Am I Human?, is a project by Agnes Questionmark aimed at exploring the concept of “being human.” The project will take the form of a theoretical and performative workshop, held in the museum’s spaces, on November 27 and 29, and, on November 28, at Museo delle Civiltà in Rome. 

«To be human is to set up a barrier, a limit and a border that belittles and overshadows the multiple ways of being. Discrimination and denigration of subordinated categories ,such as queer people, label them as “unhuman” due to their inability to conform to normative standards. One significant reason for their demonization is the inability to procreate, which quickly defines the queer body as “unhealthy”. The health system thus becomes the mechanism through which the power domain is asserted, yet it is also the space where it can be subverted. Taxonomy, the act of categorization, is a violent imposition of pre-established rules masquerading as the assessment of a genetic order. The transgender bureaucratic process is one of the many ways in which the term “human” can be, and will be, challenged. Queer reproduction is slowly tainting, contaminating and uprooting the now obsolete notion of the “human being”.»(Agnes Questionmark) 

27 November 2024, from 12 pm to 6 pm – MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome 

The workshop will begin with a group presentation on how the medical system is shaping new understandings of the “human being,” proposing alternative forms of life currently emerging in surgical rooms and other scientific spaces (both public and private). After a group discussion, participants will start developing their own image of what “human being” means to them, by exploring images in online archives and around the museum. 

28 November 2024, from 12 pm to 6pm – Museo delle Civiltà  

To further delve into the concept of “humanity” and explore the complex relationship between certain genetics and the bio-social becoming of individuals, the group will spend a day at the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome, welcomed by its Director, Andrea Viliani, and staff members who will present their work and ongoing research, showing rare artifacts not accessible to the public. Participants will have time, individually or in groups, to collect further materials and conduct research within the museum, using the online archive made available by the staff. 

29 November 2024, from 12 pm to 6pm – MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome 

On the final day of the workshop, participants will develop a solo or group performance with the support of Agnes Questionmark, who will coordinate a series of group experiments and performative exercises back at Macro. Each performance will be documented in the desired location and published at the end of the workshop on the museum’s webpage as a reinterpretation of an imaginary online archive, created in collaboration with NERO Edition.