In April 2025, the global grassroots movement “United Holobiontic Protection Alliance” (UHPA) was founded. Judith Egger donned a cockroach costume, while the group’s other three holobionts* were made primarily of organic material. Each of these holobionts represents a metaorganism that harbors many smaller organisms. It is an important part of the “web of life” that sustains us all. Most holobionts speak languages inaudible to humans, which is why Judith Egger has volunteered to speak for them and advocate for their interests and rights. The first manifesto of the United Holobiontic Protection Alliance, which Judith Egger presented to the audience in a universal spoken language, was an urgent call to respect the interests and rights of the holobionts and to protect the fragile balance of life on Earth. The UPAH advocates for a new relationship with all living things, one that is not characterized by dominance, separation, and subjugation, but rather by an understanding of mutual dependence and deep interconnectedness.
To underscore the urgency of this cause, a large gathering of holobionts and their supporters will head to several key green spaces in downtown Munich in the summer of 2026 and bring them to life through various interventions.
The procession of the Holobionts thus highlights the great value of these open spaces by walking through them, honoring them, and activating them through artistic acts and new rituals (dance, music, song, sprinkling water, Holobiont invocations). In this way, the Holobionts express loving care and set the intention to protect and preserve the green spaces.
Judith Egger, born in 1973, lives and works in Gräfelfing.
*”Holobiont” is a concept from biology that refers to a community of organisms living in symbiosis with one another and regarded as a single functional unit, a kind of ecosystem or metaorganism. The characteristics of a holobiont are unstable; however, there is a continuous transformative dialogue between all the organisms connected within it. Humans themselves are a classic example of a holobiont. Animals, plants, and even the Earth are all part of a single, vast holobiont in which humans play only a modest role.
