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ART IMITATES LIFE-SCIENCE (page 5) It's March 14th, a day after the revelry of opening night. Things are still buzzing in LU in preparation for presentations and speeches for the "L'Art Biotech" symposium. I sit at the bar waiting for Zaretsky to give a talk to a small die-hard crowd in the lounge. I swing my stool around to the counter of the bar to find a large cup of cappuccino waiting for me. Oddly enough, there are three plastic containers with some dirty-looking liquid adjacent to my frothy pick-me-up drink. Before I have the chance to interrogate the bartender, Davis walks up with a cigarette dangling from his lips, "Those are my samples of water from the river." He lifts one up, inviting me to peak inside at the brine shrimp moving to-and-fro inside. A bio-artist never stops being a bio-artist, not even for a moment. He's lingering around hoping to catch Zaretsky's slide presentation on "Workhorse Zoo," a recent project which found the artist living (and surviving) in an isolated laboratory clean room with the workhorses of biology (frogs, mice, fish…) for a week. He ended up eating his roommates. Davis catches the beginning of Zaretsky's diatribe but is quickly whisked away by French reporters who want to film him discussing DNAgraphy, his project for the show. It depicts a figure not unfamiliar to the Beaux Arts world of classical art, the female nude. The difference is that Davis did not, of course, use a paintbrush to create it, but DNA to hold and represent the microscopic images. His unique technique uses DNA to essentially play the same role as emulsion would if he were a photographer. In wrapping up his talk, Zaretsky can't help but touch upon a topic that's been causing tension between the French and the Americans as of late: the war. He empathizes with the local position and pulls out a small hybrid figure he created of the god Mars, mingled with bacterial matter (which I later find out came directly from the artist's body, and is of, gasp, a fecal origin). He walks over to a café table, places the object on it and gives a moving speech that is ultimately punctuated with the passionate act of slamming a hammer down on his creation. A few astonished café goers in the front jump but it's too late; surely an iota of the pummeled Mars figure has landed on their clothing or shoes. War touches even those not directly involved in the battle. Not long after Zaretsky's presentation we head to the LU restaurant to meet a group for dinner. At first, I am, understandably, not feeling all that hungry. The table is a mixed group of reporters, LU people and artists like Davis and Zaretsky. Catts a pale raven-haired thirtysomething with a gautille, and Zurr, a slim attractive blonde, are milling around. They've been waiting for famous French body artist Orlan, for nearly an hour and are questioning whether she'll even show up. Orlan is best known in the mainstream for her early 90's project in which she had her face altered through plastic surgery to look like the Mona Lisa. Like some art world Pamela de Barres, she is apparently eager to jump on the bio-art bandwagon, and Symbiotica's reputation precedes them. Catts, Zurr and Ben-Ary's "Pig Wings" project (in which they cloned and cultured a pig stem cell to grow wings, that were animated by muscle from rat cells) is known by progressive artists and fans the world over. A half-hour later, after Catts and Zurr have left, Orlan shows up dragging her little valise into the restaurant. It's been a long time since she 'played' the Mona Lisa. Now she's a middle-aged woman with windblown spiky hair that's black on one side, white on the other. She wears wine colored lipstick and thick black-framed glasses. Two tiny Band-Aids adorn her temples (clearly reminders of her many excursions into the world of plastic surgery, in the name of art). Hauser tells her that Catts and Zurr waited a while and finally left. She in-turn shrugs her shoulders and says that her train was delayed. |
"He empathizes with the local position and pulls out a small hybrid figure he created of the god Mars, mingled with bacterial matter (which I later find out came directly from the artist's body, and is of, gasp, a fecal origin)."
My Dinner with Orlan: Writer Shana Ting Lipton dining with body artist Orlan, moments before she asked the Foreign Minister of Haiti if she could have a swatch of his dermal tissue
Later, after we've downed our main courses and Orlan has disappeared somewhere, Hauser explains, "Orlan wants to work with Oron and Ionat on a project where she injects herself with the dermal tissue of a black person. They were going to discuss the possibility tonight." Moments later Orlan returns and explains that she has introduced herself to the Foreign Minister of Haiti and his party, who are sitting a few tables away from ours. She asked him if she could have a sample of his dermal tissue for an art project. He politely explained that the members of his party might not be too amenable to it. Continue to Page 6: Art vs. Science
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