Biotech Aesthetics the role of artists in the

Biotech Aesthetics: the role of artists in the organization of culture 1

‘[T]he withdrawal of the experience of aesthetic pleasure from art’ – Alexander Alberro on the meaning of conceptual art in October (Fall 1994) 2

Judith Reodica, hym. Next (2004) New Literary History (2007) on ‘Biocultures’ • ‘In Bio Art an artist utilizes emerging biotechnologies from the scientific and medical fields in the creation of an artwork. In a semi/living, preserved or documented form, presented are the complexities of ethics and aesthetics from the new art movement which can include the methods involved with its creation’ • ‘The hymen tissue cultures were a combination of my vaginal cells, rodent smooth muscle tissue and bovine collagen scaffolding grown in nutrient media’ • ‘My cells are in the sculpture because I wanted to myself to be a new art media. In each sculpture, my DNA is a personal signature’ 3

Eduardo Kac, GFP Bunny (2000) green florescent protein • Chicago-based Kac collaborates with research lab in France (INRA) to create independent, living work of art • Kac: ‘Transgenic art is a new art form based on the use of genetic engineering to transfer natural or synthetic genes to an organism, to create unique living beings’ • Kac wanted Alba, name of the transgenic rabbit, to live with his family • INRA refused to release Alba; led Kac to create an entire GFP Bunny series of works • Transgenic art ‘is not a breeding project’; it ‘must be done with great care, with acknowledgement of the complex issues thus raised, and above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture and love the life created’ 4

Bio Prefix • • ‘Bio’ is the new ‘post-’ or ‘cyber-’ prefix Roots of bio: Greek zoê is cited ‘the course of human life’ ‘Bio art’ has been mooted as an instructive umbrella term Bio artists are not nominalists, but the power to name can be viewed as necessary in order to generate change • Consistent with the stance of Marcel Duchamp (1957) on ‘the creative act’ that ‘the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reaction’ 5

Knotty Questions • ‘What does it mean for a society to bring into existence a rabbit that glows green? ’ • Are bio artists transgressors by challenging ‘western edifices of humanity and humanism’? • ‘But what if biotech is not really about hyper-rationality but really about something else – like aesthetics, for instance? ’ ‘It seems that we haven’t really considered the aesthetic of the biotech industry’ • As humans we need to rethink our understanding of our relationship with our own identity/body, other animals, as well as the concept of life itself 6

Point of Entry Artists • ‘Pioneers’ – Eduardo Kac (transgenic forms), Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr (Symbiotica. A ‘an innovative laboratory dedicated to researching, learning, critique and hands-on engagement with life sciences’; established in 2000 at UWA), Marta de Menezes (butterfly wings as the canvas), George Gessert (breeds, makes, and exhibits hybrid irises), and Joe Davis • ‘Interesting Cases’ – Paul Vanouse (‘intersection between big science and popular culture’), Stelarc (‘reservoirs of organs, or bionic hybrids’), and Adam Zaretsky • Noted – Julia Reodica, Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble, ORLAN, and Kira O’Reilly (‘biotechnical practices with which to consider the body as material and site in which narrative threads of the personal, sexual, social and political knot and unknot in shifting permutations’) 7

Bio Artists in the Organization of Culture • Zaretsky (2004): ‘We [bio artists] are major players in a sort of • ‘Whether Mr Mutt offshoot of the art scene insofar as with his own hand we are not making art about made the fountain or biology, we focus on bringing our not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He outsider ideas to life’ took an ordinary • Kac: ‘You have to use these article of life, placed it [biotechnology] tools because of so that its useful the kind of work you want to significance disappeared under make is of that kind, but the work new title and point of is not identical to the process that view – a new thought leads to its making; the work is for that object’ poetic, it’s imaginative, it’s (Duchamp 1917) subjective, it’s meant to resonate 8 in all these ways’

Damien Hirst ≠ Bio Artist • Bio art is not simply appropriation • Hirst’s works are not actually alive; he has appropriated a onceliving animal 9

Pathways in Biotech Aesthetics • Artists talking bio art • Art/science intersections • Distribution and reception of bio art • Being human today 10

