synthetic bodies: protocols for intra-acting

Lenka Vesela

Our bodies are porous entities that interconnect with and depend on the broader collectivity of human and nonhuman life that exists within a shared environment. Using the figuration of synthetic bodies, this exposition aims to examine the relationships in which we are enmeshed as our bodies absorb and excrete chemicals. With a focus on involuntary exposure to industrially manufactured chemicals (as opposed to exposure to naturally occurring chemicals or voluntary experimentation with chemicals of all types), this exposition invites readers to learn about the chemicals to which we are exposed and by which we are affected. With the ubiquity of chemicals in the environment, who are we becoming? How do chemicals affect us and how do we interact with them? How can we live well with chemicals in spite of their potential to harm? Adopting a decolonial feminist, posthumanist, and new materialist approach and embracing queer ecological sensibilities, this exposition develops protocols for embodied and materially embedded research practices that trace the effects of exposure to chemicals in everyday life. In so doing, it aims to demonstrate how we might build resilience through encounters with toxicity, contamination, and impurity. Download Accessible PDF

objective

The goal of this exposition is to introduce readers to the practice of protocolling and inspire them to either adapt these protocols for their research purposes or devise their own.

Synthetic bodies are bodies emerging by synthesis.

Synthetic bodies are ever-changing bodies in the constant process of synthesizing,

mixing and remixing,

combining and recombining,

assembling and reassembling,

composing and recomposing,

arranging and rearranging,

transforming,

modifying,

mutating,

becoming...

instructions

Upon entering the main page of the exposition, readers will find access to most of the content directly from this page. Navigation links located

at the bottom of each page facilitate easy return to the main page and

other key sections of this exposition.

acknowledgment

Designers Day Shift Office (Bára Růžičková & Terezie Štindlová) were invited to infuse the pages of this exposition with digital contaminants. Their subtle intervention aims to extend the contemplation of our synthetic becoming beyond the exposition’s content to the act of reading itself. By adding minute traces and residues of digital matter, they prompt readers to reflect on the intricate material entanglements shaping our existence.

Participant information and views are shared here with their consent.

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