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re-c(O)unting I. self-exploring bodies, stories, laboratories
○ pam X ella
Artistic-scientific research investigating the colonial history between Europe and Latin America and relating it to the colonial approach medicine has had on female-assigned bodies.
Created with and for the BioArt and Design (BAD) Award 2023
2023
Format experimental documentary, installation, lecture performance
Software TouchDesigner, Resolume
Media performance, film, wooden sculpture, textiles, shells, glass objects, water, medical instruments, dildo, organic matter, video projection, endoscopic camera, microscope
Creation and performance by pamela varela and ella hebendanz
Script, camera, and post-production by ella hebendanz and pamela varela
Sound art by Concepción Huerta
Scientific research with Joris Koene (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Spatial design with georgina pantazopoulou
Construction design and camera assistance by Tim Schütze
Styling with persophino
Performance technology with Lucien Nicou
Performance mentorship by Margherita Pevere
Voice art by Victoria Martínez, ella hebendanz, and pamela varela
Installation construction by pamela varela, ella hebendanz, Tim Schütze, Lars Dorren, Stamatis Tsigkanos, and the MU team
Special thanks to Amos Peled, Laila Auburger, Marlot Meyer, De Besturing, Jaap Meijers, Dennis Slootweg, Joris van den Einden, Jill Wilkinson, Krista van der Wilk, Daniela Huerta, Giulia Tomasello, Isabel Farina, Cristina Dezi, Jeroen Meijer, Wessel Verrijt, among others :)
Exhibited at
“Plotting Patterns and Portals”, MU, Eindhoven, NL, 2023-2024 (film, installation, performance)
“Sexual is Political”, Post P_rn Arts Fest, Warsaw, PL, 2024 (film)
“Inspired by...”, Art Laboratory, Berlin, DE, 2024 (artist talk)
La Nature Festival, Vielsalm, BE, 2023 (installation)
“Casting a Spell in Computational Regimes”, SomoS, Berlin, DE, 2024 (film)
Porn Film Festival, Berlin, DE, 2024 (film)
Upcoming
Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City, MX, 2024 (performance)
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re-c(O)unting is an artistic-scientific research questioning how we can transform the production of knowledge; it is an empowering journey from the transgenerational trauma our lands and bodies store. Deconstructing the binarisms between nature-technology, science-spirituality, male-female, we zoom out and into the colonial history between Europe and Latin America and link it to the colonial approach medicine has had on female-assigned bodies (i.e. the fallopian tubes are named after Gabriele Falloppio and Colombia after Christopher Colombus). Delving into our deepest insides, we hack our way into the technoscientific field to address its violent approach, while using it as a tool of reclaiming to know our bodies and their stories.
To watch the full film, please write me, and I can send you the link and password <3
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The work is a collaboration between the artist duo ella hebendanz (DE) and pamela varela (MX). It was born as an attempt to investigate the link between their roots and create decolonial lines of exchange. The scientific collaboration took place with Joris Koene (NL), a biologist researching hermaphroditic snails,
which inspired us to follow the story of Hermaphroditus—the child of Hermes and Aphrodite—a being with both female and male attributes who metaphorically brought to the work the queerifying of binarisms it portrays. The soundscape was created by Concepción Huerta (MX).
re-c(O)unting
is both a film and a performance. The film stands on its own, while the performance is a live reenactment of the story-line through the means of our bodies. It takes the shape of a lecture performance in which we, pamela varela and ella hebendanz, are live-mixing excerpts of the film with spoken word, live camera footage, performative actions, and interactions with organic matter on stage. The visual results are being projected on a screen behind us. We are accompanied by Concepción Huerta who mixes the soundscape live.
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We follow threads of Greek mythology to discover how these archetypes still impact our current belief systems, while uncovering the deeply gendered but also queer aspects of these stories. Gender fluidity and sexual pleasure travel through the narrative via the fluids of the body and the water of the sea, to eventually spiral into a multitude of viewpoints— attempting to decolonize and depatriarcalize the single-lens way science has been produced, while self-exploring our bodies as an act of reclaiming and reappropriation.
We use cunt to refer to vulva while reappropriating the swear word. Count means to acknowledge, to tell a story, and to count numbers, so it links to mcomputation. The O alludes to the big O, which refers to the orgasm but is also an algorithmical term. The circle is a hypnotic shape. re-c(O)unting encompasses the stories to be retold, the cunts to be acknowledged, computation as a field to be reclaimed, and the altered states to be experienced.
We use cunt to refer to vulva while reappropriating the swear word. Count means to acknowledge, to tell a story, and to count numbers, so it links to mcomputation. The O alludes to the big O, which refers to the orgasm but is also an algorithmical term. The circle is a hypnotic shape. re-c(O)unting encompasses the stories to be retold, the cunts to be acknowledged, computation as a field to be reclaimed, and the altered states to be experienced.
Pic by Boudewijn Bollmann
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We started this project by attempting to investigate “the orgasm as an altered state”. From then on, we navigated many routes and had a specific interest in psychedelia as a healing state of the body-mind-spirit, which in this first chapter was represented by the spiral of the hermaphroditic snail’s shell. Looking into our roots, we saw the connection between the European explorers who went to the Americas to research the land and the colonial, violent similarities to the European scientists who researched the female-assigned body. It is outrageous that lands, plants and our bodies are named after cis-white-European men. We started this project to share and dismantle this territorial and patriarchal approach in knowledge production.
How can we be the narrators of our own bodies
?
Pics by Emma Grima
Pic by ella hebendanz
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In 2023, we won the Bio Art and Design (BAD) Award and collaborated with Joris Koene, a scientist from the Free University of Amsterdam specialized on hermaphroditic snails, animals that have the capacity to change their sex from male to female and viceversa in different moments. From then on, we joined our researches and, for this first chapter, created a narrative together. This collaboration gave us access to the laboratory, a space where with Joris, a European man-identifying scientist as an ally, we could regain agency in the exploration of our own bodies. We took Joris’ research in a metaphoric way and followed the story of Hermaphroditus, the intersex child of Hermes and Aphrodite, and looked into Greek mythology to explore gendered societal archetypes. We navigated untold stories of knowledge production in connection to the female body and the Americas, by focusing on analyzing bodily fluids and to create a narrative thread. Pleasure and the orgasm are the opening to the trip. The holes of our bodies are our connection to the cosmos. The spiral of the snail is the magickal vortex in which everything revolves and where binarisms queerify.