We are so fucked.
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Both the realities and the possibilities are astonishing. Not to say traumatic. Not to say apocalyptic. The successful mapping of the human genetic code together with other breakthroughs like cloning pretty much mean the end of life as we know it–and ourselves as we know us. Indeed, as “Gene(sis)” strongly suggests, the threshold of transformation has already been crossed. Even if we’re lucky enough to avoid a biological catastrophe triggered by some corn seed experiment gone terribly wrong, we–meaning what are nostalgically referred to as human individuals–can’t be long for this world. You think Hamlet was alienated? We’re well on the way to becoming estranged from ourselves to a degree that he and 40 mad Ophelias couldn’t have imagined. Our genetic material isn’t ours in the way we once thought it to be. Nor is it stable in the way we once thought it to be. It’s subject to unprecedented manipulation on physical, philosophical, social, political, and–of course–economic planes. Hence our fuckedness.
The artists on display in “Gene(sis)” take this information various ways, which in itself is an education. Something in me expects an artist to resist advanced genecraft in the name of individuality, variation, creative imperfection, Cage-ian randomness, or even sanctity. And some do. A five-member performance group called the Critical Art Ensemble has a room of its own where you can sit at computers and explore Web sites (also available at www.critical-art.net) for creepily believable companies like BioCom–a “flesh products and services” concern dedicated to “creating superior labor, one worker at a time”–and GenTerra, which sells such “transgenic solutions” as insecticidal corn in blandly benign, eco-friendly terms. These sites make elegant, dry fun of capitalism’s amoral genius for absorbing everything into its matrix of profit and loss. Still better, though, is CAE’s Society for Reproductive Anachronisms site, which touts old-fashioned sex-for-reproduction as a way to assert the value of “anomalies and the inexplicable” against designer genetics. At once hilarious and disquieting, the Society for Reproductive Anachronisms turns a century of progressive sexual politics on its head. Suddenly Planned Parenthood is a cat’s-paw for eugenic fascism, and intercourse without contraception a revolutionary act.
Kac’s transgenic piece–i.e., Alba–scares the bejesus out of me. Not because of what it portends for our genes (after all, we’re already fucked; at least Kac’s work implies an upside: genetic cosmetology and the advent of the Day-Glo human) but for our empathic well-being. The guy’s willing to breed living things just to be clever. At the risk of seeming less than 21st-century, I have to say that whipping up a freak rabbit as an art-world incitement suggests an advanced lack of reverence for life.
Price: Free
