ARTIST TALK The Wetness of Hacking: A Transhacking feminist perspectives from Wetlab Barcelona by Gaia Leandra and Ce Quimera (Wetlab)
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The Wetness of Hacking: A Transhacking feminist perspectives from Wetlab Barcelona
Artist Talk by Gaia Leandra and Ce Quimera (Wetlab)
Moderation by Patricia J. Reis and Stefanie Wuschitz
30th of May, 19h Lecture/Artist talk
At AIL Angewandte Innovation Lab, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Wien
Gaia Leandra and Ce Quimera, currently the resident artists at Hangar’s wetlab in Barcelona, will present their artistic work and the projects developed within the well known bioart laboratory. Since 2021 they are carrying out Bioxeno, a project that aims to generate new narratives in the intersection between science and art using different tools, techniques, disciplines and practices. They understand bioart as a place of strength, taking a critical point of view to the movement of knowledge and its production by science. The project is inspired by Lynn Margullis, who studied for several years microorganisms located in the ecosystem of the Catalunya territory.
Starting from establishing interspecies relations with bacterial communities, specifically the cyanobacteria of the Ebro Delta (Catalunya, Spain), taking into account our human limitations and the need for technology to mediate interspecies relations, they ask in their research: What artistic formats could show/translate this type of link without reproducing anthropocentric or colonial views? How to account for biodiversity and the extractivism present in the ecosystems we inhabit? How do we think of the bio as life? How do we think of our lives? Or rather, how do we live them?
At these present times in which catastrophe and disaster seem to be the only possible scenarios in near futures, these times in which the visible eco-social alternatives seem to have come to an end, they find it crucial to generate new narratives, new stories about possible livable futures able to challenge our present ways of living and how we relate to each other and to the other living beings that inhabit planet Earth.
SUPPORTERS: Institut ramon llull, Government of Catalonia (Delegation to Central Europe)
Bioxeno project has had the support of the “Premios Barcelona 2020” Grants from the Barcelona City Council and with the support of Hangar.org for our two-year residency at the wetlab (Gaia Leandra + Ce Quimera 2020-2022).
PARTNERS: AIL Angewandte Innovation Lab
About Gaia Leandra and Ce Quimera (Wetlab)
CE QUIMERA
Artist and researcher, born in Argentina and resident in Europe since
2000, living between Barcelona and Bourges. She studied Social
Anthropology in Buenos Aires, while doing internships in performing arts
and in 2008, together with Kina Madno, she created the lab, Quimera
Rosa. From this point on she focused her corporal and investigative
work on post-identity gender policies and corporal, identity and
technoscience experimentations from a trans*feminist perspective.
Her work currently focuses on the development of performances,
transdisciplinary projects and interactive installations, elaborating
devices that function through corporal activity and experimentations in
biohacking. Her work includes long periods of research/experimentation,
generally in residences. In 2016, she began working with Quimera Rosa
on the project Trans*Plant, carried out and produced by Ars Electrónica
and the European Media Artists in Residence Exchange (EMARE),
Hangar and the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), the University of California in Davis and L'Antre Peaux. In 2019, she
participated in Acá soy la que se fue: relatos sudakas en la Europa
fortaleza, a pioneer collection of real stories of and for migrants to
Europe from Abya Yala and the Caribbean. She is a resident artist
together with Gaia Leandra at the Hangar Wetlab (2020/2022), where
she carries out projects of investigation and experimentation in art and
science from a transhackfeminist vision. Most of her work is collaborative
and free of patents and ownership codes and has been presented in
streets, galleries, universities, freelance spaces, okupas, art centres,
festivals and museums.
GAIA LEANDRA
Gaia Leandra holds a degree in biology. She worked at the Institute for
Microelectronics and Microsystems (IMM) of the Italian National
Research Council CNR. After university education, she started artistic
collaborations with Paula Pin within the project »Fotosintetika«. She
participates in the Maker Faire (Rome). She exhibited sound work at the
Flussi media arts festival in Avellino. She also collaborates with the
collective »Riot Studio« doing DIY biology workshops and works with
Mary Maggic’s project »Hormons«. Together with the artist Oskar Martin
she offers workshops on sound biology and electronics. She is part of the Italian collective »Merda Elettronica«. She teaches DIY synth
workshops with the artist Corazón de Robota. She curates independent
music festivals such as FTS, Multiversal, Ràdio Black Out and TPA I 76A
Napolitan squatt. From 2020 to 2022 she is part of the resident collective
in Wetlab at hangar.org in Barcelona.
ABOUT WETLAB
The research line on bioart is closely linked to Hangar’s wetlab. The wetlab is a space where hybrid interactions that disrupt the limits generally established between art and science take place under a transhackfeminist perspective and through a critical revision of science as an institution. Workshops, presentations, research residences, collective work processes and discussions are carried out at the lab. In the context of the current ecological debacle we want to promote projects that are propositive and offer other perspectives for rethinking other possible futures. The wetlab space is currently coordinated by resident artists Gaia Leandra + Ce Quimera.
Website: https://hangar.org/en/wetlab/
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