The Boston based artist Mary “Maggic” Tsang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Media Lab) will give a talk about her project on Open Source Estrogen.
In her presentation on
“Molecular Queering in Speculative Design” Mary Maggic will provide insights into her encounter with amateur science, biohacking
and speculative design to excoriate mainstream ways of hormone production. Her project Open Source Estrogen is a collaborative,
interdisciplinary research project that combines biohacking and speculative design 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. The project begins
with a speculative question: what if it was possible to make estrogen in the kitchen? From this seed more fundamental questions
arise about who is producing hormones, whose bodies are affected, and how environmental hormones already exist as a state
of toxicity. While issues of body and gender sovereignty are deeply at stake, endocrine disruptors termed ‘xenoestrogens’
pervade our environments due to petrochemical, agro-industrial and pharmaceutical forces. These xeno-molecules queer the morphology
of our bodies and bodies of non-human species, evidencing a malleability inherent to nature but alien to our prescribed notions
of eco-hetero-normalcy. In response to the “molecular queering” performed by estrogen and facilitated by dominant hegemonic
forces, the project initiates a public dialogue through DIY/DIWO (do-it-yourself/do-it-with-others) biohacking and artistic
intervention, hacking the systems of hormonal colonization.
Mary “Maggic” Tsang is an artist working at the intersection
of biotechnology, cultural discourse, and civil disobedience. Her investigations challenge the role of creator and creation,
the ethics of the postnatural product, and the neoliberal promises of science and technology. This pursuit has led her through
many modes of exploration: from tropical rainforest research to documentary films that capture the motivations and philosophies
of biotinkerers such as herself. Maggic’s most recent project generates DIY protocols for hacking estrogen, demonstrating
its biopolitical ubiquity and potential for mutagenesis, i.e. gender-hacking. Maggic has participated in a number of interdisciplinary
residencies including HackteriaLab2014 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Ars Bioarctica Residency in Finland, and Interactivos?’16:
Possible Worlds in Madrid and has exhibited for Ars Electronica and Transmediale. She holds a Bachelor of Science and Art
(BSA) in Biological Sciences and Art from Carnegie Mellon University and is currently pursuing her masters in Media Arts and
Sciences at MIT Media Lab, Design Fiction research group.
The Guest Lecture Series of Professor Ingeborg Reichle’s
seminar about the contamination of media theory through the rise of biomedia is an informative and stimulating opportunity
to hear from distinguished artists about what’s going on in the emerging fields of bioart and biodesign and will help our
students build their network of contacts. Our guest lectures are open to all.
http://maggic.ooo/Open-Source-Estrogen-2015
