“We All Live Under the Umbrella of the Genetic Revolution.”

The Art and Theory of Suzanne Anker

Masterarbeit

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

Master of Arts (MA)

an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von

Beáta FENYVESI

am Institut für Kunstgeschichte

Begutachterin: Univ.Prof. Dr. Phil. Sabine Flach

Graz, März 2020

Acknowledgements

This paper could not have been made without the help and contribution of many people. First of all, I thank my friends for the endless talks and beers that made my years of studying joyful.

I would also like to thank my mother, Edit, for her constant support from the beginning – be it financial, spiritual, or providing me a place to rest in the holidays.

Many thanks go to my boyfriend, Siavash, who not only proofread my English papers and conference speeches, but has always been there for me, whether I needed an “open ear” or a good advice.

I owe a lot of thanks to my professors and to the University of Graz, which granted me a scholarship to New York for field research, and to Ms. Ursula Winkler for her consultations about the application and financial management of the scholarship. Even more thanks to Dr. Sabine Flach who supported me with it, all along my thesis. And last, but not least, to Dr. Suzanne Anker herself who showed me around in her Bio Art Lab and was generous with her time, allowing me to interview her, and for being there for any questions or help I needed during writing. I had many amazing moments with her works and books which are an absolute visual adventure, too. I have learned an incredible amount from all of you.

Thank you all.

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Statutory declaration

I hereby formally declare that I have written the submitted paper independently. I did not use any outside support except for the quoted literature and other sources mentioned in the paper. I clearly marked and separately listed all of the literature and all of the other sources which I employed when producing this academic work, either literally or in content.

This thesis is in form and content the same as the electronic handed-in version.

Graz, September 2020 ______Beáta Fenyvesi

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Table of Contents

Glossary ...... 5

1. Introduction ...... 8 1.1. Literature Overview ...... 10 1.1.1. Selected Publications ...... 10

2. Relations between Art and Science ...... 13 2.1. What is Bio Art? ...... 13 2.1.1. History ...... 15 2.1.2. Fields ...... 20 2.1.3. Employed Techniques ...... 24 2.2. Biology as Key to the Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Aesthetics ..... 28 2.2.1. The Scientific Image ...... 32 2.3. The Significance of Suzanne Anker in the Bio Art Field ...... 39 2.3.1. Organic and Inorganic Materials ...... 42 2.3.2. Natural, Artificial, and their Fusion ...... 47 2.3.3. Art History References...... 51

3. Selected Artworks ...... 58 3.1. Territories of the Human Body ...... 58 3.1.1. The Brain ...... 58 3.1.1.1. Biota ...... 59 3.1.1.2. MRI Butterfly/Butterfly in the Brain...... 60 3.1.1.3. Exhibition - Butterfly in the Brain ...... 62 3.1.2. The Womb ...... 64 3.1.2.1. Material Power ...... 64 3.1.2.2. Origins and Futures ...... 66 3.1.2.3. Exhibition - Human Nature ...... 68 3

3.1.3. Chromosomes ...... 68 3.1.3.1. Zoosemiotics ...... 70 3.1.3.2. Exhibition - Devices of Wonder ...... 70 3.2. Territories of Living Space ...... 72 3.2.1. Water ...... 72 3.2.1.1. Genetic Seed Bank ...... 73 3.2.1.2. Exhibition - Genetic Seed Bank ...... 75 3.2.2. Outer Space ...... 76 3.2.2.1 Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind ...... 77 3.2.2.2. Exhibition - While Darkness Sleeps ...... 78 3.2.2.3. Astroculture (Shelf Life/Eternal Return) ...... 79 3.2.3. Micro-landscapes ...... 80 3.2.3.1. Vanitas (in a Petri dish) ...... 81 3.2.3.2. Remote Sensing ...... 83

