[-empyre-] AnthropoDecentering and the Hack of the Human Germline
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Last of Four on Designer Baby ethics and aesthetics Looking forward to hearing the wrap up week. The two biopolitical animal studies letters I posted above are meant to contrast the very anthropocentric issues of the FDA GM babies post above them. I don¹t know if elite, DIY or corporate mass produced transhumans count as human, super human, subhuman, post human, nextwave golemic or a-humanist mugwump jismatics but we are all always animal already. I wonder if the ethics of wetlab involvement in gore ethics of the Letter to Alba and the livestock aesthetics of well bred Cloned Animal meat might help mete out the home on the wide range that the diversity collage shuffle\d into this millenium? In any case, you can read into the issues of Human IGM between the blinds¹ of the animal model concepts in the two letters. Adam ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Does Cloned Animal Safety take into account the effect of Aesthetics on the long-term Ecological effects of Food Chain Design?, Eye of the Storm, Arts Catalyst, Tate Museum, London UK, 2009
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Adam Zaretsky Submitted a Response to the United States Food and Drug Administration call for comments on the Use of Edible Products from Animal Clones or their Progeny for Human Food or Animal Feed as follows: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/03n0573/03N-0573-EC370-Attach-1.pdf SubbDocket Number Title: 2003N-0573 - Draft Animal Cloning Risk Assessment; Proposed Risk Management Plan; Draft Guidance for Industry; Availability Summary: Availability of, and request for comment on, Animal Cloning: A Draft Risk Assessment (to evaluate the health risks to animals involved in the process of cloning and to evaluate the food consumption risks that may result from edible products derived from animal clones or their progeny); draft Animal Cloning: Risk Management Plan for Clones and their Progeny; and draft GFI #179: Use of Edible Products from Animal Clones or their Progeny for Human Food or Animal Feed Does Cloned Animal Safety take into account the effect of Aesthetics on the long-term Ecological effects of Food Chain Design? We should not be overly worried about somatic cell nuclear transfer as a Food Science edible technique. The abnormalities that can be expected might be delicious. Our worries stem from the fact that a large percentage of breeders may not have had the Art Historical schooling that most Academic students of Aesthetics might have had. Right now, the only type of taste¹ we can see embedded in cloned livestock is based on ramping up meat production and maybe designing and cloning industrial beings born with zero percent transfat. If we are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on making copies of sires whose profitability is based on 4-H tropes of beauty alone, then we are missing much of what contemporary art can lend to contemporary breeding of gastronomic novelty. How do we decide what is worth engineering for? In particular, Livestock can be designed along a wide variety of Aesthetic gene expressions. Considering the range of gene expressions possible in a collage of multiple genomic palletes, economic efficiency is neither a simple concept nor our only deciding force. Beyond public acceptance of the technology, there is also public trend diversity, novelty markets and niche power to be brokered in this global competition for more unusual food. We need to explore the entire range of clonables and widen the variety pool to include gourmet, abject and non-utilitarian breeding projects. Practitioners or Historians of Futurism, Surrealism, Abstraction, Minimalism and other Contemporary art movements may all have their own special cow, pig or chicken clone advisory role to play. Consider what a gifted cubist could bring to the table. What are the cultural aesthetics of our ecological future? The decision to design livestock along a plurality of aesthetic lineages may have an impact on the future of ecology and diversity of our planet. As competitively designed meat factories take up more and more of the terrestrial grazing land, we have come to understand that we live on a planet dominated by humans and their domestic familiars. Designed and cloned livestock are limited editions but they can reproduce independently. The industry animals may be foreign species brought forth from technological sites but are they beautiful enough for us to want to live with them for generations to come. Sometimes real-time back fat is not enough. There is an economy of aesthetics, which will drive the ecological affect of our engineered future. What can an understanding of the arts bring to livestock design? The history of art may finally come to some use for humanity through agricultural and other replicant applications. The aesthetic hazards of breeding without a proper understanding of Western Culture and our shared artistic heritage must be taken into account.. The arts represent a great asset for livestock design and a great way to insure that the future isn¹t born looking dull, retrograde and a bit too sketchy. Without a firm grasp of Art History, our cloned food may not represent our national and international goals as U.S. food producers and consumers. The admixture of global variety through genetic engineering and the cloning of spectacular hereditary cascades should only be approved through an aesthetic advisory commission made up of artists, art historians and aesthetics specialists. The future of style and the avoidance of our populous eating any aesthetic hazards depends on collaboration between new reproductive biotechnology and the Arts. I hope these issues will be taken into account as we sculpt new life from the media of biotechnology. Adam Zaretsky Link: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/03n0573/03N-0573-EC370-Attach-1.pdf ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Animal Interlude, Letter to Alba Guestbook, 2001
