HOMUNCULARIUM BASILISCUS

2024

Homuncularium Basiliscus is the first in the Homuncularium series, activated at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, UK. A short film documents the ritual im-plant-ation of queer reproductive body fluids donated by four anonymous participants. The act draws on a hybridised protocol—part medieval alchemical instruction and part contemporary occult archive, merging the writings of 15th-century alchemist, Paracelsus with esoteric texts from the Museum’s Richel Collection.

The resulting procedure is an experiment in techno-alchemical transgression, invoking the speculative creation of a basilisk-human hybrid through the disruptive potency of fluids that refuse reproductive normativity. Building on earlier works such as Alchematrix and MILF, which investigated the transmutation of gold on bodies as a system of valuation through references to alchemy and myth, the project continues an inquiry into how material transformation becomes culturally and symbolically charged.

The activation was performed under the lunar eclipse of March 2024 and remained installed in situ until December 31, 2024, as part of Arcanum Sanguinis: Occult Blood, a year-long solo/curated exhibition.

Donor identities are withheld in accordance with confidentiality agreements and in recognition of the intimate, politicized nature of the offering.

​Screenings of Homuncularium Basiliscus have taken place in Crete and the UK: at TTTlabs, Spring 2024 (Crete, GR); Occult Blood: An Artist Conversation, featuring Dr. WhiteFeather Hunter and Dr. Amy Hale, hosted by Treadwell’s Books London; and for the Inaugural Jake Stratton-Kent Memorial Lecture, hosted by the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in partnership with Scarlet Imprint. The video was also included as part of the screening series, Conjuring Creativity: Inhabiting Esoteric Ecologies curated by Geraldine Hudson and Ben Jeans Houghton, also at Treadwell's Books, London. The work is the topic of a chapter in the Feral Labs Node Book #3: Fa Fa Futures (Ionian University), which was presented for Anti-Authoritarian Aesthetics: Frontline Art and Performance in the Age of Autocracy, American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Meeting, Palais des congrès de Montréal, and featured in Makery (France) here in 2026.

This project was generously funded by the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.