Open Source Gendercodes (OSG) is a project focused on developing an open source platform for the production of growth hormones. The development of these bioproduction technologies from the late 1800’s up to the present is entangled with power structures and ideological frameworks that have co-created bodies, subjectivities, and genders. Efforts to eliminate queer, gender non-conforming, non-reproductive behaviors - as well as increase heterosexual prowess and enable lifelong performance of sanctioned masculinities and femininities drove the development of these technologies. These efforts in the early 1900's also set key precedents for our current biotech patent landscape allowing us to conceive of biotechnological products as patentable inventions.
OSG recognizes this history as well as the history of non-consensual experimentation, and the harvesting of organs and bodily fluids from: women, queers, gender variant people, the colonized, and the poor. The project seeks a functional outcome: a gender political power grab, an organ owner's manual, a hormoculture transdisciplinary transorgasmic queery. By exploring the potential of novel growth hormone production technologies designed for decentralized use, and dedicated to the public domain, OSG attempts to queer current regimes of ownership and bio-power.