Urochromatography
2024
Collaborative exploration of urine as matter together with Hedwich Rooks, presented during the residency at SOLU Bioart Society, as part of the exhibition Oozing, Spilling, Leaking: uncovering bodily fluids in artistic practice - a duo project with Gennietta Varsi and collective of Michaela Davidova and Hedwich Rooks, curated by Julia Fidder, 2024
Here, we would like to walk you along the stream. It leaks through environments - farmlands and nightclubs, sewers and oceans. It rejoins the waters of abjection to become anew - the water of ends and beginnings. The liquid is akin to humans but inseparable from nature too. Organic, and synthetic; yellow and amber; repulsive and satisfying; clean and dirty, it is mine as much as yours and theirs. In this pool we swim.
This is the ode to the metabolic by-product, to the waste and resource, to the liquid that we no longer can hold onto. The fluid is forgotten as quickly as it is flushed through the bathroom bowels. Urine, piss, pee or wee wee. Do you listen to the water tapping on the ceramic bowl? You nor we can escape the cycle. This returning need makes us feel cross-contaminated but grounded, and connected with and part of what makes us alive. The repeetition so certain but not at all general.
It all begins and ends with glomerular filtration. Or when the drinks are absorbed by the lining of the mouth and the tongue, then passed through the stomach and guts into the bloodstream. Or when proteins break down, and urobilin is formed. It all happens again and again when the substances are decomposed into oxygen, nutrients and toxins and then carried with the blood towards glomeruli. The tiny network of blood vessels that grow in the kidneys like the roots of the plants in helophyte filters strain the water, uric acid, urea, and various ions, salts and acids - down to the bladder and out.
Oozing, Spilling, Leaking: uncovering bodily fluids in artistic practice - a duo project with Gennietta Varsi and collective of Michaela Davidova and Hedwich Rooks, curated by Julia Fidder, 2024, SOLU Bioart Society
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Indian yellow pigment which was historically obtained from concentrated urine from cows fed on a diet of mango leaves
This project brings together the practices of Gennietta Varsi, Michaela Davidova and Hedwich Rooks. In the longer collaborative project, the artists research the place of bodily fluids in their own and other’s practices. In doing so, they focus both on ecological and social sustainability and reflect on the possibilities of oozing, spilling or leaking the own body in the work.
During the residency we focused on the diuretic plants and pigments explored through the food practice and chromatography process.
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asparagus, birch, hibiscus, horsetail, parsley, nigella, juniper
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microscopy image, liquid cooked urine and dandelion flower pulp extract in NaOH
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microscopy image, liquid cooked urine
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stereo microscopy image, solid cooked urine
Here, we would like to walk you along the stream. It leaks through environments - farmlands and nightclubs, sewers and oceans. It rejoins the waters of abjection to become anew - the water of ends and beginnings. The liquid is akin to humans but inseparable from nature too. Organic, and synthetic; yellow and amber; repulsive and satisfying; clean and dirty, it is mine as much as yours and theirs. In this pool we swim.
This is the ode to the metabolic by-product, to the waste and resource, to the liquid that we no longer can hold onto. The fluid is forgotten as quickly as it is flushed through the bathroom bowels. Urine, piss, pee or wee wee. Do you listen to the water tapping on the ceramic bowl? You nor we can escape the cycle. This returning need makes us feel cross-contaminated but grounded, and connected with and part of what makes us alive. The repeetition so certain but not at all general.
It all begins and ends with glomerular filtration. Or when the drinks are absorbed by the lining of the mouth and the tongue, then passed through the stomach and guts into the bloodstream. Or when proteins break down, and urobilin is formed. It all happens again and again when the substances are decomposed into oxygen, nutrients and toxins and then carried with the blood towards glomeruli. The tiny network of blood vessels that grow in the kidneys like the roots of the plants in helophyte filters strain the water, uric acid, urea, and various ions, salts and acids - down to the bladder and out.
Oozing, Spilling, Leaking: uncovering bodily fluids in artistic practice - a duo project with Gennietta Varsi and collective of Michaela Davidova and Hedwich Rooks, curated by Julia Fidder, 2024, SOLU Bioart Society
Indian yellow pigment which was historically obtained from concentrated urine from cows fed on a diet of mango leavesThis project brings together the practices of Gennietta Varsi, Michaela Davidova and Hedwich Rooks. In the longer collaborative project, the artists research the place of bodily fluids in their own and other’s practices. In doing so, they focus both on ecological and social sustainability and reflect on the possibilities of oozing, spilling or leaking the own body in the work.
During the residency we focused on the diuretic plants and pigments explored through the food practice and chromatography process.
asparagus, birch, hibiscus, horsetail, parsley, nigella, juniper
microscopy image, liquid cooked urine and dandelion flower pulp extract in NaOH
microscopy image, liquid cooked urine
stereo microscopy image, solid cooked urine
Oozing, Spilling, Leaking: uncovering bodily fluids in artistic practice - a duo project with Gennietta Varsi and collective of Michaela Davidova and Hedwich Rooks, curated by Julia Fidder, 2024, SOLU Bioart Society
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