Reproduction Otherwise

The end of pregnancies as we know them so far

Birth is a prerequisite for human survival, and - like death - a given. Around that fact, the reproduction of life, mankind has formed numerous social, religious, cultural, economic, political, medical and technological systems over the centuries. These systems are deeply rooted and sometimes seem immutable, but need not be. For example, French writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado argues in an essay for Art Forum that power today is no longer contested in the field of the production of things, but in that of the reproduction of life. 'It is there, in the field of reproduction - sexual, social, cultural - that we confront the most crucial dimension of contemporary power. It is the relationship of power to life that is mutating most drastically', writes Preciado. And where power is at stake, it’s especially dominant systems that are critically scrutinised. In this, designers and artists can play an important role, according to Preciado, because ‘we must apply the principle of cultural recombination to our strategies of producing and reproducing life, so as to transform our technologies of power and (politically) mutate’.

How much control should we be able to exert over an unborn child – or over the body that carries it?

Reproduction Otherwise, on view at MU during DDW, zooms in on recent creative scenarios and artistic perspectives on the radically changing practices around and visions of human reproduction. Through the work of seven international designers/artists - some working intimately with scientists, others working from a queer perspective, or a combination of both - this complex, mutating system around 'making life' is questioned. For how and why do we humans want and can make humans in the future? And what role do biology, cultural and social patterns, as well as technology, economics and power play in this? Reproduction Otherwise emphatically does not leave it 'as of old' to the powers that be - politics and religion, medicine and science - to address all these issues, but gives designers and artists the space to 'culturally recombine', as Preciado calls it and engage us all. On view are installations by Ani Liu, Charlotte Jarvis, Future Baby Production, Kuang-Yi Ku, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Puck Verkade and Victorine van Alphen on procreation, surrogacy, artifical wombs, multiple parenting and cyborg babies.

So what would it be like to create and meet your hybrid, self-generated digital cyborg baby?

Reproduction is not just about women, men and children; about sex and love, about generations, nuclear families or 'labor'. Reproduction is also about alternative forms of living together, the deeply human desire for a story about where we came from and where we are going. It is about the individual and collective choice for or against reproduction, and the possibilities or restrictions imposed on it by society. It is about choices that, partly due to the development of medical science and technology, seem increasingly diverse but are not for everyone, because they are mostly considered within prevailing ways of thinking and power structures. And it deals with all the possible complex consequences that reproduction entails: ethical, legal, medical and human. The conversation about reproduction therefore concerns us all: because it is about life and about how we want to see the future of human (co-)life. Not because we see ourselves as God, but because we are human beings.