A.R.T. (Artificial Reproductive Technology)

Abstract

Being part of a group of people whose existence depended on the advances of technology, experimentation, commercial dealings and a series of unnecessary processes in the natural act, has made me recognize my conception, after 21 attempts of in vitro fertilization, as an event Which does not fit into the typical life-cycle model. I have understood that although my origin does not influence my bodily or mental configuration, the way I was created or engendered constitutes an important part of my identity. The sense of otherness attached to the labels of "test child", "special child", "successful attempt" and "expensive product", made me wonder What makes us humans? Does it have to do with the way we come into the world? For me, what is implicit in everything that makes us human is the capacity to desire. If something exists it is because someone felt the desire to have it. I am a result of the desire of my parents and the human desire to transcend, to create new technologies to satisfy our own needs. A.R.T (Artificial Reproductive Technology) questions human nature, staging three conditions inherent to our existence: birth, desire and death. A paradox in which our beginning and end no longer depend on natural causes, in which the repetition of actions day after day, throughout life, leads us to naturalize artificial behaviors crossed by the desire to be more than human.