ETHOS Lab happily welcomes Lara Reime, who is a PhD Fellow in the Technologies in Practice research group. During her time at TiP Lara’s work has already intersected with the lab multiple times, and we are thrilled that she will now officially join us.
Her interdisciplinary research project combines design and ethnographic methods to explore sociotechnical entanglements of infertile bodies, with focus on bodily and embodied practices of fertility tracking. Building on feminist theories of bodies and embodiment, her research explores critical, material and speculative approaches to self-tracking and reproduction. Her work puts forward an understanding of reproductive bodies that goes beyond the female body and encompasses interpersonal and more-than-human relations as well as experiences of male, non-binary, trans* and infertile bodies.
Below, Lara reflects further on her work…
What kind of materials are you working with in your research and why?
So far, I am mainly working with yarns, strings, needles & fabric. Sometimes I am being aided by the embroidery machine that lives in the lab and other times it’s just my hands guiding the needle or knitting the knots. I am interested in exploring different sorts of materials and how through working with them we can create (different) relations to data and our bodies, so I might explore more materials during my project.
How is data materialisation embedded in your research?
I am working with different kinds of data materialization, for example translating data into embroidery patterns or the ancient tradition of quipu knotting. The idea thereby is to use materializations of data traces to reflect upon bodily relations to data worlds of which we are part. And to re-engage with bodily data through the practice of knotting and through creating tactile materializations.
What are your hopes for the research and your contribution to it?
I am hoping that my research can create spaces to tell stories of embodied experiences of in/fertile bodies and how these become co-shaped through and with technologies. Thereby engaging with and making visible a plurality of reproductive bodies.