Chemical Charm, Silicon Malley 2018

Raphaëlle Mueller, en collaboration avec Katie Lenanton et Sarah Sandler , Chemical Charm, 2018, phéromones synthétiques diffusées et frottées sur des surfaces textiles, moquette, son, lampes fluorescentes programmées, diffuseurs USB, diffuseurs d’huile, lait maternel, capteurs. Installation et performance à Silicon Malley, Prilly, Suisse, 2018. Avec Honkasalo- Niemi-Virtanen.

Le projet Chemical Charm questionne les niveaux et entités chimiques invisibles qui tendent à façonner nos désirs : les phéromones. L’installation propose ainsi une immersion dans un cocktail de ces molécules synthétiques destinées aux humains se mêlant à des produits spécifiques destinés à la reproduction animale (dans les élevages porcins notamment) ou en tant que leurre de chasse pour l’attraction des proies par l’odorat. Ces phéromones synthétiques servent de même à « hacker »/transformer la voix de la narratrice lors de la performance sonore.

Performance (english)

Alpha Female Pheromone (Androsterone)
Raw Pheromones for Sex & Status
Human & Pig Arousal Pheromone (Androstanone) Alpha Male Pheromone (Alpha-Androsterone) Female Copulins to Intoxicate Males
Wild Boar & Pig Attractant
Pig Sex Pheromone

We’ve been thinking about how we know so little about our noses, but they operate as a gateway for invisible penetrative forces—pheromones—to enter deep into a primordial space. They subconsciously hijack our bodies, imposing upon us a plethora of volatile biological effects that simultaneously exist but remain largely indiscernible.

≈ Raw Pheromones for Sex & Status ≈ Marilyn Monroe Pheromones ≈

Our interior soup bubbles but it’s impossible to pinpoint which piece of carrot is nudging up against that onion, or what propels it there. We play with placebo narratives. Pheromones battery charge our joysticks, manoeuvering us towards desires, impulses, and innermost encounters with beings, others and environments. Our synapses comandeer multiple dualling signals that layer, waft and dissipate. Here, hierarchical interspecies dynamics are temporarily muted, binaries soften, we are all encompassed.

≈ Human & Pig Arousal Pheromone (Androstanone) ≈ Female Copulins to Intoxicate Males ≈

Scientists in the ‘60s started to use ‘alpha’ as a signifier for animal dominance, and this was later applied to humans in the early ‘ 90s. Flexing their authority, alpha scientists named alpha subjects. The alpha is the brightest star, the number one, the beast who demands to be followed. The wet thrill of trying to stare down an ox.

≈ Alpha Female Pheromone (Androsterone)≈ Alpha Male Pheromone (Alpha-Androsterone) ≈

An alpha has the authority to name something naturally occurring but unverifiable. It can claim that its synthetic twin is valid, active, powerful. It believes in its capacity to control, and that it has the right to exert this capacity. It naturalises submissive behaviour, and this dynamic transcends human behaviours to oppress other species. This alpha leans heavily on its own reproductive importance. Willing instrumentalisation occurs through acts of industrial insemination that enact cycles of generative capital.

≈ Pig Sex Pheromone ≈ Wild Boar & Pig Attractant ≈

How to speak of something whose very existence is uncertain? Can we form a partial understanding through cumulative fragments? Organic desire responds to chemical control. Dissonance and residue overrides explanations articulated through default authoritative knowledges. Our language to express this is incomplete, so we attempt to communicate with gesturing bodies instead.

Raphaëlle Mueller