Mari Mutare

Abstract

Mari mutare is a transdisciplinary design research project about biocompatible prostheses inspired by the early Christian being called Green Man, a human-plant hybrid that represents the nature-culture continuum. These objects are intended to address human exceptionalism from a post-anthropocentric, feminist and queer perspective. The aim of Mari mutare is to explore the multiplicity of subjectivities in ourselves and, consequently, to influence the perception of others. Arising from the emerging field of synthetic biology, speculative design methodology supports this proposal and it materialises through transhackfeminist biopractices as tools for creating knowledge and projecting other possible futures. The experiments are conducted around the Petri dish as an epistemic object. The dish contains a symbiotic assembly of human and plant cells that interpenetrate, digest and partially assimilate while grazing the categories of kingdom, species, gender, culture and nature. While this process materialises, human subjects test their future limbs aided by an augmented reality (AR) filter, as a proxy for the physical reality, to hack into self-reflection and subjectivity, thus projecting themselves beyond the self. This project is currently a work-in-progress and is supported by Pro Helvetia, Hangar Barcelona (EU Biofriction programme), Utopiana Geneva and Hackuarium.