At the opening of the exhibition Liquid Bodies – stem cells and new biotechnology in March 2026, writer and playwright Ida Marie Hede delivered an opening speech on stem cells, exploring the ideas, myths, and market mechanisms that surround stem cells in popular culture and as an internet phenomenon.

The speech functions as a kind of “magic mirror” for stem cell research: a reflection of its speculative and commercial double, where the stem cell becomes an accelerator for fantasies of optimisation, beauty, and eternal life.

Ida Marie Hede, Medical Museion, March 26th 2026

Dear everyone present here today

I am so truly delighted to have the opportunity to give this opening speech.

Although I must admit that I … that I, today of all days, feel a little … exposed. Yeah, just a little self-conscious, a bit … porous?

Like all of you, I too am a human being in this world, shaped by the constant crises that arise everywhere, globally, every minute, every second of the day. Whether I look at the screen or into my own mind, there are missiles, ruins, atrocities and talking faces. Golden Globes, burning globes, fake globes, fake news, authentic news, online wars, food wars, tariff wars, Botox wars, now I hear the side parting is back, now children are donating blood to their parents so they can get a vampire facial, we think we know how to live forever, but we are constantly in danger of dying.

Do you know that feeling of waking up, so disoriented that you’ve forgotten where you are? What has happened? And then, in a flash, the memories wash over you, making you at once soft and hard. You think, well, then I wasn’t dead after all, I’m alive, here and now, that’s good. I am this body in time, porous and impressionable, way too susceptible. Unprotected. Was the crack I found myself in, that crack of sleep, that crack of possibilities, the crack of immortality? Freedom from biopolitical life, from the paradoxes of these heavy times?

One day I woke up just like that, and as I slipped out of the crevice, I felt that my body was so old, so creaky. Where my umbilical cord once sat, there was just a small hole and a crust, which seemed to never disappear. The dewy-fresh embryo I once was had long ago transformed into an aching flesh-body, this body, mine!

I felt I was in grave danger.

I saw on Instagram that Kylie Jenner had had stem cells injected into her spinal cord. A huge plaster on her skin, a buzzing comments section.

I read that Harry Styles, Margot Robbie and David Beckham had used stem cells from sheep placentas.

I read that John Cleese had received treatment with stem cells from umbilical cords at a clinic in Mexico that promised safe conditions – i.e. protection from drug cartels – and half price on everything.

**

When I read about stem cells, it struck me that they were time travellers. Even their names led me unexpectedly into a sci-fi world, a bit like a wild rich anime, populated by zombies, lethal elves and intelligent octopuses: totipotent, pluripotent, multipotent.

Imagine their horns, their rapid movements, the lightning-patterns on their shirts!

With scientific breakthroughs, ordinary cells can be reprogrammed into stem cells, these basic cells, mother cells, a journey that bends time out of joint. These incredible stem cells might – one day – help cure diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s and deafness; they could help repair kidneys and livers.

And at the same time, and the more I read, browsing through websites and science books, it was as if the stem cells were magical talismans, representing nothing and everything; pure building blocks, microscopic magic. An unfathomable potential that lay like a heavy pink ornament over their gravity.

The stem cells were just like this pendant on my necklace.

And they were cult-like, the stem cells – connected to the fantastical dream of eternal renewal – and to multiplication. For a moment, wild, dark, dystopian scenarios came to my mind – an army of lab-produced humans, made to defeat every threat from the outside. A dream of being self-sufficient, of being one’s own nation-state, one’s own border patrol, enough identical arms to hug and defend oneself eternally, allowing no other touch to come through.

I shook it off and started googling.

On all kinds of websites, such as

OhMyMiracleStemCellDarlingsChangingEverythingToBabySkin.com

or

XtraPlasmaStemCellVampireKiddoMiracleGreaterThanChristOurLord.com

I found diagrams illustrating the potential for optimising stem cells.

On the one hand, I could see the stem cells frolicking like emojis.

On the other, endless ramifications: everything the stem cells could do.

***

At first, I thought: I want to try that too!

I stepped into this reality where there were stem cell clinics on every street corner. While I was drinking my mint tea, made from stem cells – blood samples and spinal fluid biopsies were taken from my body.

I dreamed that the stem cells, which would be formed from my ordinary cells, would later build a thousand new bodies with my personality – how megalomaniacal!

I dreamed I took home a sealed vial containing my own stem cells. I drew the blinds and immersed myself in a petri dish so large it resembled a bathtub.

I felt myself sink into the water, my skin the only barrier between different variations of fluids, my body malleable, ready to be moulded.

I scooped the stem cells out of the jar. I was mystified. They looked like bubble gum or small attentive eyes.

I hungrily ate a part of myself that wasn’t myself.

Now I had been reset, I thought. I was regenerating, auto-generating, self-generating, poly-generating, pluri-generating, multi-generating, I was looping, swirling, circuiting.

It was a quasi-religious dream, a utopia, a prayer, a sacrifice, a sacrament.

I touched my own skin gently to explore the changes. I dreamed of sticking my hands inside my body to feel something new emerging – anything.

On the one hand, the stem cells were part of a strategy that would make me more beautiful, younger, more potent, more capable, more successful and stable, more hard-working, less anxious and neurotic. It would happen so gradually, it would be shrouded in so much mystery that no one would notice. It would become completely and utterly normalised, just as commonplace as dietary supplements; I would consume my own shadow-cell existence, my hair would grow back on my bald crown, I’d patch up my liver every two weeks, I would buy stem cells online late at night, considering which category and treatment I could afford, stem cells would be a normalised part of an ever-expanding global class debate, who has access to a cure and who doesn’t, and I, I would go as far as my money, my ambitions and my twisted desire would take me.

On the other hand, nothing was normal.

Using stem cells to heal was the most serious and complicated undertaking – a realm of time, knowledge, patience and hard work, failed trials, small and slow successes, massive funding systems, strategy, loss of hope and renewed hope.

It was so intense and so grave.

For some, one day this could be survival – it could be life.

As I realised this, I was still lying in the big petri dish. If I was to dissolve here one day anyway and have my tissue and bones spread out into the world, why this obsession with optimisation?

It was the painful feeling of doubt every human is occasionally struck by – the push and pull between healing and death.