Why panties, and why are they frantic?
There’s an expression that I love, offered to those who feel discouraged by life (as we all do sometimes, particularly in the technocapitalsphere). That little phrase is:
Keep your spirits up and your knickers down!
Bet you smirked, didn’t you?
I like this playful expression because it links spirit and pleasure. There’s nothing witchier than a healthy appetite for pleasure, whether that be erotic or more broadly sensual / sensorially engaged. For me, it’s about being fully in the body and finding deeper meaning and personal empowerment there. Incendence.
I use the figure of the witch subversively to address the cultural demonization of women’s sexual agency, in whatever form that takes (or has historically taken). By using reproductive body fluids in bioengineering and microbiology, and in adjacent feminist performance and craft practices, I’m conjuring and critiquing sex and gender norms. This to disrupt the kinds of moralized, masculinist narratives that dominate tech research and development (and thus cultural production) in Western society, and that leave out women’s lived experiences of their bodies.
I’m also fascinated by the lay origins of biotechnology, as in the ways in which it evolved from myth, magic and folk medicine. In all these intersecting elements, I find an endless path of cultural discovery, intellectual arousal, speculative storying and art-making, along with legit laboratory experimentation—whether that lab be a high tech institutional space or a kitchen. This Substack is where you can come on a textually active, exploratory journey with me around all these things.
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