Open Source Estrogen

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ESTROFEM LAB :: ESTROGEN GEEKING

RESEARCH + WORKSHOPOLOGY + FREAK SCIENCE ON the MICROCOLONIZATION OF HORMONAL MOLECULES

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This research-based project is dedicated to the development of an "estrogen hack lab" or ESTROFEM LAB -- a set of tools, protocols, and wetware for low-cost, accessible, participatory estrogen hacking + workshopology, necessitated by its genesis project, Open Source Estrogen (2015), the biopolitics of estrogen colonization and microperformativity. Regarded sometimes as hobo science, freak science, and public amateurism, the Estrofem Lab and its workshopologies aim to detect and extract estrogen from "sources with meaning," providing the contextual framework for why we hack estrogen, and why we perform science as citizens and (hack)activists. This ongoing artistic investigation has led to creation of yeast estrogen sensors (YES-HER yeast) containing human estrogen receptor for detection, vacuum pump solid phase extraction (SPE) using cigarette filters and smashed silica gel, and reverse phase column chromatography using broken glass bottles and methanol. I hope this website serves as a resource for others interested in the ongoing hormonal colonizations on our bodies and environments and wish to form their own micro-resistances - toxicity is never consensual!


PROJECT LONG DESCRIPTION The project aims to hack the hormones present in our bodies and our present environment, creating a non-institutional portal for hormone access as well as a cultural dialogue for biopolitics. In response to the various ways hormones (such as estrogen) performs a molecular colonization on our bodies and ecosystems, how do we as affected persons effectively respond? Can we use civic action to create DIY/DIWO protocols and recipes for hacking estrogen that are founded in equity and accessibility? From detection to extraction to synthesis, these estrogen recipes function as social resistance, as consciousness-raising, as DIY therapy, as gender-hacking. Institutions and scientific fields produce fictions about how bodies should be gendered and how they should reproduce, perpetuating a standard of normalcy that is exclusionary and touting hormones as the biological determinant of sexual identities. Thus, present hormone therapies both pathologize bodies and at the same time prioritize access over others. However, hormones such as xenoestrogens exist with their own agency. They can be characterized as a form of slow violence because its mutagenizing effects are so gradual and difficult to perceive. On the other hand, endocrine disruption implies a perspective for what writer Heather Davis calls a "queering futurity." If we are living in an all-pervasive, anthropocentric toxicity, then this challenges society's prescribed notions of normalcy, of binary bodies. The project acknowledges our bodies as permeable, mutable entities that are becoming increasing alien, and proposes to use "the becoming" as an agent for resistance. DIY/DIWO biohacking can function as a tool for creating new entry points and subjectivities, combating traditional power structures responsible for the production of knowledge, of bodies, and of technoscience. From these xeno-forces arise xeno-solidarities, capable of collectively hacking the systems of hormonal control.


Background

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Estrogen is a molecule that is naturally produced in our bodies, and is responsible for the normal functioning of the body such as mood, metabolism, reproductive development. However due to dominant capitalist forces such as petrochemical, agricultural, and pharmaceutical industries, the planet is permeated with hormonal molecules, called Endocrine Disrupting Molecules (EDCs) or "xenoestrogens." Plasticizers, pesticides, hormone therapy pills, personal care products, casings for electronics and hardware are all common examples of products that contain molecules such as Bisphenol-A, phthalates, dioxins, PCBs, diethylstilbesterol, and hundreds (if not thousands) other residues of industrial capitalism that interfere with the hormonal functioning of our bodies and bodies of non-human species. Furthermore, these molecules have a tendency to accumulate in areas where the marginalized and impoverished live, often as a result of colonialism. The health effects range from morphological (hypospadia, male breast development) to neurological (depression, autism, lower IQ) to physiological (early onset puberty, ovarian cancer, worldwide sperm count drop). We are increasingly living in a world that we no longer know, one that is alien, one where sex could be decoupled from reproduction, where plastic is our progeny, where our sex and gender is also industrially modulated.



