Molecular Queering Microperformance by Mary Maggic

Abstract:

Collaborative and interdisciplinary research, Open Source Estrogen combines biohacking and artistic intervention to demonstrate the entrenched ways in which estrogen is a biomolecule with institutional biopower. It is a form of biotechnical civil disobedience, seeking to subvert dominant biopolitical agents of hormonal management, knowledge production, and anthropogenic toxicity. Thus, the project initiates a cultural dialogue through the generation of DIY/DIWO (do-it-yourself/do-it-with-others) for the detection and extraction of estrogen, and contextualized as kitchen performance and queer body worship. 

Bio:

Maggic makes Freak Science, workshops with the public, performs with aliens, and exhibits with urine. It exists between the categorized fields of bio-art, bio-hacking, art-science, citizen-science, though it would rather abandon all. Its most recent work concerns the (lovely) tension between active and passive queering through estrogenic micro-colonizations and asks: do you want to be more alien than you already are? Maggic trained in both Biological Sciences and Art at Carnegie Mellon and is currently pursuing its masters degree at MIT Media Lab.