Xenopia is a visceral response to the anger we feel as women, artists, and researchers in the face of an increasing tightening by political institutions toward our reproductive rights.

The project is named after the frog Xenopus Laevis, a living interface that has been exploited as a pregnancy test for decades. 

The project started in 2024, through the IMPETUS4CS kickstarting funding. The aim is to recycle digital pregnancy tests as open-science tools to promote abortion care practices and autonomy.. Putting at the center the co-creative power of communities we would like to imagine together the future of abortion, self-care and pregnancy. Xenopia has been so far a collective effort. We have collaborated with hacker communities, such as Hackteria ZET and Gaudi Lab in Switzerland, Hackrocchio, Visionarie and Hack'n Socks in Italy. But also a rich network of reproductive rights organizations and feminist collectives in Italy like Women help women, Abortion Pills, Cca nisciun è fess, Obiezione respinta, Mujeres Libres, Consultoria FAM, La mia scelta, Rete Pro-Choice....

Our methodology is rooted in participation and open science:

*Pure experimentalism: we approach the scientific problem of pregnancy measuring and hormone testing by developing an artifact with some sort of unpredictable behaviour. This artifact guides us through the exploration of new models of understanding pregnancy and abortion. We develop this scientific problem with the interplay between disciplines, like anthropology, physics, biohacking, and design.

*Workshopology: we promote collective moments, as Mary Maggic states “the practice has to “leave” the laboratory and interact with the bodies, environments, and discourses to which it pertains”. We want to recognize knowledge as a relational practice, that comes from theory as much as the intuition of the body. Through workshops and hack-sessions, we put into relationships the hacking community and feminist struggles, to share methods, approaches, solutions.