"Holy Chemicals" (2025) is an ongoing series that includes artworks on Dopamine, Adrenaline, Serotonin, Cortisol, Endorphin, Oxytocin, Testosterone, and Estrogen. It is an inquiry into a biochemical substrate of subjective experience and a question about perspectives of biohacking. Does the delicacy of this hormonal carousel leave any room for interference? Do we fully understand the fragility of humoral regulation or should we suspect some blind spots in our knowledge?
Humans, we are a kind of perceptional reductionists.
We dislike complex feelings tending to reduce them to a main one. It so hard to us to feel, let’s say, exhausted, disappointed and doubtful at the same time that we might say that we are “just tired” or “just hungry”.
We would willingly reduce the spectrum of all our emotions to only pleasant ones. Why should we suffer from sadness, regret, desperation? That is not what we thing we were born for. Instead, we sincerely believe, that we deserve “happiness”, and we try to gain that “happiness” by all means. Get some sleep, have a bite or whatever else from avoiding responsibility to superhuman achievements.
And when manipulations with the outer world result to be far from effective, we look inside. Literally, inside. Apparently, that’s how an idea of “hormones of happiness” arose, and became a common place. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphin, like four musketeers, dominate public opinion about the nature of happiness and inspire a tendency to correct these substances balance.
Yes, biohacking is a huge trend nowadays. Now, we pretend our emotional state to be a kind of cocktail. A couple of ounces of serotonin mixed with a dozen of drop of testosterone give us tolerance. A gallon of cortisol above that all induce a chronic stress that is a new culprit of all our miseries. Any objection against such an approach?
“Holy Chemicals” is an artistic experiment that aims to visually reveal the inner -complex- biological meaning of substances that mediate our reactions and interactions. I don’t pretend to explain anything about them at all. I learn everything I can about them, focus on how this knowledge resonate with me in situations when each hormone, apparently, comes to the front.
And if right now you are about to object saying “how do you know it’s estrogen or serotonin there at the front of your emotions? You have them all together working inside of you at the same time”, I will redirect the question back to you. We never know that’s the clue. It could be a galloon of cortisol or a deficit of adrenaline, or maybe your reaction is culturally determined.
Hormones and neurotransmitters are not spices that we can combine at our taste expecting to obtain a predictable result. With spices, the taste can be surprising, but not totally unexpected. Conversely, the magic of the biology is that we never know. In life creatures, experiments are hardly possible, because we never are aware of what factors are engaged and to what extent. Now, looking at this carousel, let’s stop and reflexionate about how precise our knowledge and our techniques are. And about the fragile beauty of the biochemistry of human emotions.