Non-binary

NB explores the relationship between organs and sexuality, by questioning this system and the common design language of commercial sex toys.

Who defines an organ? What is an organ? And intervenes on new organs, services, and desires about identity politics rather as a proposition or possibility. With video, foldable design and liters of silicon.

It also invites the viewer to take a closer look at the epilogue of our personal stories, within the realities of gender fluidity and sex toys.

We all have the power to transform and change our feelings and thoughts between desire & body, technique and consciousness.

Can we re-invent the self? I’m wondering myself. Now that 3D bio-printing becomes a reality, it will be possible to print every sex organ. Will this desire free us from our ‘White-Supremacist-Cis-Hetero-Patriarchal-Capitalist culture’ we exist in as Bell Hook it defines? Can we perceive our organs and bodies as a technical mutant who constantly change its meaning as Donna Haraway writes about? I’m also interested in how Paul B. Preciado it has put forward that trans-bodies doesn’t exists in biology-books, only as a monster; ‘when can a body be said to exists? Can a body be someones property? What if a body’s made of signs, image and sound? Can those signs, those images, those sounds be mine even if my body isn’t?

Still of kinetic & video installation Non-binary by Merel Noorlander, 2020
Video registration Non-binary by Zhuo Chen, edit Merel Noorlander, 2020

The installation/performance takes place in two rooms, a white waiting room and a blue room. The visitor is invited to take a seat in the first and hand over two passport copies. One copy is cut into small pieces with a paper-shredder. A white coat is handed over, it disguises the identity of the underlying visitors clothing.

The blue room is entered. Like some public toilets in Amsterdam, blue light makes veins invisible, which equates the visitors in the blue room with the moving objects on a metal cart; commercial strokers of female body parts, transformed into kinetic hybrid designs.

The objects are casted and designed with Arduino, origami and latex. Research material is on display. A video projection shows an original stroker, which slowly disintegrate with a glitch effect, divided into pixels.

Upon leaving the room, the visitor receives the second copy of the passport back, stamped with ‘x/they/them’ research.

Co-performer and photography by Brians Kovach

Glitch-video in collaboration with Enn_Texo

Still of kinetic & video installation Non-binary Lab by Merel Noorlander, 2020
Glitch video with Enn Texo, Non-binary Lab Merel Noorlander 2020
Still of kinetic installation Non-binary by Merel Noorlander, 2020
Still of kinetic object Non-binary by Merel Noorlander, 2020
Video of kinetic object Non-binary by Merel Noorlander, 2020
Still of kinetic object Non-binary by Merel Noorlander, 2020
Still of installation Non-binary by Merel Noorlander, 2020
Video of kinetic object Non-binary by Merel Noorlander, 2020
Still of installation | performance Non-binary Merel Noorlander, 2020
Still of installation | performance Non-binary Merel Noorlander, 2020
Still of installation Non-binary Merel Noorlander, 2020