Exhibition
Johannes Paul Raether: Transformellae ikeae – Constructing The Bio-Techno ReproTribe
15 Oct 2015 – 12 Dec 2015
Address
- Malzfabrik
- 2-14 Bessemerstraße
- Berlin
Berlin - 12103
- Germany
At the center of the exhibition, event, and performances is the character Transformella, Queen of Debris and Surrogate Mother of the Institute for Reproductive Futures.
About
She is one of the multiple fictive identities and hysterical-subversive drag characters that Systema identitekturae has cyclically developed since 2009. Raether’s performance system assembles embodiments, materializations, and visualizations of social paradoxes and catastrophic political actualities.
As a research avatar, Transformella is dedicated to the assertion of the emancipatory potential of biomedical innovation in the field of assisted reproductive technologies. After five years of rambling and appearances in Europe, USA, and India, she’s now returned to Berlin to conclude her cycle of becoming and to issue a version of herself inspired by opensource software (Forking Version 0.0.1 until 2.0.1).
The question of real and potential possibilities of communal procreation and parenthood remains the starting point for establishing the techno-organic myth of the species Transformellae at District. For the queer-futuristic fathoming of such scenarios in the age of globalized-industrial production of human offspring, the character takes on the practical construction of „we“ – the potential political subject that to date had only been suggested in her repro-communal manifesto.
Transformella begins her residency with a transition ritual, the production of the Mirror Cryo-Kommunisat in the clinical-seeming FruchtbarkeitsCave 1.0.5 (Fertility Cave 1.0.5). It accommodates the performative appearances of the versions of Transformellae, as well as a series of materializations of the past cycle and the convocation of the ReproReality Hack Lab.
In this series of gatherings Transformella opens out to collective knowledge production, critique, and practical attempts at appropriation. This includes the appropriation techniques of queer-feminist biotechnology hacks (Gynepunks), a b2b Meeting about the emerging market of “Living Strategy Design” (Ashkan Sepahvand), a political critique of reproductive labor (Felicita Reuschling / Kitchen Politics) and practical design work on a neo-communal building (Robert Burghardt & Anna Heilgemeir).
In December, the heretofore collectively developed modes of a new ReproReality will form the forked, new drag avatar Transformalor. Her mission will be to exemplarily implement the resulting repro-communal tribe, whether fiction or potential reality, in the normality of a factory for life prostheses and workspaces in the neighborhood of District.