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Eduardo As you know... I support you and Alba. May you find togetherness!(Pending FDA/EPA approval.) I have no problem with the techniques of transgenes being used for art production purposes. I do have an objection to the concept of this being a Harmless Art. Why pretend that? The inserted gene is claimed to be harmless to Alba as an organism. This is an industry claim that I seriously doubt. But, if the art of GFP Bunny is not Alba in Herself but instead 'comprises her creation' including the techniques of Insertational Mutagenesis and you still want to claim that 'no harm was done' then lets take a closer look at the Protocols for a Transgenic Rabbit· They call for hormone treatments both for hyper-ovulation of the egg supplying (donor) rabbit -- mom(1) and hormone treatments for the psuedo-pregnant state of the surrogate 'uterus' donor -- mom(2) and surgery on both sides to collect the fertilized embryos from the fallopian tubes of mom(1) rabbit and to implant the GFP positive embryos into the surrogate uterus of the mom(2) rabbit. This says nothing of the throwing away of the biohazardous leftover¹ embryos that didn't take the transgene properly. As a part of the process, We also have to take into account the unnamed or numbered Brothers and Sisters of Alba who were possibly still born or born with abnormalities due to the viral infection vectors, cytoplasmic bacterial infection, bad laparascopic technique, or other natural causes. How many embryos were implanted? From which rabbit? Into which rabbit? How many lived? How many were tossed? Where are Alba's moms? Could you have done this procedure, proudly, with your own hands? Let me be clear. I remind you that I support your actions, morally and artistically. I believe that Transgenic Art, both the products and the processes, are valid as an art forms a nd as much needed commentaries on an industry of post/species-boundarybreeding technology. Unnecessary surgery, Aesthetic breeding, Even embryonic gene-play should and has be done by curious artists wielding their own scalpels. But it does us all an injustice to white wash (or green glowwash) a bloody and meaty process. No art that uses the knife (even a knife for hire) should claim that it is harmless. That is a grotesque affront. Could you to be a little more transparent or forthcoming When you review the modern breeding procedures That went into the formation of Alba? They surely did cause some harm. Signing out until next time, A difficult fan, Adam Zaretsky Research Affiliate, MFA Arnold Demain Fermentation and Industrial Microbiology Laboratory Department of Biology Massachusetts Institute of Technology 68-223 Cambridge MA 02139 PS: I hope the next trangenic mammalian art piece is better documented. I mean the glowing birth of a GFP Mammal will be a gorgeous event to capture on Digital Video! Woodstock, NY USA - Tuesday, July 17, 2001 at 11:02:46 (PDT) http://www.ekac.org/bunnybook.2001.html ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Redistributing the material world¹s diverse accents
--empyre- soft-skinned space--This is a response to Chris Robbins:
I am answering a request for more definitive notion of art goals.¹ Beyond
what I had said about bioart offering a reading of science and art in the
difficult land of luxurious, useless, process based, conceptual, secular
catechism. This former listing of art goals¹ is naïve modernism
described. I think we are still there in the arts and the sciences,
perpetuating the myth of the Avant Garde or as Laibach and NSK calls it: the
Retro Garde.
http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/archive/258-synthesis-retro-avant-garde-
or-mapping-post-socialism-in-ex-yugoslavia-
http://www.reanimator.8m.com/NSK/zizek.html
Is the goal Tactical bioMedia?
The showcasing or making public of techniques for scientific control over
organismic development has a tactical design. This is a more popular way of
explaining why we do public labs. To bring a hands-on experience to the
untrained crowd-sources demystification and takes relational knowledge to
the sites of contention. It sounds benevolent.
Accused of lowering the bar on a slippery slope.
The other half of Chris¹ question asks for delineation of what I mean by
cruel and unusual arts. Examples:
Tissue Culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfOVEf7tVm0
Synthetic Biology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_2uNKGxlzw
Embryology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mve5b8RW6_8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBKgimtgWuM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgZ6o8FIeiE
Mutant Environmental testing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g1XIpbI_rk
Human Germline Alteration
http://itp.nyu.edu/classes/germline-spring2013/
http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=7002
Firstly, do these Bioart exposures merely normalize our novel ways of toying
with life? Wet-lab bioart has recently been read as a form of DIY Fukushima.
