Acantamoebas are free living, ubiquitous (existing or being everywhere) occurring amoebas. The one celled microorganisms appear in water sources such as tap water, well water, hot tubes, bottled mineral water and even in dust and air.

A Keratitis is an inflammation of the cornea of the eye, it can be caused by bacterial, viral, fungal or amoebic infections.

An Acantamoeba Keratitis is a rare but very serious and potentially blinding infection of the cornea that mostly, but not solely, appears among contact lens wearers, mostly due to a contamination of the contact lens case caused by poor hygiene.

Apart from contact lens wearers, agricultural workers from India and pigs belong to the risk group that are most likely to develop Acantamoeba Keratitis.

Contact lens containers and contact lenses, when not handled properly, cleansed, rubbed, disinfected and aired on a daily basis are the perfect breeding ground for the, in water occurring, amoebas. Contact lenses are sliding on the cornea of the eye, when you take them in and out, or when you are blinking. Through these frictions they causes small lesions in the cornea of the eye, which is normally not problematic because the cornea constantly grows again. But these lesions allow the amoeba to enter the cornea of the eye and start to engulf and eventually feed on your cornea cells.

It is very likely that all of us have our lenses and container contaminated by a few amoebas, but amoebas can become a threat when their number explodes from hundred thousands to millions. There is actually space for a million amoebas on your contact lens! And when only some of them decide to feed on cornea cells of your eyes...

Agricultural workers in india might get lesions in the cornea through hey or dust and get infected, by rinsing the eye in contaminated water.

Pigs, whose eyes have a close anatomical similarity to the human eye, are observed to develop the infection, when fitted with parasite-laden soft contact lenses in the frame of animal testing, fostering investigations of the immunology, cell biology, and therapy for Acanthamoeba keratitis.

Structure of the workshop

1st Part
education, information, prevention

I want to propose a format in which I first make the participants/ spectators aware of the omnipresence of amoabas and the potential threat of Acantamoeba Keratitis.
I claim that my expertise on this subject derives from my experiences as a contact lens wearer and the involvement in a study of the Abteilung für Medizinische Parasitologie der Karl Franzens Universität, testing the Acantamoeba contamination of contact lens cases and corneas.

I will also introduce and share/ teach the preventive measures (special cleaning rituals) I developed for avoiding breeding amoebas in your contact lens case, and offer a check up for lenses and containers.
This first part could be very didactical, with some analogies to sexual education. I will try to convey my pseudo-scientific approach with as much seriousness as possible.

2nd Part confession, phobia

Then there is a shift, where I confess that I actually developed a serious phobia of Acantamoebas swimming between my contact lenses and the cornea of my eye, that my contact lens cleaning rituals become quite time consuming, and I often hesitate to put the contact lenses into my eyes at all. That I wear glasses more and more often, even if this makes me half blind in the swimming pools and dance classes...

3rd part
post humanistic self hypnosis, circle of life

Then I want to propose a (slightly ironic) post humanistic self hypnoses/ mantra/ somatic journey. It aims to reduce the fear of contamination, not seeing amoebas as enemies but reconciling with them. What do humans and amoebas have in common? How can we develop empathy towards them and ascribe them subjectivity? How can we become aware of our shared genetic heritage and even approximate the experience of being an amoeba?

This part has a more spiritual, therapeutic nature and leads to a physical exploration with the participants.

Parts of the mantra/ self- hypnoses could look like this:

I affirm of the fact that amoebas are everywhere.

This is nothing to be afraid of!!

Amoebas have been around for billions of years. Amoebas play a key role in any functioning ecological system, I appreciate them for that.

They live in soil and in water; in salty water and sweet water. There are free living and parasitic type of amoebas, naked amoebas and amoebas with shells. Even some cells in the human body, white blood cells and cells of the saliva move in an amiboid manner.

Existing means always coexistence, with the visible and the invisible.

I allow for new lines of empathy, affinity and respect between different forms of life, both human and nonhuman to occur.

From the day we arrive on the planet; my body is a space and time for trade, traffic and exchange for ideas, nutrients, microorganisms and sexual partners.

This is nothing to be afraid of!!

It's the Circle of Life.

Your body is not yours; it is nourished by, invaded by, cohabited by and after your death decomposed by other plants, animals, bacteria and viruses.

Who we are, is always a result of a co-evolution with other life forms, with whom we are in a negotiation process/ conflict about space and resources.

We are parasites and hosts, we are predator and prey. Every live form is just trying to sustain itself.

Our beginnings and endings are blurry. Each interaction or contact affects us; may it be with contact lenses, preservatives, skin or garbage; and always implies an exchange of microflora.

Sex, infection and food are old relatives.

This is nothing to be afraid of!!

Concluding thoughts:

I see the uncanniness of microorganisms in their omnipresence, yet invisibility.
Wether they are peacefully coexisting or causing infections is mostly not perceivable and predictable in advance, but only after an incubation period.
Hygiene remains its paradoxical position as a preventive measure. At times helpful, other times insufficient and sometimes even counterproductive, destroying the microflora of the body, causing a lot of obsessions and phobias.
Also hygiene is often associated with cleaning and water, although anything humid is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria and consequentially for microorganism that feed on them.

I choose to focus on Acantamoeba infection, since it is common in Austria and the eye is one of the most sensitive, with not so many barriers equipped, part of our body.

Finding and suggesting alternative relational modes between microorganisms/ amoebas and humans and thus challenge our perception of self and other remains my main interest.