Motherboard Original interview
This interview was made by He send the same questions to Pin, Klau & Marc
(pin copie directamente tu entrevista y la de marc desde el pad... hace falta diagramarla un pelin)
klau
1.-First, can you please give me some quick background on yourself, where you're from and how you became involved in this work?
Im a southamerican bitch, transhack/feminist, a lowtech tecno-witch, tinker, sometimes welder, sex_hacker/pornopunk body, raw graphic glitcher, protofakir, cable charmer and independent chaotic researcher. As a women, ginecology has always being an issue. I ve suffered the institutional OB/GYN violence run by men with patriarchal normative guidelines in my flesh since I was teenager. I came from a country that abortion is still ilegal, I had myself a risky ilegal abortion in perú 14years ago. As migrant I have being discriminated an insulted in spanish gynecology rooms. So, Im involved in this work cause is something that my body need, is something vital, as a political struggle abput taking back technologies, to take my body back an put it away from all this violence.
In a personal historical genealogy about this work, the first time for me that ginecology was conciently somethign to be punked or hacked, was in generatech, a gender tech festival that I was co-organizing in a feminist network of collectives in different cities of spain between 2007-2010. There we start to mash up issues between body and machines, between free culture and free bodies, about hacking codes form software to gender.so, we put togheter workshops and talks like: FLOSS audiovisual tools for stream, ginecologycal natural herbs, openwifinetworks, sexwork, independent media servers, postporn, and so on[1]. Then in 2011 with nomepisesofregao a feminist galician colective we organize a workshop called bugxina[2] to de-bug the comon as candida, triconoma, gardenella. Self exas, look the cervix to recognize them, share experiences methods to heal and discovered how this bugs look like in a microscopic level using internet archive tools. Some years later, in 2013 I started an autonomous independent research[3] on the history of gynecology[4]. What I found was horrible and set me on fire,
Anarcha, Lucy & Betsey GLANDs + GynePUNK is a autonomous research project about the history of gynecology, and an active and radical proposal to re-write it.
[1] http://www.minipimer.tv/index2bcd.html?p=665 http://www.donestech.net/ca/2_i_3_juliol_jorandes_generatech_node_barcelona http://generatech.org/ [2] http://anarchagland.hotglue.me/?bugxina [3]http://anarchagland.hotglue.me/?biomechatronic_machines/ [4] http://anarchagland.hotglue.me/?story_her http://anarchagland.hotglue.me/?story_jms http://anarchagland.hotglue.me/?mapa_laberinto/
2.-*I want to make sure I understand exactly what the GynePunks do that is distinct from BIO-reSEARCH, Pechblenda, etc. Can you briefly explain in simple terms how the GynePunks, BIO-reSEARCH, Hackteria, GaudiLabs, Pechblenda, etc. all fit together? In total, who is considered a GynePunk?*
I will describe it like this: The bioresearch framework is something that Hackteria, Gaudi and Pechblenda labs, where and aare developing in many levels and ways before. Gynepunk is more especific framework, a node of this bioresearch that we all are developing now in a rizomatic way. gynepunk is a feminist tool developed inside biohacking scene.
Now, anecdotal info: Pechblenda lab was invited to take part of hackterialab yogja. cause one of the pechblenda trio at that time, pin, was already working on biohacking and she was involved in hacteria activities before. We where extremely lucky to get tickets to the tree pechblenda. When we where landing in asia, I was with a severe urinary infection (cronich since Im a child) very painful. When we arrive there I was inmediatly asking for local plants to urinary infections. Gegen, lifepatch member give me a lot of feedback and some plants to heal the pain. So, in the pechblenda activities on HLAB we open a wiki arround body issues. There I put the local urinary infection plants tratmenet (also you can see the sexology part). Once we where back I started to work on the bioresearch wiki and putting toheter the issues that where important. All of them inspired in the amazing work of hackteria & gaudilab, under the pechblenda political embodiment.
After one year of research, an art residency in hangar give us the spring to make it material and spread it further. In that residency pin, marc and urs where the keys to make the hardware come togheter to build our own biolabs adapted to our body needs.
So, in that sense gynepunk is not a formed collective, is a riot of bodies. And for that riot we'll use all the help, complicity, alliances, tools we can find, create, build and use, everything to reclaim deep body knowledge.
