Supervisor: M.A. Hana Janečková, PgCert.

This dissertation focuses on the phenomenon of ectogenesis in relation to imaginative artistic practice. Ectogenesis, understood as the process of fetal growth outside the biological body within an artificial womb environment, is approached not only as a speculative method of biological reproduction (biomedicine, obstetrics, biotechnology), but primarily as a posthumanist creative concept emphasizing more-than-human and embodied experience. This reinterpretation subsequently enables its displacement from the clinical discourse of experimental medicine toward the sphere of contemporary art.

Based on selected artistic tendencies, speculative reproductive imagination is interpreted and critically reflected upon. At the core of my investigation lies the artificial womb – a technology essential to the ectogenetic process and a key artistic element within individual artworks. The dissertation aims to examine what happens when biological reproduction is outsourced from within the body (endo) to the outside (ecto), into an artificially constructed environment, and how this technology materializes within visual art. In what ways are, and can, the various imaginative dimensions of this ectogenetic practice be shaped if they emerge from an alternative, feminist, and posthumanist framework that emphasizes embodied experience, transformation, and more-than-human co-becoming?

Mgr. Denisa Michalinová,

Studio:

Dissertation: The Children of (Post)Men: Ectogenetic Imagination as a Posthumanist Concept in Contemporary Visual Art

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