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MATTER OF FAT

2018
Speculative & Critical Design
MA Material Futures, Graduation Project
2018
Speculative & Critical Design
MA Material Futures, Graduation Project

Liposuction at home,

film extract

© the artist

Video: Noémie Soula

Matter of Fat is a research-driven and critical design project. It uses storytelling and storymaking as speculative tools to present human fat as a valuable material in a privatised future oh healthcare.

A dystopian scenario where fat is a valuable material playing a crucial role in our future healthcare.
A dystopian scenario where fat is a valuable material playing a crucial role in our future healthcare.

2030, UK, London

The current and steady privatisation of the NHS combined with the private development of stem cells medical treatments deeply scarred and changed the UK’s healthcare system.

Closer to US healthcare subsidiaries, the NHS became exclusively for people with comfortable incomes, leaving the lower income group deprived.


Given the current demographics trends, the overweight percentage of the population is planned to raise from 30% to 50% in less than 10 years. Due to the economic inequalities growing bigger and bigger, the most affected by this global public health phenomenon are the classes with the lowest incomes.


How could lower income families and individuals compensate these inequalities and find an alternative way to get access to healthcare? How could the problem of obesity potentially become a solution?

 

The project exposed a dystopian scenario, where fat is extracted for its monetary and medical qualities.
Inspired by liposuction, a trendy plastic surgery, a DIY extraction device finds a place in the modest interiors. Extrapolating and re-contextualising current laboratory technics such as the treatment and storage of stem cells, the whole system where human fat is treated and cryopreserved, is presented as DIY and underground. The story relates the manners, devices and systems used by an opportunist and ambitious person – half-surgeon and half-dealer – creates a service for the modest households.

Mixing horrific and visceral, medical and social problematics, between fat and health, a real questioning is awaiting you.

1/ Fat Extraction | 2/ Conditioning | 3/ Organ Engineering © the artist. 

Photo: Tom Mannion

1/ Laboratory view | 2/ Packing of the final organ

© the artist. 

Photo: Tom Mannion

The Laboratory © the artist. 

Video: Noémie Soula

Video presented at Milan Design Week,  Mockumentary © the artist. 

Video: Noémie Soula

Conceptual sculpture, presented at Milan Design Week © the artist. 

Photo: Noémie Soula

Collaborators: 

Dr Alex McKeown, at the time Postdoctoral Fellow at Neuroscience, Ethics & Society team (NEUROSEC), now Head of Data Ethics for consultancy firm Information Governance Services.

Prof. Max Lafontan, at the time Director of Research, Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases (INSERM), Toulouse, FR

Dr. Anne Bouloumié, Researcher in Stroma-vascular cells of adipose tissue, Microenvironment of Adipose Tissue (INSERM), Toulouse, FR

Dr. Dominique Larrouy, Researcher and Senior Lecturer in Physiology (MCF), Obesity research laboratory, (INSERM), Toulouse, FR