Ancestral knowledge, self-determination, biohacking. In this conversation, Diana Policarpo speaks with curator and director of Kunsthall Trondheim, Stefanie Hessler, and transfeminist biohacker, Paula Pin, about reproductive rights and traditional knowledge of mushrooms and plants. 

Policarpo collaborated with Pin for the video Cyanovan (Protocol), filmed at the hacker’s lab in Galicia, Spain. Pin develops do-it-yourself gynecological technologies including portable microscopes and 3D-printed medical devices. These tools are collectively created, open source, and free. Policarpo considers Pin’s feminist biohacking practice in parallel with historical alternative medicines known and used by women and indigenous people in various geographies. Today, traditional knowledge of medicinal plants continues to be marginalized, and sexual and reproductive health remain contested issues. In the conversation, Hessler, Pin, and Policarpo connect the history of ergotism to current claims for sexual and medical self-determination, while pointing to possible futures. Access the audio file HERE.

Text by Stefanie Hessler