Make Kin
The Art and Science of Radical Reproduction
Date: November 8th 2025
Welcome and get-in: 9:00 am
Symposium: 10:00 am-4:30 pm
Price: 125 dkr
Location: The Culture Yard, Allegade 2, Helsingør, Denmark (Main Stage)
We regret to inform that Paul Preciado have had to cancel his commitment to the symposium, we hope another opportunity will arise soon : )
At a time when new technologies are reshaping the very conditions of life this symposium asks questions in relation to the future of reproduction. How do we redefine kinship and reproduction when biology itself becomes a site of intervention? How might rituals of care, maintenance, and collective responsibility resist systems of inequality?
At stake are urgent questions of care, justice, and survival. Bringing together thinkers rooted in feminist praxis and queer theory—such as Paul Preciado (ES), Jack Halberstam (US), and Sophie Lewis (UK) — this symposium / performance / event / creative protest asks how we might imagine reproduction and kinship differently, beyond patriarchal structures and the nuclear family. Alternatives which can co-exist with the traditional, in order to ensure better and more including options for a more diverse society.
Engaging with radical thinkers and pioneering ideas, the event invites artists, philosophers, scientists, and theorists to reimagine what it means to belong, to parent, and to create together.
Symposium Programme
We regret to inform that Paul Preciado have had to cancel his commitment to the symposium, we hope another opportunity will arise soon : )
09:00-10:00: Doors
10:00-10:15: Welcome with Tina Ryoon
10:15-11:00: Talk: On In Loco Parentis with bio-artist Charlotte Jarvis (UK)
11:00-11:10: Introduction to Sophie Lewis by Tina Ryoon (DK)
11:10-11:50 Keynote: Sophie Lewis (UK) – Destroy the family to realize its promise
11:50-12:10: Q&A with Sophie Lewis moderated by Tina Ryoon (DK)
12:10-12:15: Info on Breakout Sessions with Tina Ryoon (DK)
12:15-13:15: Lunch Break
13:15-14:15: Breakout Session – 5 Things (Talks/Workshops/Performance/Q&A)
1. Workshop – How to conceive: A no-nonsense workshop around insemination, laws and scams: Liesel Burisch (DK)
Location: M2 (2.floor)
2. Workshop – Tess Thorsen, Sara Ciston & Erin Robinson: On AI, Moral and Ethical Frameworks
Location: Krydsfeltet (Ground floor)
3. Performance Ritual – Organ of Radical Care: Dr. Patricia Saragüeta (AR)
Location: M5 (2.floor)
4. Talk – On Artificial Embryos: Prof. Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes (PT)
Location: Prismen (1. floor)
5. Extended Q&A – In Loco Parentis: Charlotte Jarvis (UK) /
Location: M3 (2.floor)
14:15-14:35 Break
14:35-15:15: Keynote Jack Halberstam (US) – Transpolitics at The End of The World
15:15-15.30: Q&A with Jack Halberstam moderated by Charlotte Jarvis (UK)
15:30-16:00: Final reflections w. Charlotte Jarvis (UK) & Tina Ryoon (DK) + Intro to performance
16:00-16:30 Performance: In Loco Parentis Performance by Charlotte Jarvis (UK)
Inspiration
The symposium is inspired by the project In Loco Parentis, made by Charlotte Jarvis in collaboration with Prof. Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes and developed during Charlotte’s residency at The Culture Yard as part of the European Digital Deal. The work uses new reproductive technologies to interrogate the boundaries of law, ethics, and kinship—offering a speculative framework for rethinking how and what we might parent in the future, which entities we will care for, and imaging reproduction beyond the nuclear family.
Exhibition: Mutating Matters
The exhibition will premiere on November 8th, and be on display to see for the guests.
Speakers
Charlotte Jarvis (UK)
Charlotte Jarvis is an artist and lecturer working at the intersection of art and science. Her practice often employs living cells and DNA in radical and poetic ways: she has encoded music into DNA, grown her own tumour, and even seen her heartbeat outside of her body. Treating the body as a liminal space for transformation, hybridisation, and magic, her work asks how biotechnology can be reframed through imagination, ritual, and collective storytelling.
She creates large-scale multimedia installations and performances, presented internationally at venues such as Ars Electronica, the Venice Biennale, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Guangdong Museum of Art. She has been artist-in-residence at scientific institutions including the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Netherlands Proteomics Centre, and the Hubrecht Institute, and her practice has been recognised with awards such as the Netherlands Bioart and Design Award and the Alternate Realities Commission.
Her most recent project, In Loco Parentis, developed with Professor Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes and presented at The Culture Yard in Denmark, explores the future of reproduction by bringing together stem cell research, AI, ethics, and public participation. Jarvis currently lectures and researches at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths, University of London.
🔗 https://cjarvis.com/
Sophie Lewis (UK)
Sophie Lewis is a writer, scholar, and feminist theorist whose work reimagines kinship, care, and reproduction. Born in Vienna and raised across Europe, she studied at Oxford and The New School before completing her PhD in human geography at the University of Manchester, where she examined surrogacy as a form of labor.
