Goal: Provide the initial context for the design of the Bioassay Test with seed to expose toxicity from Water sample to facilitate its re-appropriation and understanding
In 2015 we organized a kind of Hacker Camp in Brittany in front of a polluted lake − the first ever published investigation was released in 2024. It was a kick-off for a local Tour within Labs and FabLabs.
Some of us grew up on this lake. So we were and still are directly concerned and impacted, in our mind, in our culture, in our bodies by the mining site polluting the land.
We then decided to join forces - individuals, communities, biohackerspaces, scientists, hacktivists - to design technical means of analysis under free licences that were reproducible, affordable and repeatable.
From that moment on, we built on work and workshops already underway called ‘Biopanics, Kitchen and Feminism’.
Women, and later other minorities, were locked up and chained in kitchens to serve the partiarchy and provide free labour/invisible labour power for capitalism. In these same spaces of imprisonment, underground agentivity and third places were set up and run by pioneers of risk-taking.
Queer In The Kicthen, Housewives Making Drugs, Open Source Estrogen and many other punks & DIY and environmentalists influenced our steps one page at a time.
We wanted something that would be fun but competitive with hard science - see Biopunk Manifesto - and that would stand up to industrial criticism.
A system accessible - as far as possible - to people living in household kitchens; lowtech, low-cost access, re-documentable, participative and conducive to discussion and self-organisation.
In 2020, we met and collaborate with Prakash Lab during Frugal Science and with some people around the world we focused on DIY pregnancy test. In the aftermath some research among others went through seeds and Bioassay (long story story short: From very old papyrus to modern science and techno − anthropology, biology, chemistry and History [1])
I − Xavi − also have a background in biology. So in somehow I impulsed a design around seeds, from Carol C. Baskin and Jerry M. Baskin. research and modern ecotoxicology bioassay, *based from Van Noordwijk, J. (1989) ; then In 1927, Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek ; to Bioassays Advanced Methods and Applications (Donat Hader, Gilmar Erzinger & al.).
We are still trying to bridge our punk roots with other sides, like
Yesterday and even today, every little step we take, no matter how small, brings us closer to effective simplicity - like putting a seed in a bowl of water.
Now, we are facing this From Ecological grief to action(s) as an activist / investigator point of view − and Welcoming a meteor that has been eagerly awaited