Ever it Takes is an attempt to establish a relationship of responsibility and care, following the ideas of Donna Haraway about ‘making kin’ (Donna Haraway: Staying with the Trouble). By acknowledging interdependence Ever it Takes functions as a ‘naturalcultural’ community of bearded dragons, mechanisms and parents. This community is a form of material speculation that inventes practices of care, imagining improbable collaborations as a proposal for ‘possible futures and implausible but real nows’.
‘Making kin’ can be read as an ethics of care which refers to placing values of relationship and care over reason and logic. Caring was engendered as feminine and devalued. In contrast, Ever it Takes performs and values interspecies caring in public and private.The installation consists of a lab setting that establishes the connection between the artist body and an incubator holding lizard eggs. The mechanisms in the lab allow the artist’s biological matter to contribute as nutrients, as molecules that have passed through his body for the development of the lizard embryo.
Dragon eggs may seem independent but their shell is semi-permeable. Water and oxygen are able to pass through and is needed for the maturation of the embryo. This intimacy can be regarded as a birthing ritual resulting in a unique kind of interspecies parenthood.
This project was developed during a residency as part of a Summer Sessions residency at V2_.