Abstract:
The maxim, life is stranger than fiction holds true when one considers the area of biotechnology. But even while hitherto science fiction creatures literally come to inhabit the real world of biotech labs, they continue to transmit an aura of the imaginary. In effect, biotechnological practices spawn an array of biofictions grounded in, sometimes familiar, inscriptions of the (maternal) body, of human and non-human nature, while others challenge long-held conceptions of the meaning of life itself. Women artists have increasingly engaged in art practices that critically reflect on these biofictions. To do so, many even employ the techniques of biotechnologies to create new living or semi-living entities. Whether through the actual manipulation of life or by interventions, performances and other representational strategies, these artists tinker with the biofictions in engaging ways, drawing attention to the different sites where truth and myth coalesce. In this essay, I examine the strategies employed by some XX artists working in four areas of biotechnology: reproductive technologies, genetic engineering, cloning and tissue engineering.
Plus étrange que la fiction
Des artistes XX en biotech manipulent la vie
Résumé:
La maxime « la vie est plus étrange que la fiction » revêt une signification particulière en ce qui a trait à la biotechnologie. Même quand des créatures qui appartenaient autrefois au domaine de la science-fiction en viennent à habiter le monde bien réel des laboratoires de biotechnologie, elles continuent d’être entourées d’une aura d’imaginaire. Les pratiques biotechnologiques donnent naissance à un vaste éventail de biofictions reposant sur des inscriptions, parfois familières, du corps (maternel), de la nature humaine et non humaine, tandis que d’autres défient les concepts traditionnels du sens de la « vie » lui-même. Les femmes artistes s’adonnent de plus en plus à des pratiques artistiques qui posent un regard critique sur ces biofictions. À cette fin, plusieurs emploient même des techniques biotechnologiques pour créer de nouvelles entités vivantes ou semi-vivantes. Que ce soit par la manipulation de la vie ou par des interventions, des interprétations et d’autres stratégies représentationnelles, ces artistes expérimentent avec ces biofictions de manière à éveiller l’intérêt, attirant l’attention sur divers points où la vérité et le mythe se confondent. Dans le cadre de cet essai, j’aborde le sujet des stratégies employées par certains artistes XX travaillant dans quatre domaines de la biotechnologie : les technologies reproductives, le génie génétique, le clonage et le génie tissulaire.
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Stranger than Fiction
Biotech XX Artists Manipulate Life
Current biotechnological practices allow the creation of life forms that were, not so very long ago, the domain of science fiction. Through new reproductive technologies, for example, better and smarter designer babies can be bred. Also, genetic engineering techniques currently produce cross-species hybrids or chimeras never before seen in nature, millions of which reside in the real world of scientific laboratories. Cloning and research into the growing of spare body parts or the culture of semi-living entities by means of tissue engineering are other examples of some of the astounding biotechnologies practiced today. Though these ground-breaking wet technologies belong to the real world of the biosciences, they also spawn many biofictions grounded in age-old inscriptions and constructions of the body, of human and non-human nature, some even revising the meaning of life itself.
Women artists are increasingly engaged in art practices that critically reflect on these biofictions. Many even employ the techniques of biotechnologies, creating new living or semi-living entities, to do so. Whether through the actual manipulation of life or by other interventions, performances and representational strategies, their diverse biotech artworks tinker with the biofictions in engaging ways. By so doing, they draw attention to the various sites where truth and myth coalesce. Following are but a few examples of XX biotech artworks. They represent four different areas of biotechnological practices: reproductive technologies, genetic engineering, cloning and tissue engineering.
SubRosa & Reproductive Technologies: Chickens, Eggs and Eugenics
SubRosa is a collective of artists who identify themselves as a reproducible cyberfeminist cell of cultural researchers committed to combining art, activism, and politics to explore and critique the effects of the intersections of the new information and biotechnologies on women’s bodies, lives, and work. Several of their performances bring to light the biofictions inherent in assisted reproductive technologies.
U-Gen-A-Chix: Cultures of Eugenics, staged as part of the YOUgenics exhibition in 2003, was one such participatory performance. These titles already announce the kind of biofiction at the core of assisted reproductive technologies, pointing to the intimate connection between this bioscience and eugenics and the status of woman as a breeder. Of course, the female body and the issue of motherhood have been a subject of contestation for some time now. However, subRosa identifies nascent problems arising from developments in this bioscience, specifically linking human-assisted reproductive technologies to the genetic engineering of chickens, pharming, cloning, and eugenic breeding.
