Bio-trans-lab

An Open Laboratory of Hackable Gyna(eco)logy Related to Xenofeminist Practices

From 27 June to 1 July 2019
Free, until full capacity is reached. Prior registration required (complete capacity)
Registration method: Complete capacity
Place
Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
Capacity
12 people
Conducted and coordinated by

Laura Benítez y Paula Pin

Activity included in the programme:

In the Context of 8M and the Feminist Tide. The Deafening Murmur

Organized by
Museo Reina Sofía
In collaboration with
Caja Negra
Installing a hacked webcam in a speculum to inspect and diagnose the neck of the uterus using the vinegar test (see hesperian.org). Image: © Paula Pin, 2017
Installing a hacked webcam in a speculum to inspect and diagnose the neck of the uterus using the vinegar test (see hesperian.org). Image: © Paula Pin, 2017

In June 2015, the collective Laboria Cuboniks published the XF Manifesto entitled XENOFEMINISM. A Politics for Alienation, simultaneously in thirteen languages, on www.laboriacuboniks.net. As a result, Laboria Cuboniks put forward a new political project, questioning some of the past decade’s most promising philosophical ideas such as speculative realism and accelerationism, and centring the emancipatory potential of technologies and their strategic use in completely redesigning the world.  

With influences ranging from cyberfeminism, posthumanism and trans*activism to materialism, xenofeminism casts light on horizons which are neither non-essentialist nor binary and which stretch beyond notions of gender, race, sex, species and class. Thus nature is understood as a place of conflict traversed by technology which must be continually reconquered and hacked.

From a trans-hack-feminist perspective, researchers Laura Benítez and Paula Pin set forth this co-laboratory based on Do It Yourself and Do It Together bio(info)technology — namely, self-managed and collective forms of organisation, work, care, learning, and so on — with which to consider a critical review of gynaecology through tools and technology of biological exploration. With a view to sharing knowledge related to certain practices, beyond social and cultural constructs of reductionist sciences, this workshop looks to create emancipatory techno-bio-political tools that enable control over the access to the body and another gynaecology to be reclaimed, as well as generating DIY-DIT materials of diagnoses which form communities of shared knowledge.   

The experiences from the workshop will be pooled in an open session with the public.

Participants

Laura Benítez Valero holds a PhD in Philosophy and is an independent researcher and curator. Her research connects philosophy, art(s) and techno-science, and she is a lecturer in Critical and Cultural Studies at La Escola Massana. Art and Design Centre and a visiting lecturer in Technology at Elisavam, both in Barcelona. She has also worked as a coordinator at the CCCB Barcelona Institute of Humanities, as a guest researcher at the Ars Electronica Center Linz and the Documentation Centre at MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona), and has been invited to lecture at different international institutions like Interface Cultures Kunstuniersität Linz, the Sónar Festival (Barcelona and Honk Kong editions), the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the University of Puerto Rico. At present, her work revolves around the practices of bio-art, bio-hacking, processes of bio-resistance, bio-civil disobedience and non-human agents. She collaborates in a number of research projects, both academic and autonomous, and is a regular contributor with Hangar, in Barcelona.

Paula Pin Lage is a transfeminist artist and researcher with a specific focus on processes of collective research and experimentation with open source and free technologies. She has conducted residencies, seminars and workshops in institutions such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN in its French acronym) in Geneva; the Universidad Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris; the KASK School of Arts in Gent; Gaîté Lyrique in Paris; Emare Grant en Bandits Mages, Bourges; Querly Ecologies at the Click Festival, Helsingør, Denmark; and the OSH Open Source Gathering en Shenzhen, China. Her work is immersed in the development of DIY-DIWO technologies, bio-hacking and open-source hardware electronics. She is a participant in the autonomous trans-hack-feminist laboratories Pechblenda and Transnoise, and, since 2012, has collaborated in the extensive bio-hacking network, Hackteria. Her practical experience in themes of bio-hacking (body/environment) and health in the Pechblenda laboratory have led her to collaborate with Hangar, Parc de Recerca Biomèdica and DIY bio from Barcelona, jointly developing the Hangar wetlab and the two-year programme Prototipome.


Program

Workshop
27, 28, 29 and 30 June 2019
Nouvel Building, Workshops - from 11am to 1pm and from 5pm to 8pm
The workshop Bio-trans-lab is organised around four closed-door days of collective work, with each one comprising morning and afternoon sessions.

Public session
Monday, 1 July 2019
Sabatini Building, Auditorium – 7pm
This session sees Laura Benítez and Paula Pin and workshop participants share the experiences from the workshop with the public.