GENITAL( * )PANIC

Manifesto Video commissioned for the exhibition M/OTHER (2021)


Since the rise of endocrine disrupting chemicals, we all dwell in a profoundly polluted world that is deeply tied to patriarchal capitalism. In an attempt to get an analytic grasp on how chemical pollution has become entangled with ecological normativity, scientists have used the anogenital distance (AGD; distance between anus and genitals) as a biometric for assessing reproductive toxicity. Results show that the AGD has been steadily decreasing over time. In the wake of hormonal disruption, it's clear our bodies are not as fixed and recalcitrant as we want them to be. We must (re)consider the "normative" body, and how "disobedient" bodies are already pathologized - from the medicalization of infants born of ambiguous genitalia to the disqualification of intersex athletes on the basis of biology. These guidelines matter. What they entail matter. They determine how we are policed, how we are surveilled, due to our biology, whether or not we fall within the oppressive norm.


The project imagines a queer-feminist population study that chooses the users’ gender identity over their gender assignment by doctors. It will exist as both an online 3D-scanning tool that anonymously crowdsources for the Alien Genital Database, as well as a series of public gynecological installations and workshops. Deconstructing the ways in which science is performed and categories are determined, Alien Genital Database would serve as the foundation for ::redefining genital aesthetics and taxonomies for the toxic era::. Participating in this database symbolizes a counter-hegemonic strategy that dismembers the State-owned tool for policing otherness, acknowledges our bodies as unfixed and changeable in this queering landscape, and creates spacious room for our toxic variance, for all the aliens living among us. We write our own future...

Lea Sonderegger (2022)

CROSS-CONTAMINATIONS: GENITAL PANIC PROGRAM

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