Maya - Fused Horizons: Narrating Pain, Toxicity and Unavoidable Intimacy in the Anthropocene

We live in an era of bio-molecular politics. Paul B. Preciado, for instance, describes the ways in which pharmaceutical and pornography industries design and regulate bodies and desires as the “pharmacopornographic regime”. While Preciado focuses on the semiotic and biotechnological interventions that shape individual bodies, Michelle Murphy examines the uneven spatio-temporal distribution of chemicals across landscapes, a phenomenon she terms “chemical infrastructure.” Though their approaches differ—one centered on hormonal transformations and the other on environmental degradation—both theories converge in revealing how more-than-human bodies are shaped as socially constructed artifacts of larger biopolitical systems through molecular interventions. Mel Chen conceptualizes this entanglement as “molecular intimacy” , emphasizing the autonomous behavior of toxins as they circulate, merge, and disrupt existing systems of control.

Figure01, excerpt from The Borderers (2024). courtesy of Maya Erin Masuda

Figure02, excerpt from The Borderers (2024). courtesy of Maya Erin Masuda

Figure03, excerpt from The Borderers (2024). courtesy of Maya Erin Masuda

Radioactivity that mutates and transforms bodies serve as a compelling example to the “molecular intimacy”. Therefore as an interface of negotiation of scales, through my creative practice I have explored the many ways in which more-than-human surfaces such as human, animal, or landscape, planetary skin, serves as a witness to the surrounding biopolitical conditions. The Borderer, the work which I presented in 2023, problematizes the unavoidable multispecies intimacy through formulating speculative surfaces of an anonymous land.  I trained a generative AI (GAN) model using 2,500 microscopic photographs of skin abnormalities of animals that remained after nuclear catastrophes and 2,500 satellite images of planetary surfaces where historically severe contamination has been experienced. This process generated over 5,000 photographs of grey spectrum between skin and landscape [figure 1.2]. What astounded me the most was how the computational gaze of neural networks—through its pattern recognition capabilities—constructed an alternative skin, perceiving the references with an intimate, almost caressing gaze. The photographs blur the lines between tumors and mountains, producing uncanny surfaces where beauty and toxicity coexist, leaving room for speculation: scales collapsed, revealing how anthropocentric activities alter entire landscapes from a molecular level.

How could we comprehend such uncanny surfaces? Mel Chen might again provide a crucial lens. Chen critiques the stigmatization and exclusion of mutant bodies, particularly their deformities, illnesses, and toxicity, which Chen conceptualizes as “toxic queerness.” Chen’s interpretation of queerness resonates with Heather Davis’s discourse on a future based on non-reproduction. By focusing on the inheritance of spatiotemporal distribution of chemicals, Davis opens a pathway to perceive various non-human entities affected by the anthropocentric activities as “queer kin” of humankind. This reimagination of kinship, untethered from reproduction, allows us to understand ecosystems as networks of circulating molecules and explore the ambivalent intimacy that emerges within these entanglements.