In connection to the screenings of Citizen Bio (dir. Trish Dolman) and 76 Days (dir. Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, Anonymous), DOCUSPACE presents the DOCU/CLASS Citizen Bio: biohack the future in your kitchen about the biohacking underground in Ukraine and around the world, as well as the Rights Now! human rights discussion on Taming COVID-19: How and when will we defeat the pandemic?, which will raise the question of what each of us can do to defeat COVID-19.
Taming COVID-19: How and when will we defeat the pandemic?
19 May | 7:00 p.m. | DOCUSPACE
The number of people across the world who have contracted COVID-19 has exceeded 2 million. WHO warns that we will be dealing with the consequences of the pandemic for decades to come. Crisis phenomena in the world can be observed in different areas, but the highest burden is placed on health care. Some countries manage to purposefully exit the COVID-19 crisis. Ukraine cannot claim success yet, because the pandemic years have only exposed the shortcomings of the health care system.
The scale of the disaster has mobilized medical professionals who have been working overtime since the beginning of the pandemic, and volunteers have mobilized to help. But how long will the enthusiasm and resources of volunteers and medics last? How is government policy to overcome the pandemic implemented? And what can each of us do to defeat COVID-19?
Speakers:
Olha Kobevko, infectious disease doctor (Chernivtsi)
Aksana Filipishyna, the Ombudsman’s representative for children’s and family rights
Dmytro Sherembey, head of the Coordination Council of CO 100% Life
Lesia Lytvynova, head of the charity foundation Svoyi
Moderated by Andriy Semyankiv, doctor, medical blogger.
Citizen Bio: Biohack the future in your kitchen
26 May | 7:00 p.m. | DOCUSPACE
In her film Citizen Bio, the political documentary filmmaker Trish Dolman dives into the underground world of radical medicine. Her protagonists are biohackers who provide a window into the fringe world of unofficial experiments to extend human life and detail their experiences with controversial entrepreneur Aaron Traywick before his mysterious death.
What drives bio-punks in their dangerous experiments after all? Improving human capabilities, modifying your appearance, extending life – all these goals sound like they are from the comic book world. However, for instance, back at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, biohackers across the world set out to develop and test vaccines that could save lives – and, unlike big pharma companies, they did it with little resources practically in their own kitchens. So why even in attempts to meet such urgent challenges, radical medicine still remains on the fringes? Can we trust biohackers’ developments? What is the limit to their readiness to experiment? Where is the fundamental boundary between official and underground medicine? And finally, how can biohacking change our future?
Speakers:
Oleksandr Koliada, Ukrainian geneticist, science and official medicine popularizer, the founder of the Diagen genetic library, and a junior researcher at the Epigenetics Lab of the D. F. Chebotariov Gerontology Institute
Daria Dantseva, founder of Yanelab, the first DIY bio lab in Ukraine, biohacker who tested the first DIY DNA coronavirus vaccine in the world on herself in the summer of 2020
The discussion will be moderated by Maksym Butkevych, human rights advocate, journalist, No Borders coordinator.
The discussions in the DOCUSPACE online cinema are supported by the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine and the US Embassy in Ukraine.
