Surrogate, by Lauren Lee McCarthy
Surrogate, by Lauren Lee McCarthy
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Surrogate, 187 pages, 8”x 5”, full color, stitch bound book. Author: Lauren Lee McCarthy Editor: Clark Buckner, Designer: Amy Fang, Design Assistant: Uma Das O’Toole, Printer: Typecraft, Pasadena, CA. Publication date: August 2024. Price: $40.00. ISBN #: 978-0-9907934-8-9
Surrogate is an artist book, based on a pregnancy journal, which charts the progress of a performance project over the course of fifty-two weeks. Lauren Lee McCarthy offers her body to carry someone else’s baby while they monitor and control her with an app. For nine months they decide what she eats, what she does, what thoughts she meditates on — holding complete control over the body in which their baby is growing. As Roe v. Wade is overturned and gene editing opens entirely new reproductive futures, this project asks: How much control should we have over a birthing person’s body, and over a life before it begins?
About the artist
Lauren Lee McCarthy is a Los Angeles-based artist, who examines social relationships in the
midst of automation, surveillance, and algorithmic living. She has received grants and residencies from Creative Capital, United States Artists, LACMA, Sundance, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, Autodesk, and Ars Electronica; and her work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her piece SOMEONE was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and her piece LAUREN was awarded the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. Lauren's work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as the Barbican Centre, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der Elektronischen Künste, Seoul Museum of Art, Chronus Art Center, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, and the Japan Media Arts Festival. Lauren is a full Professor in the Department of Design Media Arts at UCLA.