tecnología menstrual

menstrual technology

Este proyecto se plantea servir de plataforma de creación e intercambio de experiencias. A partir del enunciado de utilizar la menstruación como material imprimante.

Objetivos:
- Crear una obra de producción colectiva de carácter internacional y deslocalizado. Trabajar a partir de una red constituída especialmente para este efecto.
- Aprovechar un residuo corporal, para la producción de una…cosa. Utilizar "la cosa" como espacio de reflexión crítica.
- Cuestionar los estatutos de nuestra identidad biológica, deslocalizándola, haciéndola útil para la producción de una obra como un material culturalparlante.
- Utilizar como material de trabajo un elemento que contiene una silenciosa carga de definición de la identidad sexo/género, utilizarlo como si fuese un código informático y cromático. Hackearlo.

Antecedentes:
- El trabajo con residuos corporales ha tenido habitualmente un carácter expresivo, catártico y ante todo provocador.
- La menstruación como residuo corporal no ha sido representada mayormente ni por la historia del arte, el cine, ni los medios de comunicación (no se acerca a la de la sangre, el semen, la mierda, el sudor o la orina).
- Se afirma que la sangre menstrual fue utilizada en la prehistoria como imprimante en la realizción de pinturas rupestres tanto del Paleo, como del Neolítico.

Procedimiento:
Este es un trabajo procesual que se llevará a cabo a través de una red de personas de distintas latitudes dispuestas a colaborar con la ejecución del proyecto.
Cada una de estas personas (un número variable) realizará una especie de pantone constituído de 4 ó 5 láminas con diferentes tonos de su sangre (obtenidos de su dilución en agua o de su utilización en estado puro).
A partir de la clasificación del material recibido, se producirá, a partir de cada una de las láminas un número aproximado de 35 píxeles. Cada serie de láminas contituirá una familia dentro del pantones general. Si consideramos que cada persona aportara un promedio de 4 láminas, ante un grupo de 25 participantes, se obtendrían alrededor de 3.500 píxeles.
Estos píxeles formarán parte del material a partir del cual se podrá generar una imagen. En programación (probablemente processing) se realizará una función para que desde la red cada participante pueda modificar el último diseño; o empezar de cero; o empezar a partir de uno de los anteriores. El programa hará un archivo con todas las versiones que se hayan realizado a partir de los píxeles.

Fundamentos:

Cronograma de actividad:

Instrucciones:
La menstruación es un material absolutamente orgánico, está vivo, por lo tanto las condiciones de almacenamiento son importantes. Se recomienda su utilización en el primer período (una semana). Si se desea conservar más tiempo, debe hacerse en un recipiente hermético en un lugar fresco y seco. No es recomendable el almacenamiento por más de un par de meses, ya que si bien su apariencia sigue siendo la misma, el proceso de descomposición está en marcha.
Para pintar sobre papel se puede utilizar pincel, esponja (gomaespuma)

Bibliografía:

un ejemplo más pequeño (o más grande) a partir de los píxeles pa01-08, pa02-08, pa03-08, pa04-08 (gracias pa ;)!)

ejemplo hoja 15 x 21

Menstrual Technology

Project Summary:

The aim of this project is to interrogate the role menstruation has had as a gendered technology in the production of femininity and its cultural impact. In this way, the proposed project is based on a collective reflection and production, using menstruation but transforming its materiality into data in the form of pixels which undergo a continuous self-reconstruction by digital and collective means.

Project Description:

Objectives:
Based on a collective production, I intend through this project to create and collaborate with an international and decentralized network. My intention is to use the process of production to open a space for critical reflection on how cultural and social constraints have informed our feminine identity. The idea is to interrogate these precepts that have defined our gender identity by displacing and using a physical material that has been subsumed by these precepts. In this sense, I am interested in incorporating menstrual blood into the production of an artwork. The menstrual blood as a working material contains a silent nature that has defined the identity of sex/gender. I intend to use it as if it were a computer code or a chromatic code and then to hack it.

Background:
Menstruation as bodily fluid has not been widely represented in arts, cinema and media (at least not like other kinds of bodily fluid or waste such us blood, semen, feces, sweat or urine). In visual arts, women artists who have used menstrual blood in their artworks have always related its materiality to an essential meaning of being woman, which limits itself to the binary notion of masculine/feminine. How can we question and work against the classical notions of sex and gender by using the same mechanisms that have defined these notions? How can we subvert a gendered technology that is so deeply-rooted in social and cultural conditions, as has been the case with menstruation? In "Technologies of Gender: Essays of Theory, Film, and Fiction" (1987), Teresa de Lauretis analyses the ways in which cinema constructs gender identities. For de Lauretis, in cinema identity is produced in terms of visual tools. She borrows the idea of gendered technology from Michel Foucault’s discussion on the idea of ‘technology of sex’.

Content:
This project proposes to make visible menstruation as a gendered technology, as a material that embodies cultural precepts. This project will question these precepts that participate in the ideological construction and production of the notion of femininity which have been perpetuated by science, mythology or popular knowledge. The gendered technology in this case refers to the production of identity and femininity through advertisement, cinema, clothing, cosmetics, medicine, food, and maternity, among others. From this perspective, the questioning of the precepts that are constructed by these ideological mechanisms will be posited first by emphasizing a collaborative work for the purpose of creating a network that will be essential for the production of the project and where the process in itself will constitute the main aspect of it. In this sense, it is fundamental to develop a decentralized social and cultural network that will provide and generate not only the material (imprints of menstrual blood samples) but also ideas for critical discussion and the images that will be made based on pixels.
For this project I will work with open source technology to develop a website. I am interested in the philosophy of the open source because it implies that you are able to manipulate codes, add new elements or change existing ones. In this sense, it is about an open practice where its development is unpredictable and its result is never fixed in time and form.
The pixel will be the basic visual unit produced from the imprints of menstrual blood and made available to participating people for the production of images. In this sense, the pixel becomes a point in the “knitting” that will be informed by people coming from different location in the world. The pixel is also a code but a kind of "clean" code which no longer is menstrual blood nor painting but rather a visual and neutralized element. Through mechanized procedures the conspirator network will construct images using these open codes. What would this action imply? And what would the implications in terms of identity and femininity be?

Working Process:
This project is based on a work-process carried out by a network of people (variable number of them) willing to work with the project from different latitudes. First, each participating person will produce a “pantone” (imprint of menstrual blood) consisting of 4 or 5 sheets with different shades or tones of their own menstrual blood either obtained by diluting the blood with water or using it in its pure state. This phase of the project has been already initiated and I have various samples sent from the United States, Germany, Chile, Spain, among others.
Once I receive the samples sent by the participants, I will keep track of the persons in order to group the sheets by their names. I will produce from each sheet an approximate number of 35 pixels. These pixels will be produced by digitizing each sheet and also by cutting the sheet into 35 pieces of paper converting them into physical pixels. If we consider that each person will send an average of 4 sheets from a group of 25 participants, I would be able to produce about 3500 pixels.
These pixels will constitute an archive that each participant will be able to use in order to create images based on the pixels. The programming will be designed in such a way that each participant will be able to create an image by starting a new one, modifying the last image produced or choosing a previous image created throughout the process. The program will create a folder to store all the versions made by people who have participated. It will not be possible to determine the type of image that will be produced since it is an open process of creation.
In parallel to this production and as part of the closure of this project, I will work collectively with women in Montreal. We will use the original source material (samples of menstrual blood that were cut into the physical pixels) and the images produced in the website to create a large mural. The produced application for Internet will be available and free to anyone who wishes to re-use it in future situations.

PANTONES RECIBIDOS: