An interesting part of the story of a (nonprofit) exhibition - and in making sense of a social/institutional phenomena more generally - is understanding who is funding it and why. This is also true when we try to understand the production of scientific knowledge. And it is this line of questioning that leads to finding out what are the perceived benefits of such knowledge/exhibition, and to whom they are beneficial.
This is certainly a very interesting part of the Paradise Now show - which combines a complicated chimera of shy wealth, obscured biotech corporations, patinas of academic impartiality, under-funded not-for-profit arts organization, over-funded .dot-orgs fronting .dot-com interests, and, of course, the self interested artists.
While funding alone does not explain the work or the show, in the case of this exhibition, when there are such powerful corporate interests involved in the development of biotechnologies (and more specifically genetic technologies), and a suspicious and intimidated public, the resulting situation makes a far more interesting story than the art world is accustomed to. (Compare it with the recent episode of the Brooklyn Museum of Art's collaboration with Saatchi collection in the revelationâ that they were controlling the value of the works of art involved (i.e. inflating them). In another context, Arnold Lehman, the director of the Museum would be celebrated as a "do-what-it-takes" go getterâ or, if he had anything to do with the Internet, a genius. Yet the newspapers seemed to imply that this was a tainting, while at the same time not rousing, discussion of the necessity of these strategies in the absence of public funding). Deliberately ignoring the financial capacity of the institutions of art leads us to miss some interesting stuff in the meaning making.
If tracing the funding helps you understand a little about interests (ie, whose ideas are being promoted, and whose might not be), then the next question is whether or not the show fulfills the expectations of these interested parties. This is what I will discuss here. And, specifically for the interested parties (1) funders, (2) curators, (3) artists and other vested/sponsoring groups.
The first has been researched and
written about by Jacky Stevens. Her report can be viewed and downloaded here:
The
Industry behind the Curtain.
The interests of the curators I will discuss a little here, and if they respond, I will also post their responses.
The third group, that of the artists, I am most qualified to discuss (at least from the point of view of one of them), in the following subsections: reviewing the reviewers; discussing the show; and elaborating what was left out of the show.
Some of my biotech projects...
Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure I will explain my own position and briefly review how and why I work in this realm of biotechnology by reviewing a few projects.
The OneTree Project
www.o-r-g.com/ONETREE/
The OneTree Project is a work to put the stuff of biotechnology to use within the public debate on issues of direct public interest. The material authority of scientists -- that is, the stuff they have in labs, the empirical evidence that give them the authority to speak on their area of expertise -- is what this project tries to put in the public sphere. By developing a networked instrument of cloned trees distributed through the San Fransisco Bay Area, the evidence for multivariate environmental responses is available to both lay and expert audiences to interpret as they see fit. The lay audience, then, has the same material authority as the experts.
The part of the OneTree project that is in the Paradise Now show consists of 6 of these clones, now saplings, that have been raised in environmental conditions. The "punchline" of exhibiting these saplings together is for the viewer to notice that, while they have identical genetic information and have been rasied under the exact same environmental conditions, they are quite remarkably different.
This then demonstrates the limits of the genetic heuristic. A full description of the project can be found at the OneTree Website. However important this project is to me, within the incredible busy-ness of the Paradise Now show, my strategy was to focus on this one point. To demonstrate that you cannot seeâ or pictureâ genes; to demonstrate the irreducible complexity of genetic information; to demonstrate that in the relatively simple form of the tree (compared to such complex social behaviors as alcoholism or violent tedencies) there is no simple set of transductions that you can trace through. This seems incredibly critical to the sensible discussion of genetic technologies within the public sphere. It was an effort to simply demonstrate how much genes don't explain. This unknown part is what is at stake. For instance: at present, who is responsible for the unknown genetic interactions of genetically modified foods? Who is accounting for what is not understood?
My own interest in showing this piece was to arouse some attention in the upcoming planting of these trees for the further development of the project. I do need to report that I was profoundly disappointed that none of the reviewers noticed that they clones were different. The general [public] response was much more encouraging.
Biotech Hobbyist
www.irational.org/biotech
"The Biotech Hobbyist" is another project that I do, intended to encourage garage biotech. I develop kits and instructions, for sterilizing in your microwave, growing human skin, transforming it with the GFP octopus gene. The idea behind this is that if there are people getting their hands messy with this stuff, then it is much less likely to seem like the deified pursuit of well endowed universities and biotechnology corporations. Again, my argument is that by getting your hands dirty you are better equipped to engage in the debates surrounding the corporate imperatives that are so much a part of this realm of research.
This site links to a forthcoming kit, developed this summer at MASS MOCA. It is a Robotic Butterfly Kit, which uses shape memory alloy and actual butterfly wings to make a flapping device. Try this at home. It is a kit that juxtaposes radically different representations of life, robotics and the actual biological material. While it used to be that robotics were taken to represent life (even threaten, imitate or replace workers), we are now moving into a realm in which the representation of aliveness is not so much in the process of physical labor but in the biological material.
Touch
(link coming soon)
"Touch" was a piece exhibited at the Swiss Inst. earlier this year, which was actual human skin (a full bi-layer skin with both epithelial layer and dermal layer) cultured from a foreskin. This used both the just FDA approved skin product Organogenesis and the Allograft skin product from LifeCell Corporation. I also included a tattoo, so that it was real skin but a fake tattoo. This piece, described more fully here, was developed to demonstrate that although the skin was human by all definitions (except for a little bit of bovine protein matrix), and a live, by all definitions, growing, dividing mass of cells (at least to begin with), in many ways it did not count as human. It was a representation of humanness. In the same way that photography challenged and transformed representational tradition, this skin marks the shift towards biological representations.
What was interesting in exhibiting this piece was that the viewers seemed very happy to TOUCH the skin, as invited, but without the hesitation that in another context they might have felt (Where else does one come across human skin that is not actually on the body? Morgues, surgery, accidents, etc), and furthermore that the human leather was thrown out at the end of the exhibition, in a confusion about whether or not it was art or biological hazard.
So biology can be representationâ rather than life itself; the public can have empirical evidence and also be involved in a direct way with the production of this knowledge. However, I will mention one more piece that was recently published on the web by the Bureau of Inverse Technology.
The HALFLIFE RATIO http://www.o-r-g.com/HALFLIFE
The HALFLIFE RATIO tracks the market value of sperm and the market value of ova. Once you calculate in all the risks and costs involved, and despite there being equal market demand for the reproductive tissue product, one of the donors comes out about $38,000 down. Can you guess which one? The issue here is that some very old inequities are reproduced in/with/through these new technologies.
Corporate Interests, Funding Imperitives
In the late 1980s a book was published called "How to Harness Grassroots Activism for your Corporation". This book signifies a very complicated strategy that confuses the credibility checks we rely on to verify our sources, to understand who to trust, and how to interpret the nuances of information.
Now anybody can get a dot-org website, and similar complicating strategies are conflating dot-com incentives with the dot-org 'credibility'. There is another forthcoming book similar to the one that appropriated grassroots activism in the 80's, but different, entitled "Corporate Art: On the Art World & Corporate Interests." This text is actually edited by me, but its inevitability is what I am trying to point to, from one side or the other. It already exists as a set of strategies from the likes of the corporate spin professionals of Noonan Russo, or in the Gene Media Forum (nominally an impartial discussant of new media, but with a board consisting entirely of biotech professionals, and although it has an academic affiliation, they forgot to appoint or engage any of the academians who analyse this area). But the former donates money to the latter -- $3000, according to the Gene Media forum director, more than enough for a semester of lectures in the CATs MEAOW series -- and with the strange omission of any critical theorists.
What is it that the artists have that these corporate interests are interested in? It is not the art, it is the access to the public imagination. No matter how small and piddling the access that artists have may be, it is direct access and provides a reason to place full page advertisements in the New York Times (two dates, will be added). In the case of Paradise Now, it was just the title of the show -- a noticeably celebratory one, without any hint of criticism, and interestingly, without even the list of participating artists (lest anyone glean some critical information from them, perhaps?). Why this bland framing of the show? Why "Picturing the Genetic Revolution"? Why not "Contesting the genetic revolution", "Genetic Revolts", "Revolting Genetics", "Artists Claiming Life", or any other formulation?
The access that artists have to the public imagination is modem access -- i.e, not so high bandwidth. This means that it is primarily via the curatorial framing of the show (the title of the show, its slogan, the graphic image rather than the actual content of the art), and at best through the digestions of the reviewers. This means that more of the burden is on the curatorial staff than one might initially believe.
The role the curator is incredibly powerful in framing the reception and interpretation of the work. And while the curators of Paradise Now did a great job in a number of ways -- they included a diverse array of artists, incredible production value, professionalism -- I do have some real criticism of the framing of the show. I make some specific comments on the curatorial text and some suggestions for how it might promote a more active involvement in the public debate and more effective engagement by critics.
"The world is being transformed by genetic research."
This opening statement, reprinted on all of the literature, suggests that this is certainly happening. It is an unequivocal statement. But the impact - in real terms - is so far equivocal. The world is not necessarily transformed, not inevitably altered, and certainly any change in the way we understand life is not a fait accomplis, but a rather slow process. Take the most defensible position of genetic research - transforming healthcare. If that was the goal and rationalization for "transforming the world," if better health were really our goal, we would be better served to spend the equivalent amount on childhood immunization, toxic waste clean up, better tracking of communicable disease, or better (universal) health coverage like every other industrialized country
Claims that genetic research will drastically impact (transform) the quality of life are incredibly speculative at best and funding encouraging hype at best. This framing sets up the "It is inevitable, Too late to do anything now, Be struck in dumb awe at the complicated marvels, Abandon all responsibility" approach to the show. It also reflects the same ring of promissory note that seems to pervade the public discussion of genetic research -- one that rarely discusses what we have actually learnt, but what we might learn, one that doesn't survey the evidence produced to date but elaborates promises and exciting speculations.
This style of discussion is familiar to us, because betting on the future, the inherent gamble of the stock market, is also cloaked in this rhetoric. We invest in potential more than actual earnings (see the Internet stocks), rather than on the basis of the price to earnings ratio. The familiarity of this rhetoric, despite the strangeness of the science and artistic works, remarkably echoes the rhetoric of Wall Street.
The very next line is: "What was once the subject of science fiction has become fact." Science fiction does not have a good track record in becoming science fact (although Science Fiction does act as a forum for public discussion of new technologies in lieu of other potentially more effective policy influencing spaces). The inflated claims seem motivated more to stimulate investor confidence than to represent the research. They are neither about the science involved nor the art, but about buoying the investor confidence.
In fact, the facts of genetic research are still very much up for grabs - because of the complexity involved in any genetic phenomena of interest, the knowledge claims (i.e. facts) will remain highly contestable and this is what makes it such an interesting area. From the scientific literature, and again addressing the most compelling application of genetic information (cancer research rather than finding a cure for baldness): "At present, description of a recently diagnosed tumor in terms of it underlying genetic lesion remain a distant prospect. Nonetheless, we look ahead 10 to 20 years to the times when diagnosis of all somatically acquired lesions present in a tumor cell genome will become a routine procedure." (Douglas Hanahan and Robert Weinberg Cell, Vol 100, p 57-70, Jan 2000)
The point is that the scientific literature is making far more modest claims than the curators of Paradise Now.
The science fictions that the curators portend are one of the primary strategies of many of the artists involved. The fictions that we see illustrated in the images of the poster for the show - the square cows and three winged chickens - are a problematic response at best. Firstly, elaborating these fictionsâ of science, as if it were just economic forces to deal with, pretends that the science is more complete and comprehensive than it is, that there is more control than there is, which is a critical issue. Although more and less disturbing images it actually promotes these fictions. Rather than contesting the representation, taking on the factsâ the images of these engineered animals pretend that these were the real concern. It distracts from the actual issues. For example, the BRCA gene and its causal association with breast cancer, although a poster child of genetic research, is only associated with about 5% of all breast cancer. The means the rest has to do with those less glamorous research areas like environmental toxins, repeated exposures to carcinogens in indoor pollution, and other approaches that get far less media attention.
