Adam Zaretsky
Sunday May 20, 2pm ­ 3pm
Massachusetts Institute of Technology , USA

Posthuman Temptation, Eros and Mutagenesis

During the past year and a half I have been attempting to determine whether music has any effect on the growth and/or production of pharmaceuticals by an engineered strain of E. coli. With only an MFA, this is a vast undertaking, which is further complicated by my own preoccupations about the near future effects of genetic engineering on our social milieu. By immersing myself in the culture of Post Doctoral research with a solid anthropological fervor, I have both participated and observed the processes by which this new technology unfolds. I have also refined both my fears and hopes (sometimes coexistent) of just how far biotechnological alterity has come and where we may end up going with it.

How does an artist who specializes in automatic noise collage, pluriform digital media and eros-driven performative excess interact with the characters, processes, and organisms of everyday biological research? How do I attempt to 'do' science? And how does my artistic process respond to this strange habitat? Finally, what common ground do we find between the disciplines and what conflicts seem irresolvable, subject to glorious and interminable debate? These are the questions that inform my daily life.

On the grand scale, molecular biology is simultaneously seen in Utopic and Dystopic lights. A great deal of hope is invested in the products of genetic engineering. Many novel strains of life are being used to bolster markets like global agriculture, animal husbandry/IVF, drug development and gene therapy (somatic and germline). The possible elimination of many inherited or acquired diseases keep a great many suffering people watching for promising results from recent clinical trials. A great deal of fear is also cathected to the biotechnological sector. It is not unusual to confront Biophobic visions of environmental apocalypse or intuit military applications. To top it off, we are becoming erotically Posthuman and slowly dealing with the loss of human identity as we had thought we were. It is for this reason that my hopes and fears coagulate around the central question of 'What Is Bad Taste?' as it becomes imbedded in life's cascade.

Scientific and industrial organisms, created for specific utilization or for the furtherance of comprehension, are also expressions of aesthetic choices. This is why I feel the learning of these technologies is an artistic pursuit. Instead of phobic reaction, I am attempting to critically embrace the processes of life's permanent and inheritable alteration. New reproductive strategies are opening the doors to rapid evolutionary trends, nationalized, racialized, popular and corporate. Are there more aesthetic organisms? The lack of a common global aesthetic and a historical track record of bad taste (i.e. ethnic cleansing, line dancing, liposuction, most painting) provides me with the impetus, the eclectic fecundity to guarantee iconoclasm in a situation which could all too easily lead to the erasure of the same.

I have learned a lot from living in a laboratory culture for the past year and a half. Many biological scientists practice obscure and seemingly demented routines that regularly cause pain, death and radical mutation. One way to cure disease or congenital birth defects is to recreate the problem on a small scale, in a controlled environment and with tools to visualize or measure what is happening. Some researchers I have met are studying how to cure AIDS and some are trying to determine how dangerous Dioxin in our water table is. These are serious issues that confront both human fear and human disregard for life and each other. They are not pretty and they are not easy to cure. I respect a lot of the work being done and have learned to judge scientists individually and only after personal interaction. Not only that, many of them are sweeter and more sincere than myself.

Humanism aside, it is the unknown arena, the huge hole in our comprehension of this crazy world, which is where both art and science glean their inspiration. I know this complexifies the debate but benevolence is not the only reason to commit an act of research. The exploration of the unknown is about human curiosity. This is something artists and scientists share. We wonder and consider ourselves free to test the limits of what we thought was true. We even share a tacit agreement to return back from our trips into the chaotic mysteries of the universe with a report, something to exhibit and share with the populace. Scientists want to open up doors that can be verified by other researchers but they do spend as much if not more time plumbing the depths of what lays beyond security, beyond the obvious. For artists it may not be important whether or not we return with a fact or just an example of what is unfamiliar or outside of 'ordinary' perception.

For me, scientific research is just a minor subset of perversion. It is a particular way of exploring the forbidden. Life on earth is curious, intuitive and creative. Those things are not rationally explainable. There are invisible worlds all around us. So, scientists want to reveal them in ways that are repeatable, empirical and reductive. We artists may be looking for equally important isolated instances of amazingness, anomalous and singular, personal and subjective. We poke and prod, sniff and stare, even into those areas that defy the social norm. The process of analysis assumes, A Priori, that the unknown is seductive, that secrets unfold when interrogated. Otherwise, why look any deeper? And the methods of interrogation are extreme. Often, you must destroy something to comprehend it. It is for these reasons that I refer to the processes of artistic and scientific discovery as perverse practices.

In the case of transgenics we can ask, 'Is this bestiality and perversion?' My answer is yes. The micro-injection of developing embryos with genes from other species in a way that is inheritable is a bestial and perverse sexual act. What I reject is the idea that bestial and perverse acts are automatically bad or unnatural. I admit, I fetishize the taboo act of mutagenesis. Its hot. With my sexual transparency, my non-utilitarian approach and my insistence on non-market driven aesthetics, I believe I offer a novel vision of how demented pure R&D is while being a proponent of it. It may not be a popular stance for someone like myself who considers himself a bit of an activist, but you can see that the lab has taught me to appreciate the good as well as the bad that emanates from exploration of the unknown.

There is a moral limit that has been suggested. That is not to disrupt the hereditary cascade of Homo Sapiens. In other words, try not to fuck with your great grand children's genes today. If you genetically alter your testicles or ovaries then all consecutive generations that emanate from your eggs or seeds will carry your personal alteration. But who is to tell you what to do or not do with your own personal gonads? The Engineering the Human Genome is one of the big debates worth watching at the United Nations. Will this be labeled as a crime against humanity or as a great advance in medical science/social planning? Can we resist the temptation to botch-design our next evolutionary phases.

With the annotations ot the completed Human Genome coming down the pipeline, we are witnessing a translation between the world of biology and the digital world and back again. The scanning of specific alleles into one of the many DataBanks (i.e. GDB, GSequenceDB, GENBank, EMBL, DDBJ) is creating an on-line source for the codes/semiotic systems that will make Post-HomoSapiens/Cyborgs/Clones (our replacement parts). This is a linguistic project akin to magik because of its ability to create life, both generic and novel from code/spells/words/programs. Literal translation of the Human Genome to a digital format involves the forcing of a metaphor of legibile, semiotic translation of the flesh. New paranoia results (as if we didn't have enough fear of the flesh. What are creative visions (science fictions) of the outcome of these types of experiments, past and present? How do we attempt to proceed as ordinary citizens? Should we expect an escalation of angst and alienation as the concrete modern urban landscape (trouble enough) becomes a BioPsychic (spellChecked biopsy chic) FleshScape of heterogenetic FreeRange obscurity?

Biography

Adam Zaretsky has been a Research Affiliate in the Laboratory for Industrial Microbiology and Fermentation, Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the past two years. With an M.F.A. in Art and Technology from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Adam is an MASTER of art. He also does independent sexwork for fun and profit. Adam Zaretsky has studied parasitology in conjunction with glossolalia at the University of Pataphysics in Salzburg, Austria. Other intrepid rants include "Latex Fetishware and the Binomial: Math Parasites in the World of Rubber Fashion," as well as the soon to be released ode to Galen "Orifice Theory, A Compendium." In 2000 Zaretsky met with Saddam Hussein at a cultural summit in Geneva, Switzerland, whereupon Saddam stated: "No-Fly-Zones *are* parasitology."