4. The SVA Bio Art Lab ...... 85

5. In Conversation with Suzanne Anker ...... 91

6. Conclusion ...... 98

Bibliography ...... 100

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Glossary

anthropocentrism is the philosophical viewpoint arguing that human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world.1

biobank is a “biological bank” that collects biological species of the same kind. The function of a biobank is to “regenerate” or “strengthen” these species.2

bioethics is the study of ethical behavior in dealing with nature and living organisms, primarily focusing on interventions and experiments on “before-life”.

biofact is short for biological artefact. An item of biological information of dead material of a once-living organism. Term coined by Nicole Karafyllis.

bioprinting is a printing method similar to conventional 3D printing, using living cell suspension instead of a thermoplastic or a resin. The technology uses bioink and is widely applicable in the fields of medicine and bioengineering.

biotech art is the artform of technologically-manipulated live components, or works involving traditional breeding, cloning, genetic engineering, tissue culture and/or other interventions.3

biotechnology is the use of living cells or microorganisms in industry and technology. In recent years it especially refers to the use of genetically-modified cells and microorganisms, often fused with the fields of bio-engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, and more.

1 Encyclopedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Ovid,” accessed February 15, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/anthropocentrism. 2 Nicole C. Karafyllis, “Die Samenbank als Paradigma einer Theorie der modernen Lebendsammlung. Über das Sammeln von Biofakten und ihre Liminalitäten,“ in Theorien der Lebendsammlung: Pflanzen, Mikroben und Tiere als Biofakte in Genbanken, ed. Nicole C. Karafyllis (Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Karl Alber, 2018), 41. 3 George Gessert, The Green Light: Towards an Art of Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 191. 5

engram is a unit of cognitive information that stores memories as biophysical or biochemical changes in the brain (and other neural tissue).

genetic algorithm is a class of algorithms that reflects on the process of natural selection, mutation, and crossover.

genetic engineering is a biotechnological process of directly manipulating and changing the genetic material of an organism and combining it with other organisms.

genetic art is an artform that involves or represents DNA, chromosomes, or evolutionary events, simulation of genetic processes, and live art in which genetics or evolutionary processes figure prominently.4

in vitro fertilization is the process of fertilization of an ovum outside the mother’s body, usually implanted back in the mother’s womb or in that of a surrogate mother.

karyotype is the chromosomal composition (number, size, and shape of the chromosomes) of a species or cell. The photographical representation of the karyotype is the karyogram.

mycology is the study of mushrooms and fungi.

notation is a structure of symbol, abbreviated expressions or graphics that together create a system with deliberate meaning within a field of study. In science and art, notation refers to technical facts by convention, often marked with lines or spots.

rapid prototyping is an umbrella term for techniques that are mad for rapidly fabricate a part, model or assembly using 3D computer aided design. The construction is usually made with 3D printing.

4 Gessert, Green Light, 191. 6

Rorschach-test is a psychological test invented by Hermann Rorschach that uses inkblots of different shapes in order to study a person’s emotional functioning and personality characteristics. synthetic biology creates a synthesis of new organisms (such as transgenic organisms) by using targeted modification of isolated genes in order to create artificial biological systems for research and engineering. tissue engineering is the method of improving or replacing biological tissues by combining cells, engineering and suitable biochemical factors. transgenic art is an art form that deals with the modification of living organisms through genetic engineering in order to create new unique beings.

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1. Introduction

This paper explores Bio Art and one of its pioneers, Suzanne Anker. As a theorist and visual artist, she raises questions about cultural issues in the context of biology and biotechnology. Anker works on a wide range of topics, from genetic engineering to the neurosciences and space exploration, which she carries out using a broad variety of materials. Hence, this thesis investigates the interpretation and reinterpretation of organic and inorganic materials, the phenomenon of natural and artificial in her works, and how their role has changed in the light of technoscience. It entails several questions, such as: what kind of intersection exists between today’s biological sciences and art, and how does Suzanne Anker’s work contribute to Bio Art through the materials she uses? Which emerging issues is she addressing? Furthermore, what is her role – or what is the artist´s role – in shaping these phenomena?5