And that the only criteria I will aplied to consider yourself gynepunk. Is reclaiming your body. At the same time is not a category or identity at all.
http://hackteria.org/wiki/GynePUNK_biolabs#Plants_Treatement http://hackteria.org/wiki/Workshopology#11.30_-_23h_.7C_FULL-DAY_SEXOLOGY_WORKSHOP
http://hackteria.org/wiki/Pechblenda
3.- *Where do the "hacker mentality" and feminism intersect? **How do you see the role of technology in putting control of medicine into the hands of those who need it? *
they intersect in a transhackfeminisr crossroad, see here: https://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/post/2015/01/25/a-transhackfeminist-thf-convergence-report/
4.- *I recognize that this is a vastly broad question, but **what does the current state of OBGYN medicine represent to you? How can open-source, DIY technology work as a way of changing this?*
it represent , at least for me, some kind of purgatory, sometimes hell. In gynecology particular case, it's reach an inquisitive, paternalistic and fascistic attitudes. To make a fucking simple yeast or gardenella exam, for name any, it seem not enough to swallow tortuous waiting rooms of the CAP (public assistance health centers), or being compel to answer (as accumulated vomits) bureaucratic, statistical forms that performs a role of popular judges of your practices, capacities or choices. Gossip questions full of moral pervert scorn, seeking data about your promiscuity, drug use, sexual orientation, hygienic practices, or squat relations... just cause how your look!
5.- *I've seen a picture of the tools (microscope, centrifuge, speculum, etc.) you've developed. Is this the complete set of tools available so far? Which tool is the most complex or difficult to produce? Which is the easiest?*
Now the set of tools you need will depend from a lot of things, the urgency of it, your body (if you have an uterus or not, if you need hormons or not), your social condition (a 3d printed speculum will be only available in some places), your geolocalization (some materials will be easier or difficoult to find, even the internet could be not easy), your political situation (abortion or contraceptive methos will be priority in some countries rather than accurate citologies), your economic condition, and even your political awarness and critical thinking will do it.
I think for sure, that we need new tools, new ways, question and create procedures, easier, accesible , all of this with non stop flow of information, experiences, documentation and talk, body talk.
Also there are many non “hardware” tools that can do a lot, the vinager test for cervical cancer, the iodo test for HPV diagnosis, the DELem a pneumatic non invasive contraceptive tool, or the condoms that can show sexual trasnmition deseases changing color! less we need less.
6.- *Where are these tools being used so far and by whom? Have they had an impact?*
I really dont know the impact of this, is brand new to me too. But in a very gynepunk guerrilla kit, the vinager test has lower down 31% the rate of cervical cancer death in india in the las 3 years. I think that the spread of what is happening here is starting to create an awarness that is creating new circles of people coming togheter to talk about their bodies and health.
7.-*How does your work fit in with the growing fab-lab scene in Barcelona? Why is this happening in and around Barcelona?*
In a cold way I think, like a hacking hobby maybe, but there's no conection. Fablab scenes normaly are not feminist or radical body political, they tend to be normative spaces, very bourgeus really. Hope im wrong cause there's always a hopelly chance to be it. I dont think is about what city is arround, is arround our bodies, arroud our political tendencies and struggles (free culture, feminist issues, migration, etc). In fact we can think, is happening in europe or arround europe then? The answer is that “gynepunk” ways are already happening arround the world, with less resources and more engaged.
8.- *What is the second phase of GynePunk going to look like? If there is a "final phase", what will that look like?*
if we have to put numbers and steps, we will have to wonder for the 3rth part. The first was the investigation, putt all the material, the thaory under one idea, the second is already happening, the materialization of the labs, the third maybe is this on, the wide spread of it, wide world networking, Looking forward I will love to focus not too much only on diagnosis, but how to deal with the diagnosis made, how heal and prevent.
also I think there will never be a final phase... the body is unlimited, different, also technologies and how they change,
9.- *Can you speak to GynePunks's goal of preserving local and communal traditions of medicine, while also providing access to useful medical technology? Is it ever difficult to encourage one without compromising the other?*
Audre Lorde — 'There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.'
(this last question is just a quote cause i didnt have more time to answer =S)
Pin
First, can you please give me some quick background on yourself, where you're from and how you became involved in this work?
I started to have contact with the context of open source and free technologies in Spain at 2008 and then my interest about electronics and DIY hardware was growing. I was developing with Maria Mitsopolu a open platform, transnoise were we start to play around gender dilution and use of free technologies years ago.
In 2012 I start to be more and more involved into Hackteria network and was found the place to continue the labor of making workshops around many topics;
At the same time was decided to live at Calafou and build a open and experimental lab to experiment around bio-electr-chemical issues. We start the transhackfeminist lab Pechblenda, with Klau kinki and Julito.
