SF Trans*Plant. A theorical-practical bio-hacking / bio-art workshop by Quimera Rosa
The SF Trans*Plant A theorical-practical bio-hacking / bio-art workshop by the Quimera Rosa collective will take place in Hangar on 17th, 18th and 25th June from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
After the introduction presented in Hangar on Rosi Braidotti’s affirmative thought, Quimera Rosa returns for a full workshop.
From commitment to creative self-experimentation, DIWO and biomedical research, Quimera Rosa’s workshop will utilise bio-hacking techniques to challenge binary identity principles that often separate humans from their non-human relations.
The workshop is based on three years of biomedical research conducted as part of Trans*Plant project, and the ethical theoretical, and practical issues they encountered through its development. Their research has led to the creation of two parallel processes. Firstly, “My disease is an artistic creation,” aims to replicate and release a medical technique called Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) to treat condylomata of HPV. Secondly, the development of a protocol for the first intravenous chlorophyll in humans.
During this workshop participants will be introduced to the legal and ethical frameworks for working with biological materials, as well as techniques and tools to work with cell cultures. With this knowledge, and through the use of various biomedical techniques, each participant will create a new symbiotic being based on a composite preparation for plant cells and mycorrhizal fungi with the contribution of human material (cells, hormones or bacteria).
The workshop is aimed at people who are interested in the (de)construction of identity or who want to experiment with it. No prior knowledge is required as we encourage a curious and experimental approach.
Trans*Plant is a transdisciplinary project, initiated by Quimera Rosa in 2016, that utilizes living systems and self-experimentation. It is a process that involves a “human > plant” transition in various formats. The project juxtaposes disciplines such as arts, philosophy, biology, ecology, physics, botanics, medicine, nursing, pharmacology and electronics.
Trans*Plant project aims, with different techniques, tools and practices, to generate crosses and hybridations between the human and the plant. In order to be able to think of a non-anthropocentric ecology, we need to move from identities based on essences to identities based on relationships. A process of transition “human > plant” that includes a protocol of intravenous chlorophyll, and with the fantasies, fears and judgments that this generates, opens the debate on the identity system at stake. A process of self-experimentation that has nothing individual since the people who accompany it walk with it. Getting a pure chlorophyll molecule knows the same obstacles as getting testosterone from the pharmaceutical and biomedical industry as from the legal and health system. It is the very set of life that is patented.
Quimera Rosa is a laboratory for experimentation and research on identities, body and technology, created in Barcelona in 2008 and nomadic since 2014. Quimera Rosa is inspired by the notion of cyborg developed by Donna Haraway, who defines them as “chimeras, theorized hybrids and manufactured from machine and organism”. From a transfeminist and post-modern perspective, they make the body a platform for public intervention, with the aim of generating ruptures in the border between the public and the private. They conceive sexuality as an artistic and technological creation and seek to experiment with hybrid identities that blur the boundaries between natural/artificial, normal/abnormal, man/woman, hetero/homo, human/animal, animal/plant, art/politics, art/science, reality/fiction. Particularly interested in the articulation between art, science and technology, as well as in their functions in the production of subjectivity, their work is currently focused on the development of performances and transdisciplinary projects, the elaboration of devices that work with bodily activity, and bio-hacking experiments. Most of his work is done collaboratively and always free of patents and proprietary codes.
Registration fee: 60 € (for the three sessions with material costs included).
Places available: 10
Registration: ludovica@hangar.org
With the collaboration of:
Credits: photo by Sophie Hoyle
SF Trans*Plant Workshop, EcoFutures Festival London.