The first part of this thesis serves as an introduction to the relations between art and science. The first subchapter introduces Bio Art. Since its definition is regularly disputed, I have tried to avoid delving into controversial point of views – apart from those of Suzanne Anker – but rather intend to demonstrate its content. The section History (2.2.) is about the chronological overview of the most important steps evolving in Bio Art, while Fields (2.3.) and Techniques Employed (2.4.) focus on its diverse artistic approaches. Through the interaction of biological sciences – their visual language and character – with art, a new kind of image, a “scientific image”, has come into being. As the last subchapter in the first part (Art History References), I would like to prove a point – and to answer partly one of the questions of the thesis: Suzanne Anker’s significance. I will do so by introducing her achievements so far in the field of Bio Art, also exploring the

5 Biosciences were the main topic of the Festival Ars Electronica in 1999, documented in the Festival Catalog, LifeScience. In the internet symposium, the participants attempted to determine the role of the artist in the transmission of the field’s issues, such as eugenics, transgenic processes, and the possibility that “the genetic engineer will involuntarily become the model of a new type of artist,” (Birgit Richard, “I- Biology and Fake Life Construction,” in LifeScience: Ars Electronica 99, ed. Gerfried Stocker [Vienna; New York: Springer, 1999], 34.) They also discussed the contingent danger of integrating genetics into artworks and getting access5 to the public. George Gessert, Dorothy Nelkin, and Eduardo Kac each contributed one article about DNA and genetics. 8

political, ethical, and cultural meaning of the materials and techniques she uses. The chapter Natural, Artificial, and their Fusion (2.6.2.) presents the cultural consequences of altering life; important venues for this are medical museums, which serve as public spaces of scientific knowledge. They function as representatives of issues about how we think of the living and the dead, as well as many more questions that Anker addresses in her works. Art History References (2.6.3.) highlights the connection to art history, as the visual part of in the artist´s artwork.

The second chapter (Selected Artworks) is dedicated to Suzanne Anker’s art. I chose pieces in order to represent different techniques and materials, from inkblots superimposed on brain scans, living plants and dead animals in petri dishes, little ceramic sculptures completed with silver figurines, each reflecting on a different discipline in the biosciences, transmitting different messages. Since the artist’s focus is centered on life itself, the pieces are categorized by different areas of the human body and of living space. Due to the variety of Anker’s works and the topics to be analyzed from several perspectives, some works appear more than once in this thesis. Their role in the emergence of the scientific image, their historical importance, and much more, are analyzed in the first part. The second half describes the works as in as much detail as possible, and connects them to the issues that Anker addresses.

Moreover, Bio Art laboratories are immensely important and intriguing platforms that demonstrate how science can be integrated in the arts. A research scholarship to New York supported by the University of Graz made it possible for me to visit the Bio Art Lab at the School of Visual Arts and gather first-hand experience of it. Making full use of this opportunity, I have included a chapter about the Laboratory, and another containing an exclusive interview with Suzanne Anker. The Conclusion (6.) presents an overview of the information gathered in this thesis, and opens up to the present and future of Bio Art.

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1.1. Literature Overview

The integration of biosciences into art first received attention in the 1980s as more and more artists got access to molecular biology laboratories.6 Literature on Bio Art, mainly focused on the connection between nature and genetic engineering, started to be published from the beginning of the 1990s. In that decade, theorists and artists were concerned about the increasing destruction of nature and its cybernetic reinterpretation. From the 2000s, biotechnology entered art, with the increasing number of topics and issues affecting today’s society. Also, at that time, the first genetically modified organisms, no longer confined to laboratories, were increasingly accessible and in contact with the public.