Artists Talking Bio Art 11

Defining an Artistic Practice • Kac identifies himself as a ‘bio artist’; also ‘biological arts’ (Catts), ‘emergent media’ (Vanouse), ‘medical artist’ (Reodica) • O’Reilly: ‘I love it when different artists use different words to describe their practices even if they’re in similar realms. Because it allows us to play with language and allows us to play with representation and the kind of cultural ideas that are associated with language and terms and expressions and so on, so I try not to be too definitive about bio art’ • All accept ‘bio art’ has gained recognition as a shorthand • What is bio art? Is bio art a movement (that is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal)? 12

Bio Art as New Media • Catts: the act of defining bio art is ‘problematic’; ‘an artist who engages with biological arts’ • Catts on Symbiotic. A: ‘It’s not so much an ideological definition or something which is based on any type of manifesto, it’s really about access to resources, it’s a very pragmatic kind of approach’ • Vanouse prefers ‘emergent media’: ‘I think it’s more to do with using the tools of molecular biology as a kind of inscription-making practice; a way of making things visible’; ‘It is about the sort space between things, between inert and living 13 things’

Role of the Artist’s Body • Stelarc: ‘Using living material [his own body], and using it in such a way that you can create sort of sculptural forms that weren’t possible before’; ‘that allows you to explore the notions of what’s alive, what’s dead, what’s partially living’ • O’Reilly on inthewrongplaceness (2005 -09): ‘Involves a piece with a dead pig, where I move this pig around the space over 4 or 5 hours and the audience come in and touch my body and pig’s body so it’s a very visceral, direct encounter’; ‘There’s no technology involved whatsoever, but its genesis is completely from animal research and science in the laboratory [Symbiotic. A residency in 2004] 14 so it’s a very different journey’

Engaging Duchamp • Kac: ‘Clearly, bio art is in vivo [within a living organism], that’s number one, it’s not about appropriating life that has been made already, it’s about inventing something that wasn’t there before. Or, in some cases using the tools of molecular biology, which are the new media of creativity, but using these tools, these media, in ways that do not go back to known art forms based on appropriation and representation and traditional body art or performance or things that we already know, otherwise there is no point, there’s no need, right? … So bio art is something new, is something that we don’t have from Duchamp, we don’t have from Picasso … we don’t have from anybody and none of these artforms lead directly to it because they’re all either counter to representation or based on representation, it’s still the representation versus abstraction debate that exists there’ 15

Bio Art as Art Movement? • • Art movement as a ‘residual of modernist nostalgia’? Bio artists acknowledge they have relations and exchanges Resistance to ‘movement’ description Stelarc: ‘I don’t think it would be very interesting if that [being part of a movement] was the case’; ‘We do very much come from different directions’ • Catts: ‘There’s no one direct kind of philosophy that drives us’; ‘A bunch of people bundled together’ • O’Reilly: ‘Partnership’; ‘Happy sort of convergence of ideas but also divergences’ • Kac: ‘The existence of a traditional early twentieth century apparatus [manifesto] shall not be the guiding principle to define whether or not we are looking at a movement’ 16

Notion of Community • Vanouse: ‘I think that we’ve been in the same ghetto together for some time, and some of us escape more than the others, but we’ve sort of been in this ghetto for a while together. So I think that cohesion’s back’ • Kac: ‘The point of manifestos with worked-up rhetoric – that’s a little passé, but if you look at the writings of these artists, these are not timid writings, these are assertive writings that establish concepts and parameters. So … all of these writings are engaged, they inform the public of the new aesthetics, they put concepts in circulation, they coin words as I have also’ • Vanouse: ‘The other thing I think is very cohesive about this particular group is … that basically when you have a group of people who are also curating and writing, and parts of the bigger structure of festivals and things like this, that you wind up getting this kind of peer review system of people that … in a sense really trim the fat … and they kind of know where the 17 bullshit is … ’

