Artistic Research
WhiteFeather Hunter | Lyndsey Walsh | Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet
Venue
Art Laboratory Berlin
Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin
Dates and opening hours
Opening: 26 May 2023, 8 pm
Running Time: 27 May – 9 July 2023
Thu – Sun, 2 – 6 pm
MATTER OF FLUX Festival
(in collaboration with FEMeeting)
Panel Discussions, Workshops, Reading Groups and many more activities from and for women/ FLINTA* in art, science and technology
15 – 18 June 2023
More information HERE!
Curatorial TEAM
Regine Rapp, Tuçe Erel, Christian de Lutz
ALB TEAM
Regine Rapp, Tuçe Erel,
Christian de Lutz, Karolina Zyniewicz,
Giada Sarmenti, amongst others
The group exhibition MATTER OF FLUX brings together three art projects by WhiteFeather Hunter, Lyndsey Walsh and Shu Lea Cheang with Ewen Chardronnet. The exhibited artworks critically reflect about nature, matter and health of female and nonbinary bodies through artistic and scientific research – exploring the use of menstrual serum for tissue culture, proposing new modes of care within the context of female and nonbinary health and discussing both traditional forms and new possibilities of reproduction. In context of the group exhibition, Art Laboratory Berlin will also realise a festival of the same title in June 2023 that seeks to initiate a wider network of and for female and nonbinary artists, scholars and cultural players in art, science and technology.
The project The Witch in the Lab Coat (since 2019) by artist and researcher WhiteFeather Hunter is a PhD research-creation and scientific research project (in progress) that explores the intersection of feminist witchcraft and tissue engineering through the development of a body- and performance-based laboratory practice. It is a work in progress until mid-2023, currently conducted at SymbioticA International Centre of Excellence in Biological Art at the University of Western Australia. The Witch in the Lab Coat includes the sub-project, Mooncalf, original research by WhiteFeather, which is a scientific and cultural exploration of the development of menstrual fluid for use in tissue culture, as well as multipotent stem cell isolation from menstrual blood. This research was featured by Merck/ Sigma-Aldrich for International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2021, as part of their #nextgreatimpossible series. WhiteFeather is fortunate to be supported in her research by UWA supervisors Ionat Zurr, Stuart Hodgetts, and Tarsh Bates and the external supervisor François-Joseph Lapointe. Some related experiments were conducted at Pelling Lab with the support of Andrew Pelling.
Lyndsey Walsh’s project Self-Care explores the personal journey of the artist and reconciliation with their BRCA1 gene mutation diagnosis and the implications of preventative care measures on their sense of body image and notions of self-care. Self-Care is a device that imagines a reality where an individual can take on the caring responsibilities of their cancer, either before they have developed cancer or after it has been removed from their body. Through this device, the narrative of cancer as a bodily enemy is transformed into a narrative about caring systems. The individual/ wearer of the device is given an opportunity to learn about their cancer as an extension of their own self by adopting it with the use of a new technoscientific prosthesis. Self-Care is an artistic attempt to reckon with ruptures in identity caused by the rising use of genetic diagnostics in medicine. Using the artist’s own body, Self-Care weaves a narrative about health, gender, and identity that seeks to resist the confines of the medical gaze. The work features a specially designed chest binder housing living breast cancer cells, which allows the artist to take on the caring responsibilities of their cancer before it emerges in their body. Through this device, the artist explores caring systems and reclaims the potential violence done onto the breasts as liberation through nonbinary gender expression.
Shu Lea Cheang together with Ewen Chardronnet will show the project UNBORN0x9. The art project questions the development of foetuses in artificial wombs outside of the body (ectogenesis) and the cyborg future of parenting. The project explores the role of obstetric science in the increasingly technological experience of human reproduction, speculating on new types of bonding that may emerge with artificial wombs. Here, pregnancy is integrated into a high-tech vision of the body as a biological component of a cybernetic communication system. In collaboration with the echOpen fablab who engages in the development of open source and low cost echo-stethoscope with smartphone application, UNBORN0X9, forks the prototype of a creative tool and hacks the (for humans) inaudible ultrasonic waves in a sonic conversion that allows the interpretation of an audiovisual and ultrasonic emotional score by performers and musicians. UNBORN0x9 is a Future Baby Production, initiated by Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet along numerous collaborators, represents the common group effort to raise issues such as the possible impact of low cost echo-stethoscopy on Global Health issues, questions of access to healthcare and motherhood, ectogenesis and the technicization of reproduction, and the back-and-forth between science-fiction imaginary and science in the making at large.
Tuçe Erel 