Since Suzanne Anker is an active representative of the appearance of Bio Art from the beginning, the following books and journals list a few, selected publications of where her artwork appeared, or which she (co-)authored.7

1.1.1. Selected Publications

In 1992, Peggy Cypher’s article entitled The Consumption of Paradise was published in the 52nd volume of the Art Journal. This paper draws attention to the decreasing natural sources and how the concept of nature, and nature in the context of culture, took on new meaning through the works of different artists. For example, Robert Smithson, a land artist, recycled grounds that had been discarded by industries; Jackie Brookner’s Made of Earth addresses the human physical dependence on Earth’s laws such as gravity by using dirt, wax, and cotton. Gene Pool (1991), created by Suzanne Anker, deals with the complexity of genetics in our body and as a paradox to that, its abstract

6 Ingeborg Reichle, Art in the Age of Technoscience: Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art (Vienna: Springer, 2009), 4. 7 Anker has published more than 50 books and articles. A complete introduction to her theoretical works in one subchapter, therefore, is not possible. I have mainly focused on those with which I have engaged most. 10

simplicity when portraying it. Being one of the first examples on genetics, Gene Pool created a path towards Bio Art.

The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (2004), co-authored by Suzanne Anker and the sociologist Dorothy Nelkin, introduces genetics being transformed to the metaphoric level through visual art, with special regard to the esthetics of molecular art. The appearance of the new grotesque8 takes as its origin the so-called chimera, as it appears in the history of art, and has been indicated as the forerunner of today’s genetic art. Focusing on what it means to be human in the present century, and what it means to have or not have an identity, the book introduces the most notable modern and contemporary artists working on genetics.

In her main works Kunst aus dem Labor: zum Verhältnis von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter der Technoscience (2005) and Art in the Age of Technoscience: Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art (2009), the media theoretician Ingeborg Reichle investigates the relationship between art and the diverse fields of biotechnology, describing and giving numerous examples on transgenic art, artificial life, and robotics. She places particular importance on Suzanne Anker’s works Sugar Daddy: The Genetics of Oedipus (1992), Zoosemiotics (1993), CodeX: Genome (2000), and Golden Boy (2003). Reichle discusses Anker as one of the main representatives of the visualization of genetics as a highlight of perception, “Mithilfe einer Ikonographie naturwissenschaftlicher Bilder versuchen Künstler gegenwärtig, die kulturellen Codes zu entschlüssel [...]” (“using the iconography of scientific images in order to decode the cultural code”).9

8 In his book The Green Light, George Gessert points out the importance of Anker’s theoretical contribution to genetics, stating: “An important development in representational work was what Suzanne Anker has called ‘the new grotesque’, freakish or malformed human figures [...].” (George Gessert, The Green Light: Towards an Art of Evolution [Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010], 117.) 9 Ingeborg Reichle, Kunst aus dem Labor: zum Verhältnis von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter der Technoscience. (Vienna: Springer Verlag, 2005), 30.

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The Glass Veil: Seven Adventures in Wonderland (2005) was born from the collaboration between art historian Sabine Flach and Suzanne Anker. It focuses on seven dialogues between them, each centered around an artwork or two with parallel features. This book goes into a detailed description of The Glass Veil, The Butterfly in the Brain/Rorschach, Origins and Futures/Stem Cells, Laboratory Life/Genetic Seed Bank, Biota/Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind, Astroculture (Shelf Life), and Vanitas (in a Petri Dish)/Remote Sensing. It explores the message behind them, the meanings and purposes of their applied materials. The book starts with two essays written by the two authors and ends with an appendix where the reader can find Anker’s and Flach’s extended interest and philosophy of art and life.

A conversation between Suzanne Anker and Sarah Franklin, a scholar of feminist science studies, was published in Interspecies (issue 106) of the academic journal Social Text. Specimens and Spectacles: Reframing Fetal Remains first discusses the brief history of fetal specimens and talks about Golden Boy, The Glass Veil, and Origins and Futures as Anker’s relevant artworks for the topic. The interview highlights the female body and the cultural approach towards it and discusses the phenomenon of surrogacy, confronting the feeling of uneasiness generated by fetal collections in medical museums.

