We, the microorganisms traveling in the mouths of humans and their canine companions, carry stories older than our hosts themselves. Our journeys, traced through saliva, span continents and generations…

Saliva is among our oldest meeting places—a site of exchange, a fluidic architecture where we all blur into each other. At a given time, there are typically twenty billion bacteria in my dog’s mouth. They are from me, my lover, your neighborhood, Milan, and countless other beings who we have crossed paths with.

Some of us are stories of displacement. We come from diverse places, ecologies, climates and dwell into new relationships, new homes. Our recent dogs carry traces of microorganisms from our past dogs. As we travel in the mouths of our fellow companions, they also carry us along with traces of dust, food, and distant geographies, as we pass on from species to species.

Salivations explores our intertwined microbial histories of displacement and belonging through the interspecies landscape of saliva. The installation consists of a series of structures made of chewing gum who spent time in the mouths of Çaça, Bailey, Kahve, and Gatsby. Our companions are immigrants, adoptions, strays who have seen the complex political realities, from Turkey's recent law that stripped stray dogs of their streets, thrusting them into uncertain futures, to the United States, where debates on breeding, shelters, and belonging shape new stories of kinship, responsibility, and care.

Through DNA sequencing, we investigated which microorganisms humans and their dogs share. We felt encouraged to see the traces of the numerous places we have been, the ghosts of our beloved ones we carried forward, the climates endured, all do exist in saliva, we call home. 

Fluid architecture

1. Mouths and stories. The microorganisms inhabiting saliva have stories to tell, from even before their host bodies.

From mouth of mouth: microbial pasts, prior futures.

2. Fluid architectures. Saliva is one of our oldest meeting points.

Spaces for exchange, microbial homes.

3. Relational material. Saliva is a fluid architecture constructed from a diversity of geographies, ecologies and climates.

Moist landscapes, intrascalar material.

4. Ourselves but blurred.  The microorganisms in the mouth are as much ours as they are of the beings we cross paths with. They adapt from host to host.

Hybrid happenstances, interspecies identities, mutant collectives.

5. Moist alliances. The saliva in humans and in their canine companions bear witness to past and present ways of living side by side.

Companion saliva, abiding among.

6. Displacement stories. Microorganisms are also bearers of stories of forced displacements, of humans, dogs and so many other species.

Migrations and ecological banishments. 

7. Microbial spectra. In saliva, there are bits of food and dust living side by side with traces from far-off geographies and remote interactions. 

• Salivations
• Orkan Telhan + elii [oficina de arquitectura]
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• Team:
• Orkan Telhan, Uriel Fogué, Eva Gil, Carlos Palacios
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• Exhibiton: 
• We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture, 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition.
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• Curators: 
• Beatriz Colomina, Mark Wigley
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• Collaborators:
• Dr. Ilkay Civelek, Teresa Martínez, Javier Élices, Jorge Zurita, María Silva
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• Production:
• Damiano Benuzzi 
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• Participants:
• Un gran grupo de otros microbianos y sus compañeros caninos/humanos, entre ellos Bailey, Arzu, Çaça, Fatih, Kahve, Betül, Gatsby, Jason
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• Acknowledgements:
• Lorenzo Airaghi, Leonardo Benuzzi, Enrico Forestieri, Riccardo Momesso, Stefano Marelli, Nina Alejandra Mesia, Dr. Deniz Oguz. Giulio Pellizzoni, Gumbase, Cafosa.
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• Photographs:
• Allegra Martin
• https://allegramartin.it/ 
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• Surface:
• 15,00m2
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• Date:
• 2025
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• Location:
• Triennale Milano, Milán