Notion of Community (cont’d) • Kac: ‘My opinion, I think we are, I think bio art is a movement, and as a movement is the first art movement of the twenty-first century, a movement that doesn’t need the traditional manifesto, the works speak for themselves. We are before entities that art has not seen before and we see a group of artists that know each other, that meet, that exchange ideas, that have a friendly relationship with each other, that appreciate each other’s work, that have occasionally invited each other to participate in this book and that conference and that exhibition or this and that. So there are exchanges on many levels, and then you have a certain common aesthetic, not in the specific outcome of each artist, but in the general principle of working with the medium’ 18

Bio Art as Artist-led Initiative • Bio art is an artistic community interested in a process of creativity using biotechnology • Collective response – from an aesthetic perspective – to relations between art and science 19

Art/Science Intersections 20

Arthur Danto, ‘The artworld’ (1964) • ‘To mistake an • Distinction between artwork for a real Andy Warhol’s Brillo object is no great feat Box (1964) as art and when an artwork is the an ordinary Brillo box: real object one ‘It is theory that mistakes it for. The takes it up to the world problem is how to of art, and keeps it avoid such errors, or to from collapsing into remove them once the real object which it they are made’ is …’ 21

Making Art from Science • Art projects from living material blur the dividing line between art and science • Catts: ‘Engage and manipulate life, but also present this manipulated life in an artistic situation’ • The manipulation of life by artists – or the removal of scientific utility from biotechnologies – can make bio artists appear frivolous 22

Bio Artists ≠ Practicing Science • Frustration that their work is labelled ‘part of science’ (Catts) or ‘artistic research’ (Stelarc) even though biotechnology plays an essential role in the artistic practice • Stelarc: ‘I respect the [scientific] researchers that I work with. They’re essential to facilitate, assist and realize some of the works’ • Kac: ‘So I purely and simply make art, and I use the media of my time, as Nam June Paik used video in his time and László Moholy-Nagy used photogram in his time, and others have used media objects such as the Impressionists who used the new brushes and the new paints in tubes. It will be obvious in about one hundred years, or even fifty or … when the novelty wears off and then the artwork stands on its own … without coinciding it historically with these developments’ 23

Artist/Science Diversion • Stelarc on fundamental differences between the way art and science operate: ‘Irritation I have that for universities to authenticate artistic practice they have to sort of justify or re-categorize it as a form of research. …. And of course we all explore and test and experiment, but, you know, as artists I think our agenda is very different, and the trajectory of art I think, often is to unsettle, to surprise, to shock, to provide alternative paradigms … and often art has no aim and it doesn’t have a predictable outcome’ • Catts: ‘I have a fairly snappy response to [artworld] people … because usually they would say what you’re doing is science and not art, so … I managed to offend quite a few people by responding and saying you obviously don’t know what science is if you think that we’re doing is science’ 24

Bio Artists ≠ Science Communicators • Catts: ‘Role of bio art in science is secondary’; ‘I’m very suspicious of artists who claim they’re contributing to science’ • Kac: ‘Science is in the eye of the beholder, which means that you can, if you want, you can see science as everything. … But let’s be clear that you are doing that, not the artist …’ 25

Distribution and Reception of Bio Art 26

Audience Reception in Validating Artists • Distribution (or intermediation) is about exposure and reputation • The reception of Duchamp valorizes the importance of reception • Who and what gets distributed and how? • ‘In the final analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius: he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of Artist History’ (Duchamp 1957) 27

Hierarchy of Authenticity in Bio Art Living, Preserved, and Documented • Kac: ‘From my perspective the one thing I would signal as we begin this conversation is that there is a difference between the market of bio art and the market of bio artists. It’s an important difference because when I sell a photograph, it’s a photograph even if it is part of the GFP Bunny series it’s a photograph, it’s not alive. We’re only talking about the market for bio art when it is itself living … in strict non-metaphorical, nonrepresentational biologically true life’ 28

‘Living’ • Bio art is living so dies by nature • Difficulties encountered by bio artists in displaying semi-living organisms, which require sterile environments and bioreactors (i. e. , devices used for growing and sustaining living cells and tissue outside of their environment) in order to survive • Catts: ‘A very versatile [exhibition] space that has the same type of resources that a good biological lab would have’ 29