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2. Relations between Art and Science

Before the eighteenth century, there was no clear boundary between empirical sciences and visual art. Art, in the form of illustrations, were part of the visual documentation of scientific explanations; artists and natural philosophers often collaborated throughout the centuries, observing and creating different meanings of nature. A century later, science started to be divided into the fields of biology, chemistry, and physics. In art, amongst other developments, photography was invented, and thus art’s relationship with science changed to a more indirect level. Nowadays, as an update to the eighteenth-century state of collaboration between artists and natural philosophers, contemporary artists have started to visit scientific laboratories with the so-called Artist- in-Labs programs and the two fields have begun to work together again.

2.1. What is Bio Art?

Bio Art is one of the youngest crossover disciplines that came out of this cooperation. Genetic art, which includes transgenic art and biotech art, are all in the conglomeration of Bio Art. It also involves anthropological and philosophical studies, delves into the history of medicine, and relates to the history of art. Encompassing all these territories, Bio Art is a widely interdisciplinary practice.10 Its main goal is to show the forms of altering organic life forms, from plants to human embryos, and to show its consequences in the political, economic, and social spheres.

Bio Art draws attention to the issues of the consumer society, amongst others the moral and practical danger of the natural environment, which consist less and less of organic elements and products. It warns of the political and economic consequences of the transformation of organic components of food or our environment. This message is

10 Sabine Flach and Suzanne Anker, The Glass Veil: Seven Adventures in Wonderland (Bern; Vienna: Peter Lang, 2015), 192. 13

effectively supported by the newest media, such as photography, installations, but also relational esthetics. Bio Art goes beyond these as well, using them as their typical media, to make the field an extension of photography and video art. As an artistic form, Bio Art has secured its place in most genres, such as performance art, new media installations and movie-making, as well as painting and sculpture. The topic also opened the door to the free usage of laboratory materials and tools: 3D printers and computers, microscopes, but also bodily fluids, tissues, as well as living or dead plants, animals, and microorganisms are fused together in order to represent the artificial and man-made in contrast to the natural world.

Models, metaphors and visualizations are integral and permanent elements of science; however, Bio Art does not intend to be a pure depiction of the results of natural sciences.11 Scientific means are technologically- and economically-structured procedures that also influence their purposes and methods. Bio Art “comes from the laboratory”; nevertheless, the production of an artwork is independent from scientific circumstances, and it also does not mean to place the – sometimes failed – experiments of science at the center of its interest. Moreover, the focus of Bio Artists does not lie on emphasizing subjectivity, it is rather an alloying of the analytical practices with fantasy, or, divided into the smallest sections, the molecular with its physical expression.12 All in all, Bio Art does not intend to depict the method of a scientific investigation but deals with the moral statement of its outcome with the finest visual representation.13

Biology intersected with art also raises countless questions, critiques, and visions. They address cultural and esthetic questions, such as: on what factors is Bio Art to be evaluated? Can we judge the quality of Bio Art based on the difficulty of the biological process(es) employed? In which category do Bio Artists fall: visual artists or amateur

11 Reichle,Technoscience, 36. 12 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 195. 13 Nicole C. Karafyllis, “ ‘Bioart’? Artefakte und Biofakte zwischen Künstlichkeit, Kunst und Technologie“, in Lebensformen - Leben formen: Ethik und synthetische Biologie, ed. Johannes Achatz (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2014), 74. 14

scientists? What is the difference between Bio Art and Bio Design?14 London-based visual artist Gina Czarnecki created an installation called Silvers Alter (2002) in order to question whether we are prepared for all the choices that biotechnology has made possible.15 With the rise of computer sciences, the relationship and contributions between biotechnology and computer technology have also emerged. In a speech at Boston University, Freeman Dyson shares his “heresy”16 about the domestication of biotechnology, similar to computer games. In this case, biotechnology would serve creative purposes as well.

