Archive for the ‘biotech’ tag
Una modesta proposta per un bestiario del XXI° secolo
Eduardo Kac, GFP Bunny, 2000
Domenico Quaranta, “Una modesta proposta per un bestiario del XXI° secolo”, 2009, to be published.
“Oggi, il sogno dei biologi è prendere la sequenza del DNA, il codice di programmazione della vita, e modificarla con la stessa libertà con cui si interviene su un documento con un programma di scrittura.” Bill McKibben
Cani blu
McKibben non ha tutti i torti: la libertà che, oggi, gli scienziati si stanno prendendo nei confronti del vivente non è poi dissimile da quella che gli uomini di tutte le epoche si sono presi nei confronti del linguaggio in risposta alle loro esigenze espressive. Ma se il vivente fosse un linguaggio, e se fosse possibile piegarlo alle esigenze dell’arte? In fondo, il codice genetico è, appunto, un codice, come l’alfabeto, i numeri, le note musicali, i colori di una tavolozza; e i tessuti non sono altro che un materiale di costruzione, se è vero che esiste una disciplina chiamata “ingegneria dei tessuti” (tissue engineering).
SEMI-LIVING ART . Interview with Oron Catts
SEMI-LIVING ART . Interview with Oron Catts
Domenico Quaranta
Published in “Cluster. On Innovation”, n. 4 (Biotech), pp. 158 – 163. © Cluster 2004
Oron Catts, Finnish by origin, is one of the pioneers in the artistic application of biotechnologies. Majored in Product design, Catts founded in 1996 the Tissue Culture & Art Project, an artistic collective (of which both IONAT ZURR GUY BEN ARY are members) that engages tissue technologies as a means of artistic expression. In 2000 he was one of the founders of SymbioticA , where he is at present artistic director. Positioned in the school of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia (UWA), SymbioticA is a research laboratory lead by artists within a department of biological science, and it offers itself as a “porous membrane through which art and bio-medical sciences and technologies can mingle”.
Since its foundation SymbioticA has hosted and worked with artists such as Stelarc, Adam Zaretzki, Amy Young, Marta De Menezes and Andrè Brodyk, all of which are extremely interested in adopting the use of biotechnologies as a new medium of artistic expression. The Tissue Culture and Art Project adopted “biomedia” in a slightly more unusual way; instead of talking about the possible consequences of human gene and the genome mapping manipulation, it uses tissue technologies as a means of creating “semi living sculptures” through the grafting of organic and living materials on an artificial life support. It’s a dangerous choice because it involves life, that is then fragmented and manipulated, utilized as a medium and object of investigation in an artistic project. Examples of semi living are the worry dolls created during the project Tissue Culture and Art (ificial) Wombs, presented at Linz 2000: work that interprets the Guatemalan legend of the six anxiety dolls, that children tell their worries to before going to bed, in a series of seven (we’re not children anymore!) dolls created with biodegradable polymeric into which different tissue cells have been inserted; semi-living (enough to dance and grow faster with the help of music) are the Pig Wings that ironically make one of the most absurd promises of biotechnology come true, according to which in the near future we could make pigs fly, making at the same time the pink pigs probable “hosts” of our spare organs, a extra extension to grow in order to then offer to man. Semi- living, still, is a little ear (a fourth of real life size) made together with Stelarc, who intends to wear it as an organic prosthesis – completely useless and purely decorative- on his obsolete body.
Interview with Oron Catts (full version, unpublished)
Interview with Oron Catts (full version, unpublished)
Domenico Quaranta
DQ. Let’s start from the usual question: what do you think you’re doing, playing God?
OC. There are two ways to answer this question – one is that the concept of God is a human construct so actually the question can be read as “what do you think you’re doing, playing human?”
The second way of responding to such a question is that following its internal logic any form of manipulation of living systems is a form of playing God therefore this question can be directed to farmers, gardeners, chefs, people who are doing flower arrangement etc. In both cases you can see that this is not going to take us anywhere.
I believe that this type of response to our work stems from exactly the point that we are trying to raise through the work – that there is a immense discrepancy between our cultural perceptions of life and what can be done with life with the knowledge of modern biology and it’s application through biotechnology and biomedical research. This question can be relevant only as a starting point in the discussion in regard to the limits of manipulation of living systems by humans. However, using God as “a side” in this discussion is quite futile as no one seems to agree about who/what is his/her/its real representative down here.
Boundaries. On Karin Andersen (2008)
Administracija, 2008, lambda print, cm 65 x 75, edition of 3
BOUNDARIES
Domenico Quaranta
Published in: Karin Andersen. Nouvelles études sur le magnétisme animal, exhibition catalogue. Genova, Guidi & Shoen, February 2008.
Over the last fifteen years the iconography of the hybrid has literally invaded our landscape of images. Blaming genetic engineering would be excessive even if it obviously bears some responsibility for this in the same way that huge steps have been made in research in the fields of artificial intelligence and plastic surgery. Cosmetics with its repertoire of make-up, plastics and wigs succeeds in doing what plastic surgery has still been unable to do – and it has done a lot – not only filling the media but also our street billboards with images of sexual hybrids, ageless women, breasts, pin-up lips and bandanas giving way to thick flowing locks. Where cosmetics itself fails, cosmetic imagery succeeds thanks to post-production software which aims to render invisible any differences between reality and simulation.
Hybridization is without doubt the major topic of the moment: genetic manipulation certainly, but also climate changes, the removal of borders, religious syncretism, immigration, linguistic hybridization, cultural contacts and clashes between civilisations while the post human is its aesthetics. Art had already anticipated in the late 80s a future which is already here, hence it is only natural that nowadays Art prefers the present to the future. Realistic photographic images of aliens, cyborgs and mutants – just three examples among many possibilities: The Loughton Candidate by Matthew Barney, the American Daniel Lee’s theriomorphic images and the robots in love from Chris Cunningham’s video clip for Bjork have less effect on us since they became part of car advertisements. We realise that these images have to recover their metaphoric impetus and need to talk again about us and about our hybridisation. Paradoxically, at the moment when these hybridisations, which for centuries have accompanied our dreams and nightmares become possible, we feel the need to hear them told in a less literal manner. The faun, in order to recover his metaphoric value – and hence universal value – to be able to talk to us has to go back to being a faun, not the bizarre character we could meet in the underground. He has to return to being a legend, a myth or a fantasy and not the anticipation of a future that troubles us.
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