Rewiring the Post-Reproductive Sensorium

If it is true that the world population is ageing and living longer, it is equally true that there is no single “typical” aging person. People’s experiences, needs, and the social and physical environments in which they live and grow are diverse. As a consequence, designing for the aging population becomes challenging if the experience is not collectively defined and understood.

Rewiring the Post-Reproductive Sensorium is a practice based research intervention on aging through collective sense-making run by OBOT (Our Bodies Our Tech) collective, a distributed network and a nomadic wet-lab working on ways to lower the barriers to research, production and scientific knowledge through new forms to access tools, protocols and data by promoting co-research practices.

The collective proposes a series of activities, including an intimate workshop and collective sensemaking actions on the topic of the female body and aging. Collaboratively, we construct new narratives that focus on the reconfiguration of age, gender, and embodied knowledge beyond the reproductive function.

Program

Activity 1: Collective sensemaking for Shifting Perspectives on Menopause
Date: Tuesday June 17, 2025, , 16:00 – 17:30
Place: Atelier Mondial, Studio 6, Freilager-Platz 9, 4142 Basel-Münchenstein

Spots are limited, please sign up by emailing metalab.hgk@fhnw.ch

The program opens with a conversation on the post-fertile body. Through tangible inputs from the members of OBOT collective, the conversation activates affective frequencies introducing the idea of the grandmother hypothesis, which suggests that post-reproductive women have an essential role in the survival and well-being of their communities.

Activity 2: Public Chats – Emergent Threads and Disobedient Listening
Place: Online streaming
When: June 20 and 21 ; more info to follow

Through an online experimental platform, thinkers, practitioners and disobedient listeners are invited in an open dialogue. The platform is shaped less by linear discourse than by a logic of weaving, of interdependent flows, where the aging body becomes a site of relational intelligence and collective infrastructure.

Activity 3: Workshop - Reframing to rewiring the narratives through needles and soft sensors.
Date: 23-26 June
Place: Atelier Mondial, Studio 6, Freilager-Platz 9, 4142 Basel-Münchenstein
When: open doors from 16:00 to 20:00

The final phase descends into matter, entering the slow, haptic world of needle felting - conductive wool becomes a tool for speculative repair. Every participant will be guided to craft a 3-dimensional body.
You are invited to come and share your experience and thoughts for a few hours during the day from 23-26 June, anytime between 4 - 8 pm. OBOT Collective will be producing the future installation and keep contributors in the loop and integrated in the final results.