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Algorithmic Violence by Authoritarian Regimes


HOW TO QUEER YOUR BODY
LIKE MARY MAGGIC, JULIANA HUXTABLE
AND MARTINE SYMS



Artists use different strategies to explore the effects of technology and surveillance on the formation of identity. Mary Maggic, a non-binary Chinese-American artists and researcher, offer viewers a "6 Point Plan for Hormone Queering Resistance" (see below) in their manifesto for the MIT research project Open Source Estrogen that ignites a discourse on challenging conventional notions of gender and bodily autonomy. 

By posing the speculative question "what if it was possible to make estrogen in the kitchen?" Maggic confronts the biopolitical and biopower structures that seek to regulate and control bodies, akin to the intentions of dataveillance in extracting value from populations.

Illustrating Donna Haraway's seminal work A Cyborg Manifesto (1985), Maggic underscores the fluidity between organic and synthetic entities within the human body. They critique the patriarchal prejudices embedded within industrial and pharmaceutical influences on bodily composition, framing the human body as a site of continual construction and embodying elements of cyborgism.

Furthermore, Maggic draws on Judith Butler's theory of 'gender performance' from 'Gender Trouble' (1990), which challenges essentialist notions of gender by emphasizing the performative nature of identity. By facilitating 'Molecular Queering Agency,' Maggic invites participants to engage in biohacking practices, symbolically disrupting traditional gender binaries and advocating for bodily autonomy.

Biohacking - comparable to Haraway's vision of cyborg agency - offers a glimpse into a posthumanist feminist future that transcend traditional feminist paradigms. In today's digital landscape, where physical and virtual identities converge, humans exist as cyborgs in online realities, that further complicate the notions of identity and agency.

 That same digital landscape is where Juliana Huxtable explores themes of identity, technology. In Untitled in the Rage (Nibiru Cataclysm), Huxtable challenges conventional notions of beauty and gender by presenting herself in exaggerated and fantastical forms, blurring the boundaries between human and machine, organic and artificial. With this image, she interrogates the ways in which technology mediates our understanding of the self and disrupts traditional categorizations of gender and sexuality.

Juliana Huxtable Untitled in the Rage (Nibiru Cataclysm)

 Similarly, in Notes on Gesture, Martine Syms examines the relationship between language, gesture and identity. In this video installation, Syms combines found footage, scripted scenes and voiceover narration to explore the performative aspects of communication and the construction of identity through bodily expression.

In this work, Syms queers the body by deconstructing conventional modes of representation and challenging viewers to rethink their assumptions about race, gender and embodiment. Through her exploration of gesture and movement, Syms disrupts normative frameworks and invites viewers to consider the fluidity and multiplicity of identity and how this are mediated and interpreted through digital media.

Film still from Martine Syms’ Notes on Gesture





Mary Maggic’s Open Source Estrogen: a manifesto on hormone queering resistance.



Mary Maggic’s participatory performance Molecular Queering Agency.