The pineapple is a polysemic element in my work that evolves throughout my life. It symbolizes different moments in my transformation process—social, mental, physical and spiritual. It is the thematic axis of an art-based research that I carried out within the open science movement.
Pineapples, originally from Abya Yala were cultivated by the Mayas and the Aztecs. Pineapples were employed in healing and purification rituals. After Columbus, the fruit becomes an imperial symbol of opulence of other worlds and technological innovation. Today, genetically modified pineapples have been commodified in size, shape, color and taste for sell. And what is the future of the pineapple?
Post Cyborg Awakening (2017)
Name: Älexis Johñson
Title: Post Cyborg Spiritual Awakening Form: Biomodd Installation for Britney X Format: 3x3x3 meter, wood, plants, electronic waste, sound and video Date: 23-26 March 2017 Location: Schauspiel Köln. Offenbachplatz 1, 50667 Cologne, Germany Additional Info: Curated by Andrea Imler. The Britney X festival was founded in 2017 by former assistant directors Pınar Karabulut, Charlotte Sprenger, Matthias Köhler and Andrea Imler.
Installation (1) focuses on the artistic use of recycled technologies, and aims to open up views into the future of Transgender Women in Latin America. The skeleton of this installation is inspired by the molecular structure of diamond.
Diamond is the hardest known naturally occurring material, with a score of 10 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. In this work, the diamond structure represents resilience and the presence of divine qualities, not just carbon molecules in space. It refers to the strength required to resist cultural erasure, institutional violence, criminalization, objectification, and pathologization of transgender lives.
The physical description of materials is fundamentally rooted in quantum mechanics, which explains how atoms bond and how electrons interact at the subatomic level. However, at the macroscopic scale, quantum effects are often approximated using classical particle models. I experienced how scientific reductionism mirrors social biases and fixed categories — simplifying complex, living systems into fixed categories and excluding those who do not conform. Classical mechanics, which focuses on the behavior of inert objects, tends to analyze phenomena in isolation, reinforcing a fragmented and compartmentalized way of thinking.
The Wave-Particle Duality theory states that waves can exhibit particle-like properties while particles can exhibit wave-like properties. This definition opposes classical mechanics or Newtonian Physics.
In my utopia, transgender women will no longer be seen merely as reshaped flesh, reduced to carbon molecules—bodies modified with organic or inorganic materials, perceived as artificial or deceptive, like passing human but cyborgs. Much has been said about biopolymers and silicone, often used as criticism. In my perspective transgender people, including those who undergo body modification, are not outside of nature. Each being — trans, intersex, non-binary or not — is a spark of God, distinct yet inseparable from the whole.
The Tida Wena from the Warao Tribe are actually perceived as sacred and beyond binary in their communities (2). This installation for the Festival Britney X, its a memorial to the 1654 murdered women in latin america between 2008 and 2015 (3). The work evokes comfort and safe space. The audio in the installation refers to three Warao shamans performing Hoarotu curing ritual (4).
References
1. About the Form> Biomodd Installation (2017)
#biomodd is a global series of art installations in which computer technology and ecology converge. Computer networks built from upcycled computer components are provided with living internal ecosystems. SEAD (Space Ecologies Art and Design) has created more than 30 Biomod with significant contribution to art-science collaborative initiatives in the global South.
@seads.network was initiated in 2009 by Angelo Vermeulen (and Tine Holvoet), later joined by Diego Maranan and Pieter Steyaert
2. Absolute inclusion of the Tida Wena in this indigenous society dates back to pre-Columbian traditions. Photo Alvaro Laiz, Wonderland.
3. For more information about about the 1654 murders
http://transrespect.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/TvT_TMM_TDoV2016_PR_EN.pdf
4. Music of the Warao of Venezuela. Dale A. Olsen, Ph.D Hoarotu curing ritual performed by three shamans.
Pineapple Chip (2017)
Name: Älexis Johñson
Pineapple Chip (2017)
Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
5 x 7 cm
Created without any functional or electronic purpose, this piece uses a PCB purely as a medium for artistic expression. With compassion, the artist explores layers of conditioning in the computer chip core. A feature of the quantum thinking is to move away from reductionism. The piece was crafted in Santiago de Chile during the GOSH Open Hardware meeting, in a workshop led by Dr. Marc R. Dusseiller (aka dusjagr).
Pineapple Dream (2016)
Name: Älexis Johñson
Title: Pineapple Dream, 2016
Form: Performance and electronic sound installation
Duration: 30 min
Location: Schwules Museum, Berlin
Performance in the frame of “Ways beyond should, Femme movements” at Exhibition MILLIONAIRES CAN BE TRANS* // YOU ARE SO BRAVE*. Pineapple dream (2016) is a technological, and epistemic sound performance. A capacitive touch sensor is used as an interface mechanism to trigger screaming sounds when the pineapple is cut. For the artist, healing is a beautiful process of unlearning—peeling away hardened layers of internalized conditioning to reach the pineapple’s tender core. Thick skin, tangy and sweet pineapple.
Shelter (2015)
Name: Älexis Johñson
Shelter, 2015
Co-creative Installation with Biomodd [ZKM7]
»Exo-Evolution«
ZKM Centre for Art and Media
Karlsruhe, DEU
Shelter (2015) is a Biomodd (1) installation imagined as shelter to provide comfort and safe space. The recycled screens, displays collaged images. The Tida Wena from the Warao Tribe are actually perceived as sacred and beyond binary in their communities (2). Popular media downgrade “the indigenous” to our past. Inspired in the Afrofuturism (3) the installation is neither a break with the past nor a fetishization of the new.
References
1. About the Form> #biomodd is a global series of art installations in which computer technology and ecology converge. Computer networks built from upcycled computer components are provided with living internal ecosystems. SEAD (Space Ecologies Art and Design) has created more than 30 Biomod with significant contribution to art-science collaborative initiatives in the global South. @seads.network was initiated in 2009 by Angelo Vermeulen (and Tine Holvoet), later joined by Diego Maranan and Pieter Steyaert
2. Absolute inclusion of the Tida Wena in this indigenous society dates back to pre-Columbian traditions. Photo Alvaro Laiz, Wonderland.
3. Mark Dery, Black to the Future, 1994.
Aula (2015)
Name: Älexis Johñson
Title: Aula (2015)
Form: Intervention performance
Format: Digital Photos
Location: KHM, Cologne. Germany.
Photograph Gil Soissong
Intervention performance in response to „Wonderland“ photos published by Alvaro Laiz in New York Times. The performance address separation and interrogates, who is the observer and who is the observed
Trans_Plantation (2014)
Name: Älexis Johñson
Trans_Plantation Series
Title: Connecting with the Earth (1-4)
Form: Intervention performance
Format: Digital Photos
Date: December 2014
Location: Flora Garden, Cologne. Germany.
Photograph collaboration with Tobaron Waxmann.
Intervention performance in response to „Wonderland“ photos published by Alvaro Laiz in New York Times. In the work “Wonderland” by Alvaro Laiz, the spanish artist comments „The existence of ancient animistic rites and the acceptance of transgender people among the Warao society could be the last remains of those old pre-Columbian traditions, never photographed before“.
The intervention address categorisation, separation and isolation in the botanic garden. An artificial ecosystem designed to contained tropical flora (transplanted) from South America and Asia. The artist express “Can I escape the life drama of the body? Can I escape the life drama of the mind? I am not separate from Nature but part of Nature. My journey has been mostly an introverted, spiritual search.”
The performance interrogates, who is the observer and who is the observed, who is the object and who us the subject. The artist reflects that trans women are often treated less like people (1) and more like exotic specimens under an academic microscope, or rare Pokémon cards, or Pineapples.
This recalls the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, when observation became a means of control. Philosopher Francis Bacon (early advocate of the scientific method) framed nature as something to be mastered, even “tortured for her secrets” (2). In this context, pineapples—introduced through colonial expansion—were displayed as exotic status symbols. Later cultivated in European botanical gardens (3), pineapples embodied both scientific wonder and the complex legacies of colonialism and plantation economies (4).
References:
- Serano, Trans Woman Manifesto, 2007.
- Bacon, Francis. Novum Organum, 1620.
- Innovative techniques were developed to let pineapples grow at Palace of Versailles
- Kilomba, Grada. Plantation Memories, 2008.
Bacon’s work was instrumental in shifting the worldview of the time from a more holistic or spiritual understanding of nature (as seen in medieval and Renaissance cosmologies) toward a mechanistic, utilitarian framework. He saw nature not as something sacred or alive, but as something to be studied, dissected, and ultimately controlled for the benefit of humanity.