BIOART COVEN, 2019-present

Bioart Coven is an international collective of over 75 artists, makers, hackers, scientists, witches, feminists, and open-minded thinkers—women, trans, and nonbinary individuals united by a shared fascination with the generative overlap between witchcraft and technofeminism. This “promiscuous interchange” forms the basis of technofeminist witchcraft, the core ethos of the Coven.

The collective first emerged from WhiteFeather’s artistic research and expanded through the online course Bioart Coven: Surveying and creating at the intersection of contemporary witchcraft and biotechnologies, offered through the School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe (Berlin) in 2021 and 2022. The course explored alternative histories of witchcraft—drawing on thinkers like Silvia Federici and Donna Haraway—alongside contemporary posthuman ecofeminist art practices. Participants engaged in hands-on experiments, including fermentation, basic microbiology, and DIY labware construction in domestic (non-lab) spaces, culminating in co-created rituals and collaborative performance.

The name pays homage to Bioart Kitchen: Art, Feminism and Technoscience by Lindsay Kelley, a key text in the course. While Kelley focuses on the overlooked role of domestic labour in scientific development, Bioart Coven reclaims the witch as central to biotech’s historical and symbolic lineage.

A living expression of the collective’s vision, the Bioart Coven Manifesto was collaboratively authored through an adapted ‘exquisite corpse’ method, reflecting feminist principles of non-hierarchical community building. Each iteration offers a time-stamped, evolving snapshot—like the growth rings of a living entity. The first version appeared in OCCULT STUDIES, Vol. 2: Revolution (Snake Hair Press, 2021), with the second published in The Earthkeeper’s Handbook (ecoartspace, 2023), available here.

Bioart Coven wearables are available here.
(more information/images to come)