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- TOP BIOLOGICAL ART EVENTS
OF 2003
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- GENESIS-Berkeley Art Museum,
California
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- PARADISE NOW-Art Center,
Pasadena, CA
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- L'ART BIOTECH-Le Lieu
Unique, Nantes
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- NEURO-Art Center, Pasadena,
CA
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- ARTBOTS-Eyebeam Gallery,
New York, NY
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- PERFECTING MANKIND: Eugenics
&
- Photography-- International
Center of Photography, New York, NY
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- CLEAN ROOMS: Art Meets
Technology
Natural History Museum, London, England
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- FROM CODE TO COMMODITY:
GENETICS & VISUAL ART
New York Academy of Sciences, New York City.
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- GENOMIC ISSUE(S): ART
AND SCIENCE (Art exhibit + artists panel)
Art Gallery of the Graduate Center of the City University of
New York (CUNY)
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- Happy New Ear?
- Bio-Art was Big in 2003
- (Res Magazine,
Winter 2003)
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- If, as esteemed author Jeremy Rifkin
has proclaimed, the 21st century is, "The Biotech Century,"
then 2003 could easily be dubbed the Year of Bio-Art. For those
of you who've been hiding under a rock, genetics is the latest
technology, science is hip, and a handful of artists who started
working with living organisms and transgenics (genetic mutation)
years ago are spawning a new generation of creators, quicker
than you can say 'glow-in-the-dark rabbit.' Today, major art
institutions, galleries and university auditoriums are housing
bio-art conferences and exhibits.
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- In March of this year, a group show
and symposium called L'Art Biotech amassed some of the key players
of the movement in Nantes, France. It was there that Perth, Australia-based
bio-artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, debuted their cruelty-free
frog steaks under the project title "Disembodied Cuisine."
For this, they created a pre-fabricated, version of a meal by
snagging tissue from frogs (without harming them) and 'growing'
it on polymer scaffolding. The work was displayed in the form
of photographs, portable lab and a nicely dressed dining room
table. At the end of the exhibit, the team sat down, said 'when
in Rome' (or, in this case, France) and ate frog steaks for dinner.
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- Artists like Catts and Zurr, as
well as Eduardo Kac and Joe Davis have been working in this 'medium'
for quite some time. Their projects haven't always elicited warm
and fuzzy receptions, but even some members of the chilly and
toffee-nosed art community are willing to give them, and other
innovators like them, a chance now that biotechnology has become
an irrefutable part of contemporary life. But, as irony would
have it, just as people were finally better able to digest the
idea of Dolly the cloned sheep, the biotech icon died back in
February. The event didn't trigger a mass candlelight vigil and
a remake of an Elton John hit, but it did re-awaken the public
interest in DNA and cutting edge science.
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- Despite the fact that biotechnology,
and its companion art movement, initially took off like racehorses,
both are still in relatively rudimentary stages. Coincidentally,
2003 also happened to be the 50th anniversary of James Watson
and Francis Crick's findings on the double helix. Apart from
being a really neat cover story for Scientific American, it was
the direct impetus for events such as the exhibit From Code to
Commodity: Genetics & Visual Art at the New York Academy
of Sciences.
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- Some members of other fringe art
communities also seem eager to jump on the genetically modified
gravy train. Bio-artist Catts has been approached by body artist
Orlan to work on a skin pigment project that would use her as
a human guinea pig. He is also planting the seeds for a project
with performance artist Stelarc in which he would create a life-sized
'copy' of Stelarc's ear using human tissue. Stelarc hopes to
have that new appendage surgically added to his head, to keep
the other two company. As 2003, the Year of Bio-Art comes to
a close, one can only add, with impish irony, Happy New Ear.
- -Shana Ting Lipton
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