(Loose quote from a rescent public debate about a GMO permit filed with the
Ministry in the Hague to exhibit modified organisms (Solar Zeebrafish and
Bipolar Flower) in the Errorarium at the Ja Natuurlijk exhibition with
representatives: Rob Zwijnenberg, Per Staugaard, Lucas Evers De Waag,,
Herman Bekken Greenpeace, Dirk de Jong Ministery of Economic Affairs and
Miep Bos Gentechvrij {GMO Free EU}).
http://www.biosolarcells.nl/onderzoek/maatschappelijke-aspecten/artist-in-la
b-making-a-field-of-interpretation-for-biosolar-cells.html
It is keen to ask, is citizen science merely a practice of assuaging the
public¹s reactive disgust to new life science? This would be advertising,
the use of fine¹ art as propaganda for the biotechnical bubble we fund.
Actually, many DIY-BIO centres have no problem with the idea that these
hands-on labs would be staged to promote acceptance of the inherent safety
and casual usury that research entails. In fact, often being science led,
they fear the good name of science being help in dissonant hands.
http://genspace.org/event/20131007/1800/Biohacker%20Boot%20Camp
Lust for life
So art can pose prettily for public relations propping up science in a
redundant campaign and art can also chide the public for not being more
active in contestational debate:
http://www.critical-art.net/MolecularInvasion.html
If we uncover the root desire to inflict change, to breed or grow
imagination in lineage form, this is the culturing of lust, the incubating
of desire. Want is inbred and an excess of greed is more than likely a
genetic aberration (potentially curable with gene therapy), but lust for
life just is. What kind of transcendence leaves it¹s chthonic mark in the
brains and germcells of the ones it has come to know? What is life without
lust? Biotech is muddy parasitism.
³The urge to scope and poke, force evolution and morphologically sculpt is a
bridge that joins the Arts and the Sciences. But, I will say this once
because it is quite clear and concise, I think this process is cruel.
Physical Manipulation DevBio Arts as a way towards knowing or sculpting
Development is non-intuitive, intriguing, curious and lovely but there is no
doubt that the process is meddlesome, violent, surgical and often
gratuitously so.²
AZ from THE MUTAGENIC ARTS
magazine.ciac.ca/archives/no_23/en/dossier.htm
More on lust in Bioart:
Viva Vivo! Living Art Is Dead
http://www.emutagen.com/downloads/leonardoZaretsky.pdf
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] First Postings
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Thanks Adam N. for having a mind meld on these topics. Good crew! Off the top, Bioart is living-materials-first in my addled brain. No offense to the object oriented animism of listmania but tinkers and tailors of life feel the experience differently than illustrators. The use of biomedia for aesthetic projection is the ethico-political stake we wield. The blood on the hands is part of the sacrificial rite, neh? That being sort of put out there bare, I am more interested in the debate being started in terms of the potentials for positive declension in the moulding of populations. I have to say that optimism in biopolitics, even in terms of techno-breeding for novel feelings, is not a total ruse. A trajectory from Charles Fourier, to Willhelm Reich, to Buckmister Fuller, not to mention the Bronx cheer of Charles Fort, trace the potential for a river of amorous flows. But can we really limit the emphasis on the work of the negative in Foulcault to that of a gore hound, netcasting for yet another Gilles de Rais? We have to remember that philosophy is caught up in the industrial confessionary. We may be parrahesiac cheerleaders, spreading liturgy for liturgy¹s sake, but the toying with fascism is just an armchair away from the radiation's leak. Mayr's migrating populations shower us with difference, but population genetics is being marketed as a post race identity politics for those in need of a new origin story from which to promulgate neo-superiorities (see http://www.ancestry.com/). In terms of affirming affirmation, to distort et echo Cary, I can only find it through that deep ecospheric indiscriminacy that Rob mentioned. Is the work of the positive to posit a function of the organism, orgasmically in optimismÉ in every direction? I hope so. Life is uncontained, oozing revelry and consuming lewdness. A snail-like acting is wet and slap-happy and on itÕs way. This is the question of affirmation. Can we be all accepting. This is a more systemic question, which should be looked at a variety of magnifications: The Panspermic Cosmos, The 'Gaia at Werk' Planetary Organism, Populations/Variations/Migrations/Meshing, The Crust Operas of Vitality (Spartan/Hedonism of Being inCorporate), The Organs without a Body (BatailleÕs Big Toe), The Selfish life of Cells, Subcellular Congeniality (hanging out on the sofas of the Endoplasmic Reticulum, alternative conformating). ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
