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

→ thinking synthetic bodies with other figurations of material/posthuman feminisms

→ making chemical relations visible/perceptible

These protocols aim to raise awareness of the extensive reach of our chemical interactions. They promote an embodied and materially embedded approach to understanding chemical exposure, tracing its effects in the sensory experiences of everyday life, and building resilience through encounters with toxicity, contamination, and impurity. The protocols are open-source proposals for collective investigative practices that embrace posthuman mutability and explore our chemical entanglements in ways that foster caring relationships. By doing so, they allow us to envision and enact hopeful futures as we learn to live in a world that includes harmful chemicals.

#1 making kin with urban dust: protocol for gathering (with) dust

#2 leaky bodies: protocol for bodies of water

#3 hydromeditation: protocol for bodies of water

#4 getting angry with endocrine-disrupting chemicals: protocol for affirming emotions caused and modulated by chemical exposure

→ intro

→ references

note on consent

The protocols are designed to unfold within everyday environments, encouraging participants to engage solely with potentially toxic compounds they are already encountering. Instead of exoticizing pollution, the protocols highlight commonplace activities like breathing, drinking water, or touching everyday objects and materials, revealing these ordinary encounters as sites of exchange, transformation, and becoming. Nevertheless, it is crucial to ensure consent at all times.

Tip

Tip