HERMAPHROGENESIS

Marcin Gawin / United Kingdom, Poland

Hermaphrogenesis is a sensory journey into the viscera, where participants engage in a reversed autopsy to rearrange human anatomy and populate the world with androgynous organisms.

Long ago, in Ancient Rome, the organs and entrails of sacrificed animals were decoded and interpreted by those tasked with defining the limits of reality. This ancient divination technique – called haruspicy – was performed by a trained priest – called a haruspex – who ritually consulted the liver, lungs, and heart of skinned beasts to discern the will of the gods.

Hermaphrogenesis invites the participants to perform a hybrid form of haruspicy – a reversed autopsy that looks in the body as a metaphor for the mutability of fixed systems. The work uses silicone replicas of human organs that audience will manipulate and rearrange into the composition of their choice. This arrangement, decoded by the computational system will grow, evolve and become an organism that populates a fictional ecosystem. The project contends with the perceived gaps between different bodies and the hierarchical superiority of the mind over the body. The work focuses on tactile exploration of our internal landscapes and by using the emerging technologies, remixes it in the realm of speculative evolution.

The term hermaphrodite emerges from an ancient Greek myth, describing the proto-trans son/daughter of Hermes (the patron saint of alchemy) and Aphrodite (the goddess of lust, love, pleasure, and beauty), uniting male and female characteristics into a single unified organism. Genesis descends from the Greek describing origin, creation and generation. Hermaphro-Genesis is an origin myth which the audience must read through the organs and entrails of the posthuman body.

From the text by [M] Dudeck