Artist Statement 

June 14, MACBA – Convent dels Àngels. Session: Sound, Data and AI

Keywords: transgender, space art, microgravity, speculative design

Xenological Entanglements. 001: Eromatase explores speculative ideas around the transformation of the transgender body for long-duration space mission, while simultaneously suggesting how to modify our ways of living here on Earth.

Space travel for transgender people will require some way of producing hormones for long-duration space missions. One potential way of doing this is through the genetic engineering of testicular cells so that they produce estrogen rather than testosterone. The Xenological Entanglements. 001: Eromatase project explores some of the elements of this desire. Consisting of open-source hardware, speculative photoperformance, and laboratory research, the project additionally highlights the need for novel methods of hormone production in a world where there still exists extensive gatekeeping regarding access to transgender healthcare.

• Adriana Knouf, PhD (NL/US) works as an artist, writer, and xenologist. She engages with topics such as wet media, space art, satellites, radio transmission, non-human encounters, drone flight, queer and trans futurities, machine learning, the voice, and papermaking. She is the Founding Facilitator of the tranxxenolab, a nomadic artistic research laboratory that promotes entanglements among entities trans and xeno. Adriana regularly presents her artistic research around the world and beyond, including a work that has flown aboard the International Space Station. Her work has been recognized by a number of awards, including an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (2021), an Honorary Mention from the Science Fiction Research Association’s Innovative Research Award, and as a prize winner in The Lake’s Works for Radio #4 (2020). https://tranxxenolab.net