Saturday, October 19, 2019

Trust Me, I'm an Artist

From Waag
The performance Que le cheval vive en moi (May the horse live in me) is an extreme, medical self-experiment with a blood-brotherhood beyond species boundaries. With this performance, the French duo Art Orienté objet calls for greater ecological responsibility from humans, whose technologies increasingly instrumentalize other animals and plants. The artist Marion Laval-Jeantet has turned herself into a proverbial “guinea pig,” allowing herself to be injected over the course of several months with horse immunoglobulins (glycoproteins that function as antibodies in immune response) and thus developing a progressive tolerance to these foreign animal bodies.

In February 2011, having built up her tolerance, she was able to be injected with horse blood plasma containing the entire spectrum of foreign immunoglobulins, without falling into anaphylactic shock—the intention being that the horse immunoglobulin would by-pass the defensive mechanisms of her own human immune system, enter her blood stream to bond with the proteins of her own body and, as a result of this synthesis, have an effect on all major body functions. Immunoglobulins are biochemical messengers that control, for example, the glands and organs of the endocrine system, which is also closely tied to the nervous system, so that the artist, during and in the weeks after the performance, experienced not only alterations in her physiological rhythm but also of her consciousness, characterized by heightened sensibility and nervousness....MORE
And from designboom:
art orienté objet: may the horse live in me
art orienté objet: may the horse live in me
que le cheval vive en moi’ (may the horse live in me) by art orienté objet (marion laval-jeantet & benoît mangin)  is a medical self-experiment  / performance where the artist marion laval-jeantet allowed herself to be injected with horse blood plasma containing the entire spectrum of foreign immunoglobulins (following several months of precautions to build up her immune system). after the transfusion, the artist performed a communication ritual with a horse while wearing prosthetic horse-like stilts before her hybrid blood was extracted and freeze-dried....MORE