Another element to be considered is the intention involved in the work of both artists and scientists. The aim of the latter group’s research is to establish scientific facts from the information they examine. Artists take scientific facts in order to create new forms of life. The transgenic work of artists is intended to challenge our concepts of the living world versus the nonliving.17

In the 1980s, artists who studied and created artworks in genetics or robotics were inspired by discovering something new, creating their own world. However, they were very different from each other in their technique, style, materials used, or even in their ideology. The chapters below contain examples from these artists, their investigations of topics and matters. First, however, the history of Bio Art follows.

2.1.1. History

Although very little was incorporated into art practice, ideas about genetics were alive and popular in the United States. It was before the Second World War, and the public

14 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 192. 15 Stephen Wilson, Art + Science Now (London; New York: Thames & Hudson, 2010), 21. 16 Freeman Dyson, “Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society,” lecture held in November, 2005 at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Boston University, MA, video, 31:06, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFLjUt2leM&t=2068s. 17 Dorothy Nelkin and Suzanne Anker, The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2004), 95. 15

considered it an extremely important factor in human affairs, hence, they thought that everybody has the right to have access to it, including artists. After the war, the field genetics was restricted, denying access to lay people and becoming the exclusive property of experts in science, medicine, agriculture, and business.18

The first artist who identified living organisms as fine art19 and dealt with the concept was the photographer, painter, and curator Edward Steichen (1879-1973). Led by the inspiration and the theory of Charles Darwin’s The origin of species,20 from the 1920s, Steichen hybridized plants of different breeds, such as the sunflower and the poppy. From differently hybridized delphiniums, he planted between 50,000 and 100,000 of these flowers in his garden. He presented the results at the MoMA in New York City in 1936. (fig. 1) The importance of the exhibition was to be found in the fact that America at that time was struggling with the definition of modern art, including the acceptance of involving unconventional materials in it, such as living organisms. Steichen’s act of declaring his plants to be artwork was important not only for showing a new kind of plant breeding, but also opening up possibilities for artists, critics, and the audience to expand their idea of art materials and topics. After the exhibition, the history and nexus of art and nature, as well as art and genetics, was interrupted for a short time, until the outbreak of the Second World War.

In 1939, Sacheverell Sitwell’s Old Fashioned Flowers was released. This book was about plants considered as fine art: Sitwell sees highly bred plants as representation of a “direct and conscious attack upon Nature.”21

Between about 1945 and 1960, genetics mainly appeared in science fiction as a fantasy. Apart from a few examples, it got very little attention in the circle of visual arts. One of these exceptions was the 1946 exhibition entitled The New Landscape (in Art and

18 Gessert, History of Art, 230. 19 Well before the end of the nineteenth century, however, several influential writers had claimed garden plants as art. Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s most famous proponent, argued that ornamental plants were art, though not fine art. Gessert, Green light, 47.) 20 According to Darwin, domesticated organisms with significant esthetic appeal might be fine art. 21 Gessert, History of Art, 230. 16

Science) (fig. 2) carried out by György Kepes, a visual design professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He believed that art (especially new media disciplines such as film, photography, and television) and science have a common visual language and hoped for closer interaction between the two fields; this, however, did not progress until the 1980s.22

In 1965 the term genetic engineering was coined.23 At that time, artists were only rarely engaged with genetics. An outstanding counterexample of it was Hans Haacke, who produced works using living grass and different animals between 1967 and 1972.24 In Chicken Hatching, he installed small incubators and placed fertilized chicken eggs inside them, which he kept warm with lamps until they hatched. (fig. 3)

Although the first exhibitions involving living organisms were held at the beginning of the 1990s, for their work The Lagoon Cycle, (1972) Helen and Norman Harrison were on a quest for edible organisms that could survive in art galleries. The organisms became part of a personal-esthetical and environmentally-concerned project that also included panels and maps, texts, and images. (fig. 4) 25

