs and optical devices for analog information storage. 

In this slippage between biological organism and recording technology, the mantis shrimp becomes a metaphor for mediation understood as a practice of decoding, translation, and access to otherwise imperceptible frequencies of reality. The Museum in Draft: Provisional Formats for Multispecies Mediation is a processual and situated project curated by Lisa Andreani that investigates the museum as a living tool and permanent draft, in which mediation can be understood as a practice of attunement between plural temporalities, ecological relations, and discursive forms.

Image: Peacock mantis shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus), seen at Réunion island in the Indian Ocean.

June 4, 2026, 6 PM
To Lecture or Not: Rough Cuts for a Living Museum
Talk with Giulia Grechi

June 5, 2026, 10 AM–6 PM
The Habitable Skin: Practicing Porous Coexistences
Workshop with Studio Coquille

July 1, 2026, 11 AM–7 PM
Museum as Carrier Bag: Practices for a Living Museum
Symposium