The pamphlet, distributed to the participants of the performance, U-Gen-A-Chix: Cultures of Eugenics, posed the provocative question: “Why are women like chickens? So that the participants of the performance might uncover the biofictions inherent in reproductive technologies and establish their positions in this regard, SubRosa set up two performance booths, one that provided information on human egg donations and the consequences of reducing the female to the status of a breeder of designer babies.
The second booth gave participants the opportunity to taste a sub-Rosa-made superior chicken biscuit that allegedly enhanced memory and intelligence. Once the participants were more intellectually endowed in this way, they were better able to reflect on the issues at hand: how technologies, facilitating the breeding of made-to-measure offspring, coincide with certain social eugenic tendencies. Afterwards, the participants were able to give their opinions in video-taped interviews and fill out questionnaires that allowed them to evaluate their own Fleshworth on the biotech tissue market. Humorous and ironical as such participatory performances might be, they serve a very serious purpose: to expose the insidious biofictions embedded in the seemingly benign science of assisting childless couples.
Other projects by subRosa, like Smart Mom Pregnancy Technologies, parody the marketing strategies of reprotech companies. The smart technologies marketed by this particular fictional corporation enable the obstetrical monitoring of womens pregnancy and birthing. The Smart Mom Pregnancy Technologies Corporation boasts that their products are harbingers for a new kind of technically engineered and assisted biological evolution which holds out the hope of the birth of a new race of cyborg platforms and cyborg organisms. For details on the array of smart products offered by this corporation, as well as other projects by subRosa, visit http://www.cyberfeminism.net/index.html. _(All references above are from this site)_
Faith Wilding, a founding member of subRosa, has also collaborated with the Critical Art Ensemble on such projects as Cult of the New Eve. The new Eve (an anonymous woman allegedly from Buffalo) provided her DNA for the Human Genome project, and thus became the new mother of science, heralding a new biological age. The Cult of the New Eve performs rituals exposing the close ties between science and religion: how they share similar biofictions, particularly those grounded in myths about originary genetic identities. Through cult sacraments of transgenic beer and wafers, the Cult of the New Eve confronts those who partake with their readymade ideas about genetic science. For more details on the Cult, visit http://www.critical-art.net/biotech/cone/index.html.
Beatriz da Costa: Exhibiting Transgenic Myths
Artist, Beatriz da Costa reveals still other biofictions inherent in biotechnological practices. Several of her projects, done in collaboration with the Critical Art Ensemble, serve to disclose myths relating to genetic engineering and, most particularly, the science of transgenics. This is a branch of genetic engineering where genes of one organism are isolated and spliced to incorporate the genes of another organism. This allows for the growth of transgenic crops and the creation of cross-species animals, even hybrids incorporating human and plant genes. (Such a hybrid was grown by the artist Laura Cinti. Her Cactus Project is a transgenic artwork involving the fusion of human genetic material into the cactus genome resulting in the cactus expressing human hair. For more details on this human hair-growing cactus, visit Cintis site http://www.lauracinti.com/ )
In the year 2000, Beatriz da Costa and the CAE were part of a participatory performance, parodying a pseudo-biotech corporation, GenTerra, engaged in developing and marketing transgenic products. The strategy of posing as a profit-driven corporation involved in research and product development, even while it professes to have a social conscience, highlights the motives and marketing tactics of for-profit ventures in biotechnologies, and the potential consequences of their products.
The performance site comprised a biotech lab tent and a bacteria release machine containing twelve Petri dishes, one of which contained transgenic bacteria. There were also several computer stations providing factual information on the science of transgenics. The GenTerra artists/scientists, all dressed in lab coats, gave out details about their products, boasting about their ability to produce healthy GMO foods and solve numerous ecological and social problems.
Once informed about the science of transgenics and about the truths and lies conveyed in the marketing rhetoric of GenTerra, the participants at the performance could actively become involved in assessing the risks of such biotechnologies. They could do so, for example, by deciding whether or not to release bacteria from one of twelve Petri dishes situated in the release machine. When the Petri dish with the transgenic bacteria was released, a robotic arm opened the lid of the dish, leaving it ajar for approximately five seconds. Then the lid was closed. For details regarding the release of the transgenic bacteria, and for more information on how GenTerra industries offer transgenic solutions for a better, greener world, visit the site at http://www.critical-art.net/biotech/genterra/index.html. In parodying biotech companies, both artist and participant effectively play out the biofictions, and discover both the positive and negative aspects of genetic engineering.
