Commoning Molecules: Decolonising Biological Patents by Gender Hacking Protocols

By making reference to the political context of “molecular invasion” (Critical Art Ensemble 2002), this article will compare two practices of production and administration of hormones to highlight the consequences at stake when business property extends over bodies and cells of humans, animals and plants. On the one hand, I will examine DIWO (Do It With Others) biohacking workshops that synthesise pharmaceutical hormones and share the know-how by using open-source protocols and participatory workshop methods. I will refer to these specific practices as exemplary of a growing approach to the topic which represents a new field combining biohacking, activism, art, and open science, by “commoning” (Linebaugh 2008) medical tools and knowledge. These workshops are hacking the business property in humans by commoning practices of co-creating and co-producing hormone molecules, refusing to be locked into the profit-driven mechanics of bio-capital and aiming at taking back scientific knowledge. Moreover, these interventions question what a normal or natural model of sex is – given that organic pollutants are already affecting every aspect of the sphere of reproduction of humans and animals, its related organs and hormonal balance (SCOPE-IUPAC 2001; Lind and Lind 2011; Hood 2005; Kier 2010; Langstone 2010). On the other hand, I draw on an open-ended conversation I conducted with a number of Italian trans activists, focusing on the power that pharmaceutical monopolies have, through the intellectual property rights on pharmaceuticals (including hormones), to introduce or withdraw from the market drugs on which many people rely. This article aims to show how selected DIWO biohacking workshops, which are taking place between Europe and North America, can be understood as decolonial interventions as they call us to critically reappraise the relationship between knowledge, power, and institutions by commoning science knowledge and resisting the push to commodify knowledge and place it behind paywalls, by commoning the molecules’ production. Finally, they promote a more inclusive approach to healthcare that critically reappraises technology and raises collective awareness of our bodies as battlegrounds to be engineered and controlled

The Medicalisation of Politics or the Politicisation of Medicine: The Case of Italian Struggles to Design Public Healthcare Institutions

The article follows the contours of a conversation with Fulvio Aurora, Paolo Fierro and Edoardo Turri, three members of the Italian health activist organization Medicina Democratica, which will also function as the backbone of our account of the initial radical impetus and the later demise of the Italian public health system, the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale or SSN. Through the focus on the Italian context, we wish to address a set of broader and interrelated questions around the design of public healthcare services and the scale of political agency which can be significant today across a number of struggles. When reasoning around issues of health, and seeking for definitions that complexify this concept beyond a mere ensemble of optimal bodily functionality, the Italian context offers an effective standpoint. Not only because it was the first place where the pandemic spread beyond its original outbreak in the Chinese province of Wuhan, but also because in the Seventies this country has been a very important laboratory of political practices that contributed significantly to shape international debates and political imaginaries around healthcare practices. For example, one might recall the importance of Franco Basaglia's work for the so-called “anti-psychiatry” revolution; the invention of the consultori (a network of self-managed reproductive healthcare centres), operated by the feminist movement, which later become part of the national healthcare system; and finally, the method of the workers’ self-inquiry introduced by activists such as Ivar Oddone and Giulio Maccacaro to launch important investigations into the toxicity of industrial plants, which were influential beyond the Italian borders

Commoning Molecules: Decolonising Biological Patents by Gender Hacking Protocols

By making reference to the political context of “molecular invasion” (Critical Art Ensemble 2002), this article will compare two practices of production and administration of hormones to highlight the consequences at stake when business property extends over bodies and cells of humans, animals and plants. [...] This article aims to show how selected DIWO biohacking workshops, which are taking place between Europe and North America, can be understood as decolonial interventions as they call us to critically reappraise the relationship between knowledge, power, and institutions by commoning science knowledge and resisting the push to commodify knowledge and place it behind paywalls, by commoning the molecules’ production. Finally, they promote a more inclusive approach to healthcare that critically reappraises technology and raises collective awareness of our bodies as battlegrounds to be engineered and controlled

