[Digital] Present Feminist Futures
Open Source Estrogen
Online Workshop by Mary Maggic
Initiated in 2015 as a conceptual platform for ideas, tactics and collaborations, Open Source Estrogen began with a simple question: what if it were possible to synthesize estrogen in the kitchen? From this seed came more questions as to how gendered bodies are controlled and managed through corporate and institutional science, and how endocrine disrupting molecules exist already around us as a state of environmental toxicity. Is there hope for disobedient bodies amongst capitalist and ecological ruins? To answer this question, the project and its following mutations position hormones and their molecular colonization as a constant entanglement with the self, human, non-human, and planetary, with their biopolitical omnipresence as the very source from which we collectively hack, demystify, and emancipate its molecular mystique.
During the workshop we will be performing a urinary hormone extraction protocol using everyday materials. Please read the materials list if you would like to participate. It is also possible to follow Mary Maggic’s presentation and the workshop as a listener only.
Material list: https://maggic.ooo/Urine-Hormone-Extraction-Action
*You can use a plastic bottle if you don’t have a glass bottle cutter. You can use acetone (nail polish remover) or isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) if you don’t have methanol.
*the workshop will be held in English
*no previous knowledge required
*join with your computer or mobile device
*in order to receive the password for the zoom meeting please send an email to mail@alpha-nova-kulturwerkstatt.de
Mary Maggic (b. Los Angeles, 1991) is a non-binary Chinese-American artist currently based in Vienna, Austria. Their work spans amateur science, public workshopology, performance, installation, documentary film, and speculative fiction. Since 2015, Maggic’s research has centered on hormone biopolitics and environmental toxicity, and how the ethos and methodologies of biohacking can serve to demystify invisible lines of molecular (bio)power. In 2017, their project “Open Source Estrogen” was awarded Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica Hybrid Arts, and in 2019 Maggic completed a 10-month Fulbright residency in Yogyakarta, Indonesia investigating the role of Javanese mysticism in the plastic pollution crisis. Maggic is a current member of the online network Hackteria: Open Source Biological Art and the laboratory theater collective Aliens in Green, as well as a recent contributor to the radical syllabus project Pirate Care. https://maggic.ooo
This event is part of our ongoing series [Digital] Feminist Present Futures.
