QUEERING: Open Source Estrogen! Workshop with Mary Maggic

The Institute of Anxiety invites you within the framework of the QUEERING* programme for a lecture and a workshop: 

How do bodies queer at the molecular level? How is this queering inextricably tied to industrial capitalism? And is there a way out of capitalist ruins, one that has been further exacerbated by the pandemic? 

Combining body and gender politics and environmental toxicity, this workshop centers on the concept of “open source estrogen,” the underlying premise that hormonal molecules are ubiquitously all around us, and available for us to hack, mutate, and become-with. Through this process of socio-political excavation, we can begin to “emancipate the hormone molecule,” unboxing its molecular mystique. The 2-day event will begin with a talk on hormonal research embedded with short screenings, and finish with a hands-on urine hormone extraction protocol and a collective cooking performance with xenohormone ingredients. 

Mary Maggic (b. Los Angeles, 1991) is a non-binary artist working at the intersection of cultural discourse, body and gender politics and ecological alienations. Using biohacking and public amateurism as a critical practice of care, Maggic investigates the micro-performativity of hormones and works collaboratively to demystify their molecular colonization. Purity is not an 
option! 

WORKSHOP OUTLINE: 
Friday, 8th / auditorium (4th floor, way will be signaled by signs) @ AVU, U Akademie 172/4, 170 00 Prague 7-Bubeneč 
6PM–8PM 
A lecture with embedded screening of: 
Witches of Calafou (2016) 
Estrogen Farms (2016) 
Housewives Making Drugs (2017) 
Molecular Queering Agency (2017) 

Saturday, 9th / Šaloun’s Villa, Slovenská 4/2499, Praha 10 (map), enter via staircase connecting Slovenská and Francouzská st. 

1PM 
Urine-hormone workshop 
Access to water source and toilets for participants are secure. While hormones will be drying, we can begin the collective cooking.

3PM 
Collective cooking performance modelled after the Aliens in Green workshop 

6PM 
Dinner and cocktails 

The workshop will be held both in English and Czech language and it is intended for a broad public. 
Free of entry. A registration is needed forSaturday’s part on October 9th — please, send an email to iu@insitutuzkosti.cz

*QUEERING. AN ENDLESS NUMBER OF POTENTIAL NATURES. 
Queering is a series of lectures, discussions and workshops created in co-operation with figures from the realm of activism, the exact sciences and fine arts, focusing on a search for new forms of evolutionary processes, ecological interactions and policies from the perspective of queer and feminist theory and inter-disciplinary co-operation.

The project is realized with the support of the City of Prague, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Municipality of Prague 7 and the State Fund for Culture.

Photoreport: © Karolína Matušková