Beatriz da Costa has also been involved in other Critical Art Ensemble biotech projects. Molecular Invasion, for example, was a participatory science-theater work of 2002, which entailed a live public GMO experiment. For the duration of the exhibition in the gallery space, the collective grew reverse engineered Roundup Ready canola, soy and corn. The strategy underlying this science-theater work was to relay the truth and the lies about genetically modified organisms and the consequences of the marketing practices of biotech corporations on real people. Details on da Costas projects can be found on the CAE website under, Contestational Biology and also under, Free Range Grain. These sites provide documentation on a number of critical issues surrounding genetically modified organisms and microorganisms: dispelling many myths and promoting public awareness on the socio-cultural and economic implications of transgenic seeds and crops.
Even though many biotechnologies can provide enormous benefits for society, there are also many dangers lurking beneath the obscured biofictions. Information provided by corporations on the various biotechnologies is abridged, selective and often elusive: they are representations that omit as much as they exhibit. Deciphering and exhibiting some of the biofictions inherent in cloning technologies is one of the goals of artist and engineer Natalie Jeremijenko.
Natalie Jeremijenkos Clones: Seeing Difference
Even before the advent of Dolly the sheep, the subject of cloning conjured up fearful images of perfect replicas of an individual, challenging notions of uniqueness and difference, and the essence of human identity. Even in the current debates on the ethics of research on human cloning, one can observe underlying biofictions, particularly concerning genetic determinism, a notion that reduces human and non-human life to genetic codes. Natalie Jeremijenkos One Tree(s) project sets out to dispel such myths, subverting the common notion that genes are the Book of Life.
This project consists of cloned trees, produced by a method of micro-propagation, first displayed as 100 seedlings in 1998. One Tree(s) is a paradox in both the figurative and literal sense. It is literally so because these trees were cloned from a century-old walnut tree called the Paradox, with a circumference of about 30 feet. Exhibited in various stages of growth, Jeremijenkos clones may have disappointed those expecting to see science fiction versions of perfect replicas. As genetically identical clones, the trees are also paradoxical in that they represent sameness (in their DNA) and difference at the same time. Even as young seedlings, the clones displayed unique properties: distinctive branching patterns, varied numbers of leaves, and diverse growth rates.
Despite the fact they are genetically identical to the mature Paradox tree, they are most evidently not perfect replicas of the century-old tree. Neither do any of the clones even replicate their clonal others. As such, they display difference and complexity. What is significant is that the differences displayed in the cloned seedlings are not a result of variations in external or environmental factors. One Tree(s) thus challenges conventional discourse on genetics that perpetuates notions about loss of individuation and authenticity. Indeed, each distinctive cloned tree manifestly proves the opposite. Life (whether plant, animal or human) constitutes more than just genetic make-up.
Now planted in pairs, in diverse geographical public spaces, the cloned trees continue to display sameness and difference. As such, one has the opportunity to visualize, in a material way, the complexity of life itself. This is particularly significant today. With the mapping of the human genome now complete, it is perhaps more important than ever to dispel reductive notions of genetics. Is a human being not more than the sum of his/her genes? Can one think of ones genomic makeup as ones self?
If Jeremijenkos One Tree(s) project allows one to recognize the complexities inherent in all life forms, it also challenges another biofiction: that of cloned plants. The method of micro-propagation for cloning is an asexual reproduction process, similar to the creation of new plants from a cutting. As such, clones (with identical DNA but in various shapes and sizes) have surrounded us for a very long time, and have been created by many of us in our homes and gardens. For details on this and other artworks by Natalie Jeremijenko, visit, http://www.locusplus.org.uk/biotech_hobbyistNJ.html
Tissue Culture & Art: How the Aesthetics of Care Challenges Conceptions of Life
Tissue engineering is a biotechnology that promises, in the not too distant future, the ability to grow spare body parts to replace injured or defective ones. The culture of organs from ones own cells would eliminate problems associated with the rejection of a donor organ by the host body’s immune system. This revolutionary new biotechnology has been the object of some remarkable artworks.
