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
