How do bodies queer at the molecular level? How is this queering inextricably tied to industrial capitalism? Combining body and gender politics with environmental toxicity, we begin to unpack the concept of “open source oestrogen”, the underlying premise that hormonal molecules are ubiquitously all around us, available for us to hack, mutate and become-with. Through this process of unboxing their molecular mystique, we see that even in our sea of toxic molecules, there is still a sublime sea of co-mattering. This workshop will begin with a presentation on hormonal histories and fictions followed by a hands-on embodied worlding exercise with urine-hormone extraction.
Mary Maggic is an artist and researcher whose practice revolves around workshopology as critical sites of care and knowledge production that can move us beyond toxicity narratives and ecological ruins. With this participatory practice, Maggic constantly searches for new performative strategies for embodying our porosity, alienation and stickiness. In 2019, they completed a 10-month Fulbright residency in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, investigating the relationship between Javanese mysticism and the plastic pollution crisis. Later, Maggic received the 2022 Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship for their continued dedication to public workshopology and site-specific world-making practices. Based in Vienna since 2017, they are a current member of the global network Hackteria: Open Source Biological Art and the Asian feminist collective Mai Ling.