ARTIST TALK The Wetness of Hacking: A Transhacking feminist perspectives from Wetlab Barcelona by Gaia Leandra and Ce Quimera (Wetlab)

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.

https://hangar.org/en/wetlab/