Summerhall once again collaborates with the Edinburgh International Science Festival on an exhibition co-curated with ASCUS Art and Science on cutting-edge art in science, this year casting a somewhat disturbing eye on the staggering advances in biotech and the use of living cells and organisms for the creation of the replacement body parts of the future.
Synthetica is something of a
mini-retrospective of the past 20-odd years of bio-art, with artistic explorations on the frontiers of science ranging from Oron Catts’ and Ionat Zurr’s Pig Wings to Marta de Menezes’ exploration of man-made genetic alterations.
Pig Wings is one of those constructed phrases that brings up all sorts of associations, from flying pigs to a slightly disturbing BBQ item called “pig wings”, a piggy version of chicken wings, but without the actual wings. The mind boggles.
Created, and in this context the term creation takes on a rather greater weight than with most artworks, by artists Catts, Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary at the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, and the SymbioticA Laboratory at the University of Western Australia in 2000, it is a nightmarish visualisation of the possible and the unthinkable in biotech.
These laboratories are the heartland of bio-engineering, working on projects such as growing skin from stem cells, growing organs for putative transplant. Such work is on the crest of the medical vanguard, but it is, of course, entering very murky territory when it comes to ethics.
If in 2000 this was something of a brave new world, 18 years later it still is.Catts and Zurr have used a method wherein pig skin cells – used in bio-engineering for their genetic proximity to humans – are grown around a synthetic scaffold.
The artists saw in this strand of science an echo of the creation of chimeras, animals that are a hybrid of two or more different animals.
The association with wings has its roots in history. When chimeric creatures were created in the imagination, in literature, in cultural myth, they came with one of two types of wings, the artists note.
Bird wings, largely associated with “good” – angels and Pegasus spring to mind, although you might think of notable exceptions include the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz – and bat-like wings for the bad – devils, dragons and so on.
The artists have co-opted a further set of wings from prehistory, those of the pterosaur, as a different sub-type. All three were then grown in the labs out of living pig cells, creating, in a sense, living wings.
It is, on the face of it, every horror notion you might have about the development of biotech. Amazement at the ease with which these things can be done, and horror at the human love for playing with nature, just because we can; of exploring what we can do, without first thinking whether we should. It also leaves you wondering at the connotations of what this means for individual species and their bodies.
While Pig Wings is the innovative early work, there is new work here, too, created with Tarsh Bates.
Crossing Kingdoms is a work in progress created during a residency at the UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology at the University of Edinburgh which explores the products of
“cross-kingdom” cell fusion in synthetic biology, working, once more, with
semi-living things which here challenge the categorisation of lifeforms.
Summerhall’s other thought-provoking exhibitions include Taiwanese artist Ting Tong Chang’s P’Eng’s Journey to the Southern Darkness, a series of lifeless crows and other birds, mounted on plinths and animated by robotic devices which move the corpses in a naturalistic manner.
Here, too, is a fascinating retrospective on the Portuguese artist de Menezes, whose work looks at man-made genetic alterations and explores the cross-point between natural and artificial. De Menezes has long used CRISPR-CAS9 gene-editing technology, allowing her to work directly with living organisms as a new art medium.
Past works include editing the genes of live butterflies to produce different wing patterns and mapping personalities in MRI scans.
Summerhall will show three works, including her work with her partner Luis Graca, which “immortalised” their partnership by mapping their respective genetic codes, held in perpetuity in adjoining but separate holders. Together, apart, forever.
Synthetica is an exhibition that will provoke many questions, from the ethics, possibilities and aims of
bio-engineering itself, to what extent the artists themselves are complicit in the science they choose to question and explore.
How far should we allow ourselves as a species to “play God”? And where might it lead? As good a chance as any to refine your thinking on the subject.
Synthetica: Edinburgh Science Festival at Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, 0131 560 1580, www.summerhall.co.uk, until 13 May, daily, 11am-6pm, free. Talks include Marta de Menezes in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, today at 4pm (£5)
DON’T MISS
Inghela Ihrman’s larger-than-life work deals
with our anthropomorphic tendencies when
dealing with animals, explores our
relationship with invasive species and how
we interact with nature. Humans being fairly
invasive themselves, this is rich territory for
Ihrman, who opened the show with a live
performance dressed as an otter giving
birth. Elsewhere, a giant hogweed invades
the space and a toad does gymnastics.
Ingela Ihrman: We Thrive; Cooper Gallery,
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and
Design, 13 Perth Road, Dundee, www.
djcad.ac.uk/cooper-gallery, Mon-Fri,
10am-5pm, Sat, 11am-5pm, until 13 April
CRITIC’S CHOICE
Above: Synthetica exhibition opening at
Summerhall
Left: Taiwanese artist Ting Tong Chang’s
P’Eng’s Journey to the Southern Darkness
The winningly named Shonky brings “The
Aesthetics of Awkwardness” to Dundee in a
Hayward Gallery tour guest curated by the
artist John Walter. It’s a fabulous scattergun
of “shonky” art, although the shonkiness is
in the look only. The
gallery itself is divided
into a series of colourful
conceptual spaces, with
a diverse range of artists
grouped together. The
idea, says DCA, is that
this work with its
unpolished aesthetic can
tell us something
important about a
number of things, from
gender to identity, from
notions of beauty to the
body. And it is precisely
because its visual look is
unpolished that it does it
better than other more
dominant visual forms.
The visitor can decide, of
course. Included are prints of Friedensreich
Hundertwasser’s fabulous
Hundertwasserhaus (1983-85) in Vienna,
with its wonky internal spaces and trees
growing from the inside out, and his
designs for Rogner Spa, Blumau (1993-97)
alongside the architects Arakawa and Gins’
inspiring Inflected Arcade House, with its
sloping internal floors and oddly-shaped
rooms. There is Tim Spooner’s performed
sculpture, The Voice of
Nature, which combines
poetry and sculpture in
an installation that
“appears to teeter on the
edge of collapse”;
Benedict Drew’s
deliberately
overstimulating
installation, a cacophony
of sound and vision; and
the experimental music
making of Plastique
Fantastique’s newly
created performance
work.
Other artists include
Walter himself, whose
“The Shonky Bar” greets
visitors as they come in.
Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness,
DCA, 152 Nethergate, Dundee, 01382 432
444, www.dca.org.uk, until 27 May, daily,
10am-6pm, Thursday, until 8pm
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