This book examines how our understanding of human sexuality and human body changes through the processes of mediation unfolding at the intersection of nonhuman life and the Internet. It analyses performances and simulations of human subjectivity, as well as digital image manipulation strategies that generate novel visions of bodily and sexual mutations, in the context of new materialist philosophies – especially those focusing on dark materialities and posthumanism. Such philosophies employ the concept of the material dynamics of nonhuman life as a speculative tool to engage with technological mediations. There is a radical nonhuman dimension to the
performances of bodily mutations on the part of some Internet users. I am interested in examining those mutations as a way of probing various new possibilities of life, in its corporeal and sexual dimensions. With a view to this, I turn to fungi as a conceptual device which offers some crucial insights into the generativity of living matter. Fungi play a fundamental role in the decomposition of ecologies. They can process the most complex organic bodily forms, including potentially toxic or polluting bio-compounds, break them down and enable new mutant fusions. In this way, fungi revitalise environments by getting rid of obsolete body structures, releasing bioenergy into circulation and making this energy available for other life forms. My work aims to translate those fungal behaviours into visual and conceptual strategies for rethinking human subjectivity, in particular human sexuality and the
human body, on and off the Internet. The concept of ‘fungi media’ will serve for me as a figuration for articulating those transformative processes.