Her first book, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (2019), established her as a daring new voice in feminist thought and was praised by Donna Haraway as “the seriously radical cry for full…” — a testament to how Lewis extends and transforms the cyborg-feminist legacy. She has since published Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation (2022), a call to imagine care beyond the confines of the nuclear household, and most recently Enemy Feminisms (2025), which interrogates reactionary strands of feminism and their entanglements with far-right politics.
Alongside her books, Lewis has contributed essays to n+1, Harper’s, Boston Review, The New York Times, and the London Review of Books, and has worked as a translator and member of the Out of the Woods collective. She currently teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and is a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies.
With both rigor and wit, Sophie Lewis challenges us to think otherwise about reproduction, kinship, and survival — insisting on the radical possibilities of care as a collective practice.
🔗 https://www.interviewmagazine.com/literature/sophie-lewis-wants-you-to-be-a-better-feminist
Jack Halberstam (US)
Jack Halberstam is a leading American academic, writer, and queer theorist whose work challenges normative understandings of gender, culture, and failure. Born in 1961, Halberstam earned a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Minnesota.
He has held faculty positions at UC San Diego and the University of Southern California—where he directed feminist research—before joining Columbia University in 2017 as Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Halberstam is the author of numerous influential books, including Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (1995), Female Masculinity (1998), In a Queer Time and Place (2005), The Queer Art of Failure (2011), Gaga Feminism (2012), Trans: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (2018), and Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire (2020). Female Masculinity advanced new readings of gender beyond binaries, while The Queer Art of Failure proposed failure as a radical alternative to capitalist norms of success.
A sought-after speaker and dynamic public intellectual, Halberstam lectures widely on queer theory, popular culture, visual media, subcultures, and gender variance. In 2018, he received the Arcus/Places Prize in recognition of innovative scholarship on gender, sexuality, and architecture.
Halberstam uses both he/him and she/her pronouns, and embraces names like Jack, Judith, or Jude in different contexts—describing their gender as fluid, a “free-floater,” open to contradiction and play.
Tess Skadegård Thorsen (DK)
Tess Skadegård Thorsen, PhD (she/her), is a researcher, educator, and consultant specializing in representation in tech, media, and film. A former managing editor of the Danish Journal for Gender Research, she received the 2022 Kraka Award for gender studies. Her work has been published internationally and she has lectured at universities worldwide including Columbia, Penn State, Lund, and Copenhagen. Tess was formerly Director of Product Ethics at Comcast NBCUniversal and now serves on several advisory boards including the Danish Pioneer Centre for AI, Teater Dansk Dansk, and Pluralisterne.
🔗 tessskadegardthorsen.com
Sara Ciston (US)
Sarah Ciston is an artist-researcher building tools for intersectional, critical–creative approaches to machine learning. From October 2025, they join IT University of Copenhagen as PostDoc. They hold a PhD in Media Arts + Practice from USC and are the author of A Critical Field Guide for Working with Machine Learning Datasets. Founder of Code Collective, they’ve held fellowships at CAIS and HIIG Berlin and were named an AI Newcomer by the German Society for Computing. Their work has been presented at Akademie der Künste Berlin, MUTEK, Mozilla Festival, and Science Gallery London, with a forthcoming MIT Press book.
🔗 sarahciston.com
Liesel Burisch (DK/SE)
Liesel Burisch is an artist, writer, and birth worker whose practice explores collective healing through hybrid gatherings of rest, ritual, and celebration. Influenced by nightlife culture, their work reimagines rest as resistance and recovery from trauma and austerity. Burisch’s Queer Nursing Manifest is part of the Wellcome Collection, London. They are winner of the Prix JCE and nominated for the CIRCA Prize 2023, with recent exhibitions at O-Overgaden (Copenhagen), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Art Tower Mito (Japan), and Imagine the City (Hamburg).
🔗 lieselburisch.com | Queer Nursing
Prof. Susana Chuva De Sousa Lopes (PT)
Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes is Professor of Developmental Biology at Leiden University Medical Center and Visiting Professor at Ghent University Hospital. She has received major research grants including VENI, VICI, and ERC Consolidator awards. She leads the ZonMW PSIDER consortium HipGametes and is PI in the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW). Her research focuses on human gametogenesis, stem cell differentiation, and early development, advancing understanding of fertility and reproduction.
🔗 Leiden University Profile
Dr. Patricia Saragüeta (AR)
Dr. Patricia Saragüeta is a scientist and artist with a PhD in Chemistry, working at the intersection of genomics, cellular biology, and art. She is a CONICET researcher and Professor at the University of Buenos Aires. Her practice explores the meeting of art and science both institutionally and creatively. Saragüeta has published three books of poetry, numerous scientific papers, and essays bridging the poetic and molecular dimensions of life.
🔗 University of Buenos Aires Profile
Host: Tina Ryoon (DK)
Tina Ryoon, MA in Modern Culture and Master in Curating works as Program Manager at Art Hub Copenhagen and as Special Consultant at The Danish Technical University (DTU). She has an interest in bringing creative and critical perspectives into technological contexts, and enjoys operating at the intersection of art, culture and technology