Paula Pin (Lugo, 1982)
Is a researcher and artist activist which has a strong inclination towards research and experimentation processes with collective and free technologies.
She has undertaken residencies at institutions such as CERN, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Art school KASK en Gent, Prototyp_ome at Hangar Barcelona, Gaite Liric en París, Querly Ecologies at Click Festival y OSH Open Source Gathering en Shenzhen, China. . Although her work emerges from within a scientific tradition of research and experimentation, running throughout drawing to abstract video, circuit bending and lab experiments but always located in the intersection where biology, science and queer art collide.
Interactive kinetic sculptures, immersible environments, audiovisual installations, performance and direct action are the art disciplines that she has used in her search for developing new channels to communicate desires and sensations, using the physical body as the bridge which connects nature and technology.
Energy inspired installations in which her manipulate materials and light to reveal new perspectives on the world in which we live. Questioning the boundary between science fiction and fact, much of her artwork investigates a broad range of subject matter relating to natural phenomena such as bioelectricity, bioluminescence, geochemistry and the cosmos.
In 2011 she was awarded a grant from Vida to develop her Photosinthetik Symphony data from sensors attached to plants and her own body generating sound. The project continues development as an hybrid between gendertechnature in a sense of tactical biopolitics. This experience of investigation led her deeper into science, especially biology, and led her to rework her artistic practice both conceptually and materially.
Sound, or, more specifically noise, is for her an almost utopia promise of opening, containing all possibles and going beyond the social constructions that musical elements like tone and rhythm impose. Taking the practical of noise as a disturbance into the social construction of gender she co-creates with Maria Mitsopolu the transfeminsm group Transnoise in 2012.
This has led they to experiment with building synthesizers – often worn on her body and Pure Data patches for performance and starting a fluent activity giving workshops for transfeminist oriented people, explaining the basis on electronics and open up a big network of transfeminist noisers.
As her interest in the relationship with nature grows, and influenced by thinkers such as Michael Marder or Karen Barad, she has begun to occupy laboratory spaces and hack the performativity of science. In Sept 2012 she took part, with Hackteria, in the nanosmano life project in Ljubljana where she participated in the investigation of cells, solar panels and other microscopic devices as well as giving workshops.
This activity of workshops, sharing her knowledge and spreading the ethic of DIY and open technology, is an integral part of her practice.
Plants, microorganisms alternative energy, the laboratory, have led her to see the body in a new sense, integrated into a complex mesh of interactions which promise a new transversal function for her work, blurring the distinctions between machine, animal and plant, and opening up new horizons for art and performance.
In the last years after my graduation from Fine Arts College, I have been developing an interest in DIY-DIWO technologies, hacking and hardware electronics, in a context of learning by doing in a transhackfeminist electronics open laboratory (Pechblenda) that I co-founded in Calafou, a free technologies based in ecology and open source ideals. Calafou is the place where different personalities whose trajectories are linked to collectives dealing with trans-gender, transhackfeminist, activist research, technological sovereignty, ecological issues, audiovisual production, transformation of spaces and performances. As a one person that was living there for the last four years I was involved in the day live developments and co-organizing most of the free, open technology events there; you can see bellow the deferents task or implications on it.
My active participation in the lab Pechblenda and Transnoise, besides my social ideals and my work as a noise performance, has taken me to many spaces and contexts, specially to the point of starting to collaborate in Hackteria, a biohacking network. Open up again the opportunity to give up workshops as a facilitator all around the world always putting the focus on spread the knowledge and share experience over a transfeminism horizontal perspective.
The last two years, after bio and transhackfeminist values I have been designing and fabricating the devices for a Mobile Lab that is used for autonomous gynecology practices and investigation. As my knowledge in electronics is based on open source and DIY, the devices included in the laboratory are portable replications of a microscope, a speculum done with a 3D printer, an incubator and a centrifuge.
Source : http://paulapin.net/#
