Panacea Sovietica

In the late 1920s, in one of the experimental laboratories of the young Soviet Republic, physician Alexei Zamkov developed a hormonal drug called Gravidan from the urine of pregnant women. It was used to treat a wide range of conditions — from mental and cardiovascular disorders to infections. The drug proved especially effective in addressing sexual dysfunction, which quickly made it highly popular among the Soviet elite.

By the 1960s, Gravidan was declared ineffective and faded into obscurity. The project imagines that, in the 21st century, amid renewed interest in extending human life, research quietly resumes. Production initially serves the domestic elite before expanding to allied autocrats and “indispensable” leaders worldwide. Access to the drug becomes a tool of loyalty and dependence, giving rise to what became known as Gravidan Diplomacy.

The project follows Gravidan as a residue of Soviet biopolitical imagination—a technology that was never fully stabilized, yet never entirely disappeared. It persists as a fragmented set of practices in which the body becomes both archive and laboratory. Ageing male political bodies seek to prolong their authority, while reproductive female bodies are reduced to systems of extraction, regeneration, and continuity.