Cure Ribelli. Tecnologie aperte per una cura come bene comune

Cure Ribelli è una pubblicazione che nasce dalle attività di ricerca e disseminazione svolte da WeMake nell’ambito del progetto Digital Social Innovation for Europe, un programma supportato dalla Commissione Europea che punta a rafforzare la rete di organizzazioni che propongono l’utilizzo delle tecnologie con una prospettiva mirata all’impatto positivo sulla società. I concetti chiave del paradigma dell’innovazione sociale digitale gravitano intorno a termini quali codici e dati aperti, co-progettazione, collaborazione, impatto sociale. Dal gennaio 2018 abbiamo riflettuto e ci siamo confrontate sulla declinazione di tali concetti nell’ambito della cura e della salute a partire da una mappatura del contesto e da un percorso formativo informale che ha coinvolto cittadini, referenti politici, professionisti e istituzioni. Che cosa significa sviluppare un’innovazione dal basso guidata dalla comunità e fondata sui beni comuni, in un settore impreparato al crescente invecchiamento della popolazione, governata da burocrazie obsolete, e che è limitata da tecnologie proprietarie e procedure verticistiche? Abbiamo cercato di rispondere a queste domande attraverso sette articoli e sette pratiche progettuali che danno concretamente forma ad altri e nuovi modi di fare cura e occuparsi della salute sfruttando il potenziale emancipatorio delle tecnologie digitali. Nell’ambito di questa ricerca, abbiamo voluto definire questi altri modi “ribelli” poiché spesso nascono da forti esigenze personali delle persone direttamente interessate che, nella maggior parte dei casi, agiscono senza chiedere il permesso di mercati e istituzioni, per provocarli al fine di farli cambiare o per sopperire alle carenze di chi dovrebbe ma non innova, con cura, il settore della salute

Rebelling with Care.:Exploring open technologies for commoning healthcare

The publication Rebelling with Care is the result of the research and dissemination activities carried out by WeMake within the framework of DSI for Europe, a project supported by the European Commission to reinforce the network of organizations using technologies to make a positive impact on society. The DSI paradigm revolves around key concepts such as open codes and data, co-design, collaboration and social impact. Since January 2018, we have reflected upon the traction these terms could have specifically in the field of health and care practices, starting with a map of the current DSI ecosystem and an informal learning journey that has involved citizens, policy-makers, professionals and institutions. What does it mean to develop bottom-up innovation, which is community-driven and built upon the commons, in a sector that is struggling to meet the needs of a growing and aging society, that is ruled by obsolete bureaucracies, and that is limited by proprietary technologies and top-down procedures? We have tried to answer these questions through seven articles and seven practices that show in concrete terms the contours of the emerging and diverse new modalities of dealing with the health and care challenges of today by leveraging the empowering potential of digital technologies. In the context of this research, we came to define these different modalities, which often emerge from the strong personal needs of the people directly impacted by a specific condition, as “rebel practices”. This is because in the vast majority of cases, these practices simultaneously operate outside a market logic without asking for the full permission of official institutions, with the purpose of provoking them to change or filling the gap left by who do not innovate, with due care, in the fields of health and care provisions

Towards a Grammar of the Recreative Industries

The “transfer of the responsibility of paying for publication to the individual author (or the author’s funding agency or institution)” that is brought about by gold author-pays open access is, as Gary Hall notes in Pirate Philosophy, a “typical neoliberal move.” By placing researchers in a position where they have to compete for the inevitably limited amounts of funding that are available to enable them to publish on an article- or book-processing-charge (APC/BPC) basis, gold author-pays open access serves as a means of introducing yet further competition into the public system of higher education. It also establishes a commercial market for A/BPCs, and with it another way of “inflicting debt” onto the university, to set alongside that achieved by the “imposition of a system of tuition fees in England” (Hall 2016: 193, n60). It is not surprising then that calls are increasingly being made within the open access movement for non-profit presses, projects and institutions to cooperate horizontally in order to counter the hegemony of both free market economics and commercial publishing. When it comes to actually building non-profit alternatives, however, questions of funding soon come into play. A number of interesting innovations have emerged, not least in the form of library consortium subsidy models that redirect money otherwise used to purchase subscriptions to exorbitantly priced journals. Still, the long-term financial sustainability of numerous open access initiatives currently depends on already overstretched institutional budgets. As a result, even though many non-profit projects wish to work together cooperatively, they find themselves in a situation where they are forced to compete against one other (and against for-profits) for funding from libraries, foundations, research councils and other sources