Overlap

  • March 28th 2019

    Overlap

    Mapping a Hormone Hyperobject, was shown in the University at Buffalo art gallery March-April 2019. The installation builds off of research done while in residence at UB's COALESCE bioart laboratory from Fall 2018 to Spring 2019. The installation consists of a single channel video projection and on the floor at its base, a stack of take away newsprint broadsheet prints.

    The looped animation projecting onto the wall depicts an irridescent, rectilinear fluid form. Etched into the surface of this phantasmic presence is a molecular biology flow chart mapping choreography for producing a transgenic (genetically modified) plant who would produce steroid hormones like Progesterone, Testosterone, and Estrogen. The diagram uses the style of technical drawings required for patents on genes, molecules, and biological processes. An aesthetic which renders life ways and beings within imperial regimes of ownership through a sort of continued colonial haunting of beings. Published into the gallery space, this technical choreography is stolen from the possibility of individual patent claims and dedicated to the commons of "prior art."

    An interactive expanded version of the text that was printed on the takeaway newsprint broadsheets (Mapping a Hormone Hyperobject) can be accessed here.