The work of Eduardo Kac, although more reflective than the glibness of Rockman, embraces the transgenic animal. These are by no means inevitable.... and presenting them promotes the 'incontestable authority' of science, and also sensationalizes, drawing public attention away from other arguably more interesting, or at least more actual, issues.
The transgenic bunny has unfortunately gotten much of the press attention. This limelight for the green fluorescing bunny is presented bereft of the actual research questions that compelled its creation. The value of the GFP process in literally illuminating difficult to see metabolic phenomena in a dynamic way has made it an incredibly popular research tool. (If you would like a kit to do it, see the Biotech Hobbyist.) It is generally not the case that scientists will work to 'fulfill' the creative vision of the artist: this doesn't tend to fulfill their incentive schemes. And it is attention to very particular applications and rationalizations that we need and that generally the public wants.
Kac's embracing of the inevitability of "transgenic animals' as a fait accomplis misrepresents the generally very careful and respectful stance of scientists. They are no more a fait accomplis than the use of test animals in the lab: that is, if your research questions are not strong enough, you will find animal testing difficult to do, as Kac has found it difficult to exhibit the bunny. Actually, he never has, but this doesn't prevent to attention. The accountability for what is being done, and why, is more critical than pretend games of one-upmanship. That the production of any transgenic animal necessarily engages the complicated unknowns involved in the genetic manipulation of life. Bad boy art is boring, and furthermore there is too much at stake to leave the public imagination to the likes of Kac and Rockman's facile gestures. The point is that the scientific knowledge of manipulating life is very partial and incomplete.
Without going through the rest of the curatorial text, I turn instead to the framing of the discussions around the show. They are: "What can we expect?". Not "What will we decide?", not "How to understand?" but the more passive instruction to sit back and watch, or expect. And this big one, co-sponsored by the Gene Media Forum, and co-funded by Noonan Russo, was attended by science journalists and the most high profile. There were no artists or activists involved in the panel, but representation of the social sciences was the minority (when surely it should have been the majority -- social scientists are much easier to schedule, are more directly engaged with social issues, and don't necessarily have interests in promoting this work -- systematically excluding any and all critical scholarship) in the form of Dot Nelkin who is currently working on tracing the religious impulses within this work more generally. Nelkin's work, while telling an interesting story, is not enough.
Artists are not holier, nor morally superior: it is just that their interests are completely transparent. While being accountable to a general public, in a way that scientists are rarely required to confront the public confronting their work, they are not burdened by much funding nor the expectations that the funding carries with it. This makes them useful cultural needles.
The 2nd panel, and the one in which I was given 5 minutes to present my work, was entitled: "Picturing the Genetic Revolution". Note the optical tenor, not conceptual nor political emphasis, and furthermore continuing the same note, celebrating the optimism of progress, again unproblematically asserting that this is a revolution.
So, in closing: an emergency panel is being held to respond to and counter some of this seemingly neutral, yet radically exclusive representation of what is at stake. A panel with some of the viewpoints excluded from the Gene Media Forum is being held at the Center for Advanced Technology and netcast internationally.
It is called - "How to Understand Genetic Information - And Why?" It is not sponsored by the Gene Media Forum, nor Howard Stein nor his industry affiliates. It is a discussion that is framed, not at passive expectations or pretty pictures, but at the more active interpretive stance that is a critical part of participation in the artworld.
The panel will include:
Moderator: Troy Duster, author of "Backdoor to Eugenics"
Additional Notes
The search for genetic based interventions are - while very promising for balding -- actually not going to impact health substantially.
For example - how some very old inequities are being reproduced with new technologies - see the Bureau's HALFLIFE Ratio for a metric that follows and compares the market value of sperm and the market value of ova.
To finish off the curatorial text, or alter it somewhat, 39 nameless artists feel like they have become puppets for promotion of the corporate interests and the control of critical engagement by a greater public.
The issues are stakes are no less than how we represent life, what risks we will bear, and how we can understand this compelling, dangerous, fascinating and complex information.