The direct use of Steichen’s idea can be seen in the experiments of George Gessert, who hybridized plants (amongst others, irises and streptocarpuses) as an extension of painting from 1985.26 By the end of the 1980s, genetics again became a topic for artists, who this time explored it much more extensively than for example Steichen had before the Second World War. Also, the wider public picked up the idea that mutual contributions between science and art could be beneficial. Today, collaborations have become even stronger and are regularly funded by universities or companies: amongst

22 Reichle, Technoscience, 2-3. 23 Gessert, Green Light, 112. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 113. 26 Interestingly, the first time Gessert heard about Steichen’s exhibition was in 1989, in the essay written by Alan Lacy. As he notes, he doubts that any artists started out knowing about the exhibition. 17

others, the European Union and the American Academy of Sciences support collaborative projects. 27

A new art form, called Bio Art, soon entered in open venues, like the Lincoln Center in New York, where one of the first shows dedicated to art and genetics was held. It was called Gene Culture: Molecular Metaphor in Visual Art (1994), curated by Suzanne Anker.

As different publications started to appear on the topic, in his article “Notes on Genetic Art” (1993), Gessert examines the problems of exhibiting genetic art, giving various examples of genetic artworks, including his own.28 He says, that although a new artform flickered into life, there is no great “breakthrough” in creating something completely new. For him, the “failure” of genetic art is that breeders do not involve genetic engineering or science fiction in their work, while artists do not sufficiently appreciate what breeders have achieved. According to Gessert, “genetic art suffers from too little give-and-take among these various things.”29

Today, the idea of genetics intersected with art is welcomed by the wider public. Artists have continued where they had left off: they present their genetically-involved works in exhibitions. Moreover, one of their innovations is to involve viewers in their work: in art projects or at workshops, non-scientists can get access to genetics. The artist Beatriz da Costa in cooperation with the Critical Art Ensemble created an event where they showed biotechnological research techniques to the participants with which they could create their own transgenic organism (fig. 5). Using human DNA that was extracted from

27 In 2013, the American Academy of Sciences supported research that led to a report on the cooperation between arts and science as an important contribution to society. The report stated, “[c]reativity plays a crucial role in culture, creative activities provide personal, social, and educational benefit, and [creative] industries are increasingly recognized as key drivers of economic development. There are major benefits to be gained from encouraging, supporting, and strategically investing in this domain.” (Wilson, Art + Science, 16.)

28 He reports that genetic engineering was an extremely expensive technology in the 1990s. As a closure, he expresses his concerns about the constant devastation of the ecological system, to which – consciously or unconsciously – genetic art also contributes. 29 George Gessert, “Notes on Genetic Art,” Leonardo 26, no. 3 (1993): 208. 18

blood samples, the aim of the experiment was to introduce the risks of releasing these creatures into the environment and at the same time, increasing literacy about the topic. The viewers could also measure the weight of genetics themselves and could have their own experience about transgenics.30

Figure 1. Steichen’s Delphiniums at the MoMa, 1936 Figure 2. The New Landscape (in Art and Science), 1946, exhibition view

Figure 3. Hans Haacke, Chicken Hatching, 1969

Figure 4. Helen and Newton Harrison, fragment from The Lagoon Cycle, 1972

30 Wilson, Art + Science, 29. 19

Figure 5. Beatriz da Costa and the Critical Art Ensemble, GenTerra, 2001-03

2.1.2. Fields

Since all kinds of lifeforms, be they natural or artificial, serve as inspiration to artists, they latter started to turn their attention to a somewhat distant, but overlapping field of Bio Art. The idea of robotics is an extension of modern sculpture. Norman White’s interactive Helpless Robot (1987-96) is a conceptual, emotional framework that possesses artificial personality (fig. 6). With the participation of the audience, it rotates on a large industrial rotating tray. It has a vocabulary of over 256 phrases which it uses depending on its present situation (which is also influenced by its past) – including negative experiences, such as boredom, frustration, arrogance, and overstimulation.31

Representing artificial life, Pulse from 2016 is a three-dimