PERMEABLE BODIES

Art Laboratory Berlin welcomes you to our new series Permeable Bodies (May – November 2023) with artistic and feminist explorations of embodiment and identity in flux, as well as an investigation of our interconnection and interaction with the environment around us. With reading groups, talks, workshops and podcasts we propose a net of narratives of permeability to encompass a poetic (post)natural history of being woman throughout 2023.


The human body, especially women’s bodies, have been going through a metamorphosis under the biopolitics and body politics of the Capitalocene. The empowerment of masculinity over body politics remains dominant: As Rosi Braidotti suggests in her publication Metamorphoses. Towards a Materialistic Theory of Becoming, “the subject of feminism is not Woman as the complementary and specular other of man but rather a complex and multi-layered embodied subject who has taken her distance from the institution of femininity. ‘She’ no longer coincides with the disempowered reflection of a dominant subject who casts his masculinity in a universalistic posture.” (Braidotti 2002, 11). In her influential publication Bodies of Water, Astrida Neimanis refers to Luce Irigaray and states that “for Irigaray, feminine bodies are fluid, both figuratively in their non-subsumability into a masculine paradigm, and literally in their genital mucosity, their placental interchanges, and their amniotic flows. This leakiness is what makes woman always a woman-to-come.” (Neimanis 2017, 78).

The female body, which is also the body that gave birth to and nursed us, is embodied with multiple identities. Our own bodies are all too often seen as private and discrete from the larger world around us, or as a part of ‘culture’ but distant from ‘nature’. Even before we are born we are formed not only by the genetic matter of our parents, but by the environment in which our biological mother lived. Just as this environment has been polluted by human intervention, the human body has also been contaminated: microplastics have been found in the uterus, in amniotic fluid and in drinking water; add to this the pollutants in the air that our mothers breathed, and we realise that everything is intimately interconnected. The events in our new series Permeable Bodies discuss different notions of permeability approached through artistic, medical, sociopolitical and phenomenological perspectives.

PROGRAM | Short version

Long version see below

Reading Groups | May – November 2023

UNBORN0x9 Reading Group in 3 sessions with specialists in the fields and the artists Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet, a FUTURE BABY PRODUCTION Project

(1) During the month of May 2023: ECTOGENESIS Reading Group, with group leader Dr Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, researcher in healthcare law and bioethics, and the artists Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet
27 May 2023: Hybrid performance with Dr Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, members of the reading group and the artists (online & on-site), video documentation here

(2) During the month of June 2023: ULTRASOUND Reading Group, with group leader Dr Julie Roberts, feminist researcher in reproduction politics, and the artists Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet
2 July 2023: Online performance with Dr Julie Roberts, members of the reading group and the artists, video documentation here

(3) During the month of November 2023: SURROGACY Reading Group (TBA)
November 2023 (TBA): Online performance with the group leader, members of the reading group and the artists

Talks | May – November 2023

11 May 2023, 7 pm | Talk @ ALB on-site
Adriana Knouf – In Extraterrestrial Space. All Bodies Are Trans Bodies

25 June 2023, 4 pm | Talk @ ALB on-site
Lyndsey Walsh – SELF-CARE

24 August 2023, 7 pm | Talk @ ALB on-site
Margherita Pevere – Arts of Vulnerability

4 November 2023 | Talk @ ALB on-site
Mooni Perry, Hanwen Zhang (AFSAR) – Betel Nut, A Cultural Connector among Austronesian-speaking Societies

23 November 2023 | Talk online
Mary Maggic – Performing the Sublime Sea of Co-Mattering

Workshops | October – November 2023

16 September 2023, 12 am – 5 pm | Workshop
Sarah Hermanutz, Fara Peluso, India Mansour – Hydrofeminist Ecologies

14 – 15 October 2023, daily 11:30 am – 3:30 pm | Workshop
Karolina Żyniewicz, Charlotte Roschka – Capturing Leakage: Body Flows and Material Investigations

18 October 2023 (World Menopause Day) | Workshop
Nicola Hochkeppel – Explore Menopause: It Could Be the Best Time of Your Life!

21 – 22 October 2023, daily 2 – 6pm | Workshop
Flo Razoux, Aouefa Amoussouvi – We’re not Lobsters! Queering, Decolonising and Hacking Menstruation

Podcasts | May – November 2023

Art Laboratory Berlin is starting a new Podcast Channel Sonic Ecologies, from 2023 onwards. Each year the podcast will have a theme; this year it complements the series Permeable Bodies. Each curatorial team member (Regine Rapp, Christian de Lutz, Tuçe Erel) will interview several artists and scholars of our Permeable Bodies series, spread throughout the year 2023. The podcasts, around 15-25 minutes each, will be scheduled and published regularly throughout spring, summer and autumn 2023.
Interviews and more information on our podcast channel HERE.

Have a look at the event-related pictures in the slider:

Adriana Knouf: TX-1, 2020

Shu Lea Cheang/ Ewen Chardronnet: UNBORN0x9, Paris, 2022

Lyndsey Walsh: Self-Care, 2021-ongoing, Art Laboratory Berlin, 2023, photo: Tim Deussen

Podcast series Sonic Ecologies, Art Laboratory Berlin, 2023

Shu Lea Cheang/ Ewen Chardronnet: UNBORN0x9

Margherita Pevere: Wombs_W02, detail, photo: Maja Bacic

Wetland Ecologies: Life in Transitional Zones Workshop by Sarah Hermanutz, India Mansour, Fara Peluso, 2022

Workshop Capturing Leakage: Body Flows and Material Investigations with Karolina Żyniewicz and Charlotte Roschka, 2023

Workshop Explore Menopause: It Could Be the Best Time of Your Life! with Nicola Hochkeppel, Illustration: Gabriele Heinzel

Workshop We’re not Lobsters! Queering, Decolonizing and Hacking Menstruation with Flo Razoux and Aouefa Amoussouvi, photo: Barnabás Neogrády-Kis

Mary Maggic, 2022, photo: Suchart Wannset

PROGRAM | Long version (chronologically)

11 May 2023, 7 pm | Talk @ ALB on-site
Adriana Knouf – In Extraterrestrial Space. All Bodies Are Trans Bodies

Bodies exist in a state of constant transition: growth, death, transformation, renewal. Some bodies – such as human bodies that undergo medical transition – experience this more acutely. Departing from her twinned practices of medical transition as well as extraterrestrial space research, she will outline some of the ways in which all bodies that go to space become trans bodies. To recognise this is to highlight the processual nature of body transformation and its necessity in order to exist – perhaps, even, to thrive – within extreme environments, whether these are on earth or in extraterrestrial space. Through references to her own artwork, scientific research, and speculative fiction, she will show how we must embrace our existence within the unsettling domain of being constantly in-transition and the new affordances that that domain provides.


27 May 2023 | Livestream Performance (with video documentation!)
Reading Group ECTOGENESIS

The Reading group ECTOGENESIS is a fork-out project of UNBORN0x9, shown in the exhibition Matter of Flux. Initiated by Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet with Future Baby Production, UNBORN0x9 reflects on the techno-scientific developments in obstetrical medicine, its social, cultural, philosophical and prospective implications and to offer an artistic view of the science in the making. During 2021-2022, UNBORN0x9 was part of the EU platform ART4MED.eu, which focuses on a methodological framework that fosters collaboration between artists, health and biomedical researchers. The online reading group aims to enable cross-border knowledge exchange – across nations, races, genders, real and virtual borders. For the studies in three specific topics –  Ultrasound, Ectogenesis, Surrogacy, the online web platform incorporates reading materials, co-writing pads and online chats as multiple interface entries. Guided by Dr Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, a researcher in healthcare law and bioethics with a particular interest in reproduction and the body (abortion, gestation, pregnancy and birth), along with ten registered READERS, the online reading group aims for in-depth research/studies and motivates public debate on these topics of concern.


25 June 2023, 4 pm | Talk @ ALB on-site
Lyndsey Walsh – SELF-CARE

Self-Care is Lyndsey Walsh’s artistic attempt to reckon with ruptures in their identity caused by the rising use of genetic diagnostics in medicine. Using Lyndsey’s own body, Self-Care weaves a narrative about health, gender, and identity that seeks to resist the confines of the medical gaze. This talk will explore the larger body of research that has given way to Lyndsey’s artwork. Self-Care’s name emerges as a critique of the popularising role of individual responsibility for health in preventative medicine, which has led to individual choices being depicted either as acts of heroics or offenses to the sanctity of health. Exploring how the self is built in the time spent in doctor’s offices, the waiting room, and the spaces in between, Lyndsey will give us insights into the country-specific and ever-uncertain role that genetic testing plays in predicting and attempting to prevent diseases, as well as the how these biotechnological ways of perceiving the body collide and intersect with gender, family, and care.


15 July 2023 | Livestream Performance (with video documentation!)
Reading Group ULTRASOUND

The livestream performance of the Reading group ULTRASOUND is a fork-out project of UNBORN0x9, shown in the exhibition Matter of Flux. Initiated by Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet with Future Baby Production, UNBORN0x9 reflects on the techno-scientific developments in obstetrical medicine, its social, cultural, philosophical and prospective implications and to offer an artistic view of the science in the making. During 2021-2022, UNBORN0x9 was part of the EU platform ART4MED.eu, which focuses on a methodological framework that fosters collaboration between artists, health and biomedical researchers. The online reading group aims to enable cross-border knowledge exchange – across nations, races, genders, real and virtual borders. For the studies in three specific topics – Ultrasound, Ectogenesis, Surrogacy – the online web platform incorporates reading materials, co-writing pads and online chats as multiple interface entries


24 August 2023, 7 pm | Talk @ ALB on-site
Margherita Pevere – Arts of Vulnerability

What does it mean to be vulnerable — and what may leaks tell us about bodies and environments in posthuman terms? Dr Margherita Pevere has addressed these questions through bioart and performance. Ash, slugs, cellulose-producing bacteria, bioreagents, drawing, writing: diverse materials constellate her artistic research and come together in celebration of leaky matters and relations. Alongside discussing the artworks Wombs and Lament, the artist will guide us though a nuanced discussion in feminist and queer terms about materiality, vulnerability, and the entanglements of life and death. What emerges are two concepts — ‘arts of vulnerability’ and ‘poetics of uncontainability’ — which, while coming from the arts, may have something to say about these very unstable times.


16 September 2023, 12 am – 5 pm | Workshop @ ALB on-site
Sarah Hermanutz, Fara Peluso, India Mansour – Hydrofeminist Ecologies

Together the artist Sarah Hermanutz, the designer Fara Peluso and the biologist India Mansour continue their ongoing workshop collaborations along the Panke River, with an introduction to ecofeminism and hydrofeminism as both academic theories and as lived artistic and scientific practice. Guided by this framework, the workshop will take a special interest in the algal life of the Panke. This often invisible part of the ecosystem will be explored on the riverbanks with site-specific phenomenological, meditative sensory encounters and sample taking, followed by indoor ocular encounters using microscopy and DIY biology practices to observe living algal samples, grown in the laboratory from Panke river samples gathered in the previous year’s workshop. Practices of cultivating and studying these life forms as a form of care and environmental engagement will also be discussed. Flowing together formats of reading groups, meditative sensory experience,  DIY and traditional methods of scientific inquiry, and discussions both affirmative and critical, this workshop invites fluid practices of connection and care between and beyond humans, ‘staying with the trouble’ in laboratory practice with algae that defy categorisations of ‘living’ or ‘dead’, and embracing the unease of incomplete, in-progress ways of watery knowing and being.


14 – 15 October 2023, daily 11:30 am – 3:30 pm | Workshop @ ALB on-site
Karolina Żyniewicz, Charlotte Roschka – Capturing Leakage: Body Flows and Material Investigations

Capturing Leakage: Body Flows and Material Investigations is a two-day workshop that takes place indoors and outdoors at the Panke River. The project was developed by Karolina Żyniewicz and Charlotte Roschka and is founded on the methodology of artistic research: conceptualisation, sampling, and exploration. The crucial aspect of the project is building a narration based on writing, photographs, videos, sound, electromagnetic recordings, and material samples from the Panke River and Soldiner Kiez. The narrative work will be based on the contrasting activities of broadening (accumulation) and narrowing (selection).

18 October 2023 (World Menopause Day) | Workshop @ ALB on-site
Nicola Hochkeppel – Explore Menopause: It Could Be the Best Time of Your Life!

The biological end of female fertility affects half of the world’s population at some point. Even though not all women suffer from menopause, about one-third of the female population experiences a wide range of symptoms, of which the so-called Big Five are most common (hot flashes, vaginal discomfort, sleep disturbances, depression and muscle- & joint aches). With the removal of taboos, education and empowerment, it quickly becomes clear how much good this phase can do for women, our environment and the community. The workshop provides an entertaining explanation of the basic biological phases and symptoms associated with menopause and demonstrates how the change can be experienced differently. The question however, of why we still associate femininity with fertility leads directly to political issues, which will also be discussed in the workshop.


21 – 22 October 2023, daily 2 – 6 pm | Workshop @ ALB on-site
Flo Razoux, Aouefa Amoussouvi – We’re not Lobsters! Queering, Decolonising and Hacking Menstruation

The collective 2-day experiment aims to decolonise and queer our perceptions of menstruation. Participants will be invited to share their experiences and examine the representations of menstruation and its rituals. The group will also explore how to access and make use of scientific and technological knowledge, and understand bias. We aim to challenge the capitalist agenda, reinvent ways of harvesting data from the human body, and create alternative narratives in art, biopolitics, and technology. All genders are welcome! We recommend attending both days of the workshop but attending one single day is also possible.


4 November 2023 | Talk @ ALB on-site
Mooni Perry, Hanwen Zhang (AFSAR) – Betel Nut, A Cultural Connector among Austronesian-speaking Societies

In the lecture performance the artist duo Moonwen will explore the cultural and social significance of betel nut chewing among Austronesian-speaking societies in Taiwan and beyond. Drawing from their previous project Looking for Sirih (beauty), which investigated betel nut chewing culture and its sexist stigma against women selling betel nuts, Moonwen will share their ongoing research on the interconnectedness of betel nut culture and Austronesian-speaking people.


23 November 2023 | Talk (online)
Mary Maggic – Performing the Sublime Sea of Co-Mattering

Proven through years of researching through the project Open Source Estrogen, biohacking methodologies serve far more than spreading didactic knowledge. These protocols produce an existential knowing in our bodies and environments, leading to collective strategies that may help us out of ecological ruins. The talk describes how biohacking, as a xeno-feminist practice of care, can inevitably lead to a form of world-making, where collectivities can emerge with a radical breakage from the past.


November 2023 | Livestream Performance
Reading Group SURROGACY
More information coming soon