Ionat Zurr, and her partner Oron Catts, have employed tissue engineering to make numerous semi-living sculptures from cultures of skin, muscle and bone cells grown on artificial biodegradable polymer of a variety of shapes and sizes. These semi-living sculptures, exhibited at international venues, are fragile life forms, and are thus always displayed in a fully functioning tissue culture laboratory. Such an exhibition lab includes a sterile hood, incubator, microscope, a sophisticated monitoring system, and a bioreactor that simulates the conditions of the bodies from which the cells and tissue were derived, allowing them to be sustained and to grow.
Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts became interested in tissue engineering after learning about the work of scientists who created a truly science fiction creature: a hybrid of a mouse and human ear. First, creating a prototype of a human ear out of polyester fiber and human cartilage cells, the scientists subsequently implanted this ear structure onto the back of a hairless mouse. The mouse’s tissue nourished the ear while the cartilage grew to replace the fiber. Zurr and Catts were invited to work in the Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School with Dr. Joseph Vacanti, one of the leading scientists working on the ear-mouse project. There, they learned important tissue culture techniques and, as one of their Tissue Culture & Art projects, cultivated a semi-living ear, an exact replica (1/4 scale) of the ear of the Australian artist, Stelarc. Other semi-living sculptures have, for example, taken the form, of Worry Dolls (2000), and Pig Wings (2001).
Nurturing and caring for these semi-living entities for the duration of the exhibition is an essential part of TC&As art projects. Daily, the audience is invited to view the feeding of these semi-living entities, emphasizing the necessity of caring for these new life forms. The end of the exhibition, however, represents the death knoll for these artistic creations. At the closing of the installation TC&A perform a killing ritual in which the semi-living sculptures are removed from their sterile environment and placed in miniature coffins where they die.
By nurturing and then allowing the death of their semi-living sculptures, TC&A exhibit not only the fragility of these lab-produced life forms, but also confront the visitors with their own biofictions. Even the aesthetics of care implies the eventual termination of that care: emphasizing human power over the life and the death of the semi-living entities. In this way, TC&A challenge preconceptions of life and, significantly, the manner in which humans tend to construct hierarchies among different life species.
Such hierarchical constructs are particularly highlighted in their victimless projects. Their recent Victimless Leather, for example, is an attempt to grow leather from animal cells, thus without the necessity to slaughter the animal. Similarly, Disembodied Cuisine, (2003) was the growing of a victimless steak made from cells harvested from a biopsy taken from a frog skeletal muscle, thus also eliminating the need to kill the animal. The culture of this victimless meat was grown in a clean lab exhibition space in Nantes, France. At the end of the exhibition, the meat was cooked with herbs, flambed, and then consumed in a video-taped feast by the artists, the curator, and other invited biotech artists.
The ability to create food and clothing, without killing, is certainly appealing to vegetarians and animal lovers. However, these victimless projects, as much as those involving killing rituals, touch on the very core of common conceptions (or biofictions) about life and death, and about humans relation to other life forms. Such interventions prompt the question: when does life count? This, of course, has been an issue in abortion debates. But tissue engineering might also trigger such considerations for non-human life. Even victimless meat consists of living organisms and is thus still alive. But then, so too are the vegetables we eat. The act of eating, by any species, inevitably entails the act of killing life. A dinner feast of any kind is, in essence, also a killing ritual. But why is it that the killing of certain life forms for food or clothing is more problematic than destroying others? The aesthetics of care in the TC&A projects forces one to confront the most fundamental questions regarding the nature of all life (including animal, vegetable and semi-living entities) and the necessity for certain anthropocentric habits that is, the death of other life forms to maintain human life. For more details on the Tissue Culture & Art projects of Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts, visit their site, http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au.
While the various biosciences (reproductive technologies, genetic engineering, cloning and tissue engineering) illustrate the quasi-godlike ability of humans (whether they be biotech mothers, scientists or artists) to create life, these biotechnologies also challenge our personal and collective conceptions of the meaning and value of all life, not only those created within the parameters of scientific laboratories or biotech corporations. The XX artists, working in this area, discussed here, provide particularly important insights, casting a light on the many questions we will have to pose in the next few decades, not only about the biofictions of biotechnological corporations, but about our own (mis)conceptions of the relation between human and non-human life, many of which will no doubt have to be revised.