Surrogate
Surrogate began with a proposal: To carry someone else’s baby for nine months while they use an app to monitor and control me. The parents could decide what I eat, what I do, when I sleep — having complete control over the body in which their baby is growing. Collaborating with a prospective parent, I pursued the remote-control surrogacy with help from fertility doctors, surrogates, doulas, midwives, geneticists.
Working with a prospective parent, I followed the desire to perform this remote-control surrogacy through an intense process working with doctors, psychologists, fertility specialists, surrogates, doulas, midwives, and geneticists. It involved designing the Surrogate app, searching sperm donor databases, completing psychological evaluations and health exams, freezing embryos, talking with family, and ongoing correspondence with each other. Upon reaching a difficult moment where I was prevented from being a surrogate by the medical board, I expanded the work into a series of short films, performances, and installations that tell the story of what happened.
As Roe v. Wade is overturned and gene editing opens entirely new reproductive futures, this project asks: How much control should we have over a birthing person’s body, and over a life before it’s born? What does kin mean when rapidly developing reproductive technologies—including IVF, egg and sperm donation, embryo freezing, DNA testing, and gene editing—shift our relationships? What happens when our industrialized drive for control collides with the process of birth?
This deeply personal work offers my body as physical, emotional, and conceptual surrogate for understanding reproduction and technology’s role in it. The act of becoming a remote control surrogate serves as a metaphor for the control we may soon hold through processes of genetic engineering, as well as the immediate infringement on our bodily autonomy enacted by the legislation of reproductive rights worldwide.
Surrogate App
The Surrogate iOS app consists of a parent and surrogate version. The surrogate version tracks heart rate, sleep, physical activity and step count, mood, meals, water intake and weight. A calendar feature allows the parent to view and schedule activities, tasks, and meals. A snapshot feature enables the parent to request a current snapshot of the surrogate's immediate environment. A message feature documents parent and surrogate conversation over the course of the pregnancy. A notes feature allows both to privately record their thoughts throughout the process. The visual design of the app references a digital notebook, departing from the slick tech aesthetic of current life tracking apps. While the app and performance began with a provocation of extreme control and surveillance, through the development process, the app became a tool for understanding an evolving and nuanced relationship.Credits
Cinematography, Gabriel Noguez
Intended Parents Film, Director, David Leonard
Surrogate App, Design, Stefanie Tam
Prosthetics, Design and Fabrication, Paul Esposito
Placenta, Design and Fabrication, Eunice Choi
Studio Assistants: Lela Barclay de Tolly, Karina Lopez, Chelly Jin, Wylie Kasai
With support from
Creative Capital AwardUnited States Artist Fellowship
MacDowell Fellowship
Sundance Institute New Frontier Story Lab
Sundance Institute Art of Practice Fellowship
Pioneer Works Tech Residency
KW Institute for Contemporary Art