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WHAT'S HAPPENING @ THE MACRO LEVEL? The above (left) shows points of entry of endocrine-disrupting compounds into the water supply. While EE2 (Ethinyl estradiol, estrogen derivative found in oral contraceptives) is more chemically potent than other estrogenic compounds, the amount of EE2 consumed by women using oral contraceptive is significantly less than the other sources described above. As an example, the volume of veterinary estrogens given to livestock each year in the US is five times the volume of EE2 consumed by women who use hormonal birth control methods.

WHAT'S HAPPENING @ THE MOLECULAR LEVEL? The above (right) shows examples of interaction between xenoestrogens and estrogen signaling pathways. Some xenoestrogens, such as tributyltins, can inhibit aromatase, the enzyme responsible for the conversion of androgens in estrogens, resulting in the perturbation of the androgen/estrogen balance. Other groups of compounds can interfere with estrogenic signaling by competing with natural estrogens for binding to sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), resulting in defects in E2 plasma transport.

(notice the similarity between the two diagrams...)

INTERACTIVOS?'16

Collaborators: Paula Pin, Gaia Leandra, Amanda Padilla, Carlos Gamez http://comunidad.medialab-prado.es/en/node/1602 Untitled-1.png

The goal of Open Source Estrogen is to explore the various ways that estrogen performs molecular colonization of human society, our bodies, and ecosystems. Estrogen is the most ancient of sex hormones. Therefore the mutagenic effects of environmental estrogens disrupt species across all animal taxa, including humans. In response to the ongoing molecular colonization of xeno-estrogens, the project aims to demonstrate how our collective mutagenesis necessitates civil action through DIY/DIWO practice. Three possible approaches are: 1) SYNTHESIS - Are we able to circumvent governments and institutions to gain hormone access? What are the ethics behind self-administering self-synthesized hormones? 2) DETECTION - What are the ramifications of estrogen de-regulation? How can biosensors play a role in mobilizing citizen surveying of local water sources? 3) EXTRACTION - How can citizens remove the hormonal toxicity in the environment that is currently mutagenizing human and non-human bodies? Can the xenoestrogens be recycled back into our bodies? We are looking for collaborators across ALL disciplines: biochemical knowledge for extraction, biotoxicology, cross-species endocrinology, ecological interactions, analysis of biological samples from local water sources, building of low-cost biosensors for detecting and mapping estrogenic waters -- these are a couple of examples.

DIY COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY (Solubility Experiments)

OPEN ESTROGEN LAB (FINAL INSTALLATION)

Estrozine 1.0

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Download the first edition: File:ESTROZINE-1.0-impr.pdf

Housewives Making Drugs (Synthesis)

Martha Stewart subversion via kitchen hormone hacking !

CULTURALIZE SCIENCE!

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watch watch

With the creation of a DIY estrogen protocol, increased endocrinological know-how and body sovereignty, becomes a public platform for discussing the ethics of self-administering self-synthesized hormones. What physiological dangers are posed with potential overdosing and exposure to impurities, and what will people trade in return for wresting greater control over their bodies? Furthermore, the citizen approach to estrogen synthesis in turn deregulates it, having potential for environmental release that exacerbates current hormonal colonizations of coastal regions.

Chickens (Extraction)

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See AVIAN TRANSGENIC TECHNOLOGIES: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21131712

Also, PRODUCTION OF PHARMACO PROTEINS USING TRANSGENIC AVIAN: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-017-0726-8_52#page-1


BIRDS OF ESTROGENIC PARADISE Can chickens absorb estrogen from the environment and deposit in their eggs? Let's research it!


Toxic Eco Bodies (Detection)

WHAT ARE THE RAMIFICATIONS OF ESTROGEN DE-REGULATION? CAN WE EXTEND FEMINIST HEALTH CARE TO BODIES OF NON-HUMAN SPECIES, CREATING A SORT OF GYNECOLOGICAL CLINIC FOR WATER BODIES?

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Growing the YES-Yeasts in RandeLab

Also documented on RandeLab website

Plating, shaking and growing

Links

http://maggic.ooo/Open-Source-Estrogen-2015

http://maggic.ooo/Estrofem-Lab-2016

http://www.addgene.org/23061/

http://www.mpbio.com/product.php?pid=114410522&country=204