‘Preserved’ • Bio artists have developed ways to preserve their works for display • Catts and Zurr: ‘The killing ritual’ in order to stop the growth of works like Pig Wings and Semi. Living Worry Dolls, which are preserved in glycerol • Reodica (hym. Next project): Growing hymens until they reach the desired size, then quickly stopping their growth, and coating them in latex 30

‘Documented’ • Catts and Zurr had shows of large digital prints of photographs of their semi-living sculptures in the mid-1990 s • Catts: ‘Very traditional [exhibitions] in the sense of what we were showing was a representation of the process. . . and the objects that were developed in the laboratory’ • Reflected technology constraints and curatorial choices by exhibition venues 31

‘The Genuine Article’ • Kac and Stelarc identify their non-biological works as extensions – or auxiliary works – of the original, living, biological ones • Stelarc: ‘I think in a sense what you do seamlessly interfaces with everything else that you do. In other words, it’s convenient to kind of separate things and say oh, this is just documentation or this is just performance and this is what really is the artwork. But I really, I’ve never really done that and, so if I look at a videotape of my past performances, to me that documentation is a kind of additional sort of half-life’ 32

‘The Real Thing’ • Catts: less emphasis on documentation; Pig Wings collected by Mo. MA (New York); disappointed ‘just the prints’ • Catts: ‘Symbiotic. A lost interest in selling anything, because it was much more interesting for us to show the living sculpture. . . And then we were getting more and more concerned. . . some of our work questioned the whole notion of the commodification of life. . So at the very same time of critiquing commodification of life, actually trying to commodify a thing in an artistic context and sell it, was problematic. So since 33 2000 I don’t think we’ve sold one work. . . ’

Being Human Today 34

‘Visceral: the living art exhibition’ (2011) Oran Catts and Ionat Zurr Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin • ‘There is something that makes us a little uneasy, perhaps even queasy, about the idea of creating art works from living tissue’ (Director, Science Museum) • Exhibited works form ‘a series of provocations and puzzles around the nature of living and non-living, asking us to consider the myriad of possible implications of our new biological toolkit’ 35

Posthuman Defined (I & II) • Posthuman I: implies the demise of humanism, the traditional humanist belief that ‘man is the measure of all things’; questioning assumed qualities of being human such as self-awareness, consciousness and reflection; poses opportunities for new ways to understand what constitutes being human • Posthuman II: traditional views of being human were challenged in the 1980 s and 1990 s by Stelarc and ORLAN; A Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway 1985); How We Became Posthuman (Hayles 1999) opportunity to ‘configure human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines’; Jens Hauser’s ‘satellite bodies’ (destabilizing our definition of being human) 36

Posthuman Defined (III) convergence of biology and technology to the point where they are indistinguishable • ‘Extropianism’ – theoretical and technical inquires into the next phase of human condition through advances in science and technology – results in technophilic accounts • ‘Critical Posthumanism’ with political and sociallyrooted basis highlights the processual character of the posthuman; bio artists interrogate and create the possibilities for the emergence of new relationships between human and machine, biology and technology 37

Critical Posthumanism of Bio Art (critique of the biotech industry through aesthetics) • GFP Bunny ‘may reveal us to ourselves as well as anything might: as a mirror held up to nature’; Kac sought to demonstrate the role of genetic engineering in normal, domestic lives. Has the distinction between art and reality collapsed? • Zurr and Catts cite Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘becoming animal’ – that is until there is no longer man or animal – in discussing the Pig Wings project; ‘Physical actualization will severely challenge current belief systems, which are unable to account for developments in biological technologies’ • ‘Can “life” be reducible to number? ’ Thacker draws reference to the use of ‘parallax’ by Žižek that at the core of 38 humanity is something ‘inhuman’

Duchampian Lessons on the role of artists in the organization of culture Contemporary art can certainly be considered one of the most powerful and recognized generators of meaning existing today Bio art can be provocative and distributing 39

• Free Exchange of Ideas • Emancipatory role of bio art with artist-led initiatives • Catts: ‘Bio artists can make scientists more aware of the social role they’re playing and not just as value-free knowledge workers’ • Pluralism of Values • Bio art represents an artistic practice outside monied contemporary art world of commodified objects • Democratic, celebrates the validity of differences, and help keeps alive distinctions between the business world and the arts 40