My desire to work more connected with the environment was related with the constant interest to work with the human body, to reflect more and more about agencies in relation with the crecent sensation to considered and feel more and more the holistic
from basic electronic circuits to solar cells to pleasure toys to train your vaginal muscles.
I want to make sure I understand exactly what the GynePunks do that is distinct from BIO-reSEARCH, Pechblenda, etc. Can you briefly explain in simple terms how the GynePunks, BIO-reSEARCH, Hackteria, GaudiLabs, Pechblenda, etc. all fit together? In total, who is considered a GynePunk?
the summary from the makery article also already nicely positions the project.
I think that is already explained at makerey article;
but I would love to added some facts around Gynepunk process / project;
for me gynepunk is a project that was started from an individual person, Klau kinki that being inspired through different projects generate the interested to start to develop more projects around really body-awareness.
This kind of creation of processes is how we all together growup, from many different communities around the globe.
So Gynepunk is a fruitful proposition of open and collaborative process because has implicit on the roots the necessity to collaborate with many different backgrounds from medical to nurse to engineers and transfeminist.
Is a process insert into the main idea to build a mobile open lab that takes as an important goal the creation and transfer of knowledge.
For me the project perform the last and most difficult ( reto ) into the open-free hardware develop of tools because ( el cuerpo humano ha de ser entendido ) y hemos de desarrollar hardware específico para analisis y valoración de datos que tienen que ver con el extenso campo de la medicina.
As a curios person and hacker is a ( reto ) y que juntas empezamos a materializar.
Esa materia y la energía generada por los procesos de investigación y desarrollo es para mi el carburante que necesitamos para seguir haciendo realidad nuestros sueños; a través del acceso a tecnologías para la autogestion de la salud nos acercamos a una autonomía tecnológica casi total.
Una autonomía tecnología que transita desde nuestro cuerpo hasta el entorno que lo rodea.
trying to take the power that techno / scientific institution has reserved to keep us far away from out freedom and autonomy of knowledge in order to control the population having us distracted from our expanded goals.
BioResearch is an umbrella of proceses that we were research time ago, that involves the knowledge from our bodies to the environment, because as I say before, the lab was created to investigated and experiment into bio/electro/chemical processes.
So in some way everything is connected not only into a holistic way but at least into our propossals, actions and definitions.
GaudiLabs is for me a friend that I admire because he has the ability to go away from the close industry and use his knowledge and experience to develop tools and hardware to make the world better.
The constant interest and fruitful collaborations from Urs gaudenz makes me always think that there is some opportunities to continue working and learning together.
Steel waiting for the moment that he visit us in Pechblenda.
Hackteria is also another big umbrella, more like a network of people that works together or not but sharing the ideals of creation an open and free technology that allow the open the access through a extended wiki. Many people is involved but until right now only pin, urs, klau and marc were active collaborating into the process of gyNEPUNK.
Now the project is starting to have the desirable openness and is documented so the people can acces and start to be involved ( en el lugar donde se encuentren )
Where do the "hacker mentality" and feminism intersect? How do you see the role of technology in putting control of medicine into the hands of those who need it?
Pin>
As a transhackfeminist I feel the a natural intesect between both; starting from the point of sharing knowledge into a horizontal way to do it from hacking the gender issues to make the dilution of fixed identities to make a dilution of boundaries of many aspects to be hacked.
As a person that lives in Calafou and also from before I was always having a lot of interest around matter itself doesn't matter about which discipline we talk about.
Then more conscient was discovering that the scientific knowledge make me allow to explore and understand better the relations with the technologies around me. This interest was expanded into a fruitful way to define hacking between us... we hack all from bodies to landscapes, from close white boxes, we understand our body also as a technology to be hacked, from the established ideas of gender and sex to explore the capacity to start to research more inside us to find our own ideas and technologies to help to be free, autonomous and independent from the system.
We like to have an account the error into our processes because this was a tool to understand into a previous fase of learning and because we considered that the fault is implicit in all the procecess of learning.
This hacker mentality for me performs a new way to understand the world around us, and give to us many tools to develop and generated our own technologies to make want we want with, doesn't matter is is to hack the system to have the right that was not contemplated to have into the past of is is into the way to research with freedon about our illness and make an autonomous knowledge from witches to cyborgs to make a reapropiation if is needed from the militarized technologies in a way to usees for our crecent and
for me all this scientific - gynecological ( or not ) explorations works as a biopolitical instrument while hacking and assembling DIY sequencers, loopers< producing noise : that is an ardous assertion of freedom against ans order that seemed immutable.
I recognize that this is a vastly broad question, but what does the current state of OBGYN medicine represent to you? How can open-source, DIY technology work as a way of changing this?
There is steel many tabus around gynecological and sex- gender issues. This means that the patriarcal and capitalistic system has the knowledge and steel acts in a sense of formal way to understant the bodies.
As transfeminist we need to confront effectively the dominations of “race”, “gender”, “sexuality” and “class” and open the close box of gynecology from a bio-i-logycal ( way ) I think is a good point to start to redefine all and better of that to start to open all the forgotten kind of ways to leave; because ( Above all we know that there are not only two gender as far the medical and biology biology they have wanted to believe)
I've seen a picture of the tools (microscope, centrifuge, speculum, etc.) you've developed. Is this the complete set of tools available so far? Which tool is the most complex or difficult to produce? Which is the easiest?
we were building the tools together following the instructions from the Hackteria wiki and also implementing some issues when this was needed.
the process can move faster because because many people have been working for years to gather useful information and allow people who have not studied engineering have open acces to replicate the tools .
sometimes is not about how much dificult is to build something but what use you give to the device, in our case talking mostly about bioology
Where are these tools being used so far, and by whom? Have they had an impact?
The tools developed into the specific framework of Gynepunk are being started to be used more between us and closed friends and curious people that they where join us into the residence in Hangar last May.
From this residence we were also in Luzern working into a prototype that Urs build called QCM ( quarz cristall microbalance) a device that is expedted to be use to check the biomolecular interactions aswell the sperm mutility and ovulation of the period.
In other hand we develop together the idea of having a web cam inside the speculum and this was used as a device to check the inside of a vagina into a Gaia & Pin performance made in Napoli last mount, again the performance was putting into a playful way all the tecnologies that interest us having into considered how we use this to open more the acess to the knowledge and open how we understand our bodies desmitification and showing inside the skin, into the organs, close to the desirable molar futures, starting and continue working each time into a small scale, understanding more and more how matter works into our bodies.
How does your work fit in with the growing fab-lab scene in Barcelona? Why is this happening in and around Barcelona?
Pin :
the project is more connected with the scene of Calafou, a place to explore and develop new tecnologies and right now steel not connected with the fab lab scene in Barcelona, only because we were using a 3D print from the fablab inside Hangar.
As Marc explained is more related with a international contest and also with one fablab in specific were the first speculum was printed during a residence in june at PlatformeC in nantes.
What is the second phase of GynePunk going to look like? If there is a "final phase", what will that look like?
There is definately no "final phase". this is just the beginning...
Can you speak to GynePunks's goal of preserving local and communal traditions of medicine, while also providing access to useful medical technology? Is it ever difficult to encourage one without compromising the other?
Marc
First, can you please give me some quick background on yourself, where you're from and how you became involved in this work?
...
my background, marc, from switzerland, trained as a scientist in nanobiotechnology, went further into electronics music, cultural organizer, DIY electronics and maker environments, enthusiastic educator and workshopologist, transdisciplinary scholar and cultural facilitator. through the hackteria project (which i was one of the co-founders) combining the personal scientific background with the open culture approach and DIY movement, aswell as the interest in transdisciplinary collaboration of artists, hackers, scientists and whoevers.
I want to make sure I understand exactly what the GynePunks do that is distinct from BIO-reSEARCH, Pechblenda, etc. Can you briefly explain in simple terms how the GynePunks, BIO-reSEARCH, Hackteria, GaudiLabs, Pechblenda, etc. all fit together? In total, who is considered a GynePunk?
very complicated questions :-) here is my summary: it's all been connected for many years... hackteria is a website and a community of practice with many groups and individuals involved, doing workshops, organizing gatherings and putting stuff on the wiki. GaudiLabs is a specific node in that network, a physical space and an open individual how developed a lot of the open lab instruments. Bio-reSearch is a page on the hackteria wiki, initiated during earlier collaborations within the hackteria events with pechblenda and continued by them (klau, pin and whoever contributes to the wiki page), pechblenda is also a physical space, a lab, part of calafou, which was visited by many people and projects are developed there... while pin has collaborated within the hackteria framework already for many years, the pechblenda initiative/group joined the hackterialab 2014 yogyakarta and has develeoped more ideas on combining their transhackfeminist approach with the DIY biology and generic lab equipment. from making bio.inspired sex-toys to gynecological DIY analysis tools. the latter was picked up during the transhackfeminsit festival at calafou, august 2014, where the idea of mobile gynepunk lab was developed, aswell as first experiments were done using the diy microscope for vaginal smear inspectiion.
the summary from the makery article also already nicely positions the project.
WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN BIOHACKERS
Where do the "hacker mentality" and feminism intersect? How do you see the role of technology in putting control of medicine into the hands of those who need it?
again, just my personal oppinion. certain medicine and diagnostic tools should kinda be done in controlled, clean and qualified environments. decisions for treatments, dosages and drug use, wrong diagnostics results can cause more damage, then doing nothing. so i keep away from to big promises about ebola, cancer or malaria... but basic body-awareness, simple infections, blood counts, urine tests can get people more aware of potential health issues.
but still the hacker mentality and DIY tools can open a new dialogue about the current power structures and make obvious some existing failures of the pharma/med industry to not deal with the real problems of those who need it, research money going into first-world problems, instead of tackling the basic problems for many billion of people on this planet.
I recognize that this is a vastly broad question, but what does the current state of OBGYN medicine represent to you? How can open-source, DIY technology work as a way of changing this?
my personal experience within the project was for example with the 3d printed speculum, just showing it around amongst friends and in public... intense reactions, tabus, ignorance and fun. gynecology, still higly biased by cultural gender issues, or middle age catholic conservative tabus... macho / male reactions to pussy-watching and other
I've seen a picture of the tools (microscope, centrifuge, speculum, etc.) you've developed. Is this the complete set of tools available so far? Which tool is the most complex or difficult to produce? Which is the easiest?
..
Within the hackteria framework we have developed a large set of tools for the amateur scientists, for hackers, for teachers, for artists or whoever wants to have them. it's been one of the core activities and thus the subtile "Generic Lab Equipment" next to "Open Source Biological Art". In fact a lot of the basic science lab equipment is very easy to hack, or build yourself, maybe with limited quality and reproduciblitly, but great for the "demystification of science". The first project within hackteria was started as an idea to create an online platform to share such instructions, involve interdisciplinary groups of artists, scientists, hackers and the like-minded, develop workshop to share these instructions and protocols. the DIY microscope was the beginning, most easy hack, just use a webcam, reposition the lens and build a stable setup. But many other examples of lab-equipment has meanwhile been built, from centrifuges, to laser-tweezers, micro-fluidic diagnostic devices to "open" fox traps.
the hackteria wiki shows many more examples:
http://hackteria.org/wiki/Main_Page
Where are these tools being used so far, and by whom? Have they had an impact?
Many of the tools developed, appropriated or used from other shared sources, have been implemented in educational environments for all kind of people (children in indonesia, biotech students, artists, hackers/makers, teachers), in art installations and sound performances, DIY bio enthusiasts working on garage molecular biology and genetics, agro-bio tech in developing countries, water or soil analysis in citizen science projects and many more... or just to have fun geeking around with science tools. While many of these DIY lab equipment prototypes don't serve as full high-quality research equipment, they do a great job in inspiring a discussion on how and who we are doing science, as cosmological prototypes and almost ritualistic artefakts for the demystification and democratization of science.
How does your work fit in with the growing fab-lab scene in Barcelona? Why is this happening in and around Barcelona?
Hmmm. i don't think the work is specifically connected to barcelona. the collaborations go back to many other places in the world, from switzerland to india, gijon to yogyakarta and all around the planet. hackteria has been influenced and incorporating many aspects of earlier hackerspace models open collaborations, sharing and digital fabrication tools, aswell as the maker and DIY electornics environments before the fab-lab hype of the last 3-4 years. most of our tools can be made from recycled hardware trash, basic electronic components and hotglue & cardboard... no laser-cutter needed, just the shared know-how on how to build and then more importantly USE IT for something useful. Speaking of myself, Marc, and also of Urs, we have been in maker-environments and electronics since more than 10 years (urs even since he was a kid 30 years ago) and also involved in the swiss fablab-scene since it's beginning.
What is the second phase of GynePunk going to look like? If there is a "final phase", what will that look like?
...
personally, we need to get much more experience with the real tests, involved nurses and other open-minded med-people, describe in more detail the first projects and write instructions, share the knowledge, and develop the concepts furhers as low-cost kits, workshops and writings.
There is definately no "final phase". this is just the beginning...
Can you speak to GynePunks's goal of preserving local and communal traditions of medicine, while also providing access to useful medical technology? Is it ever difficult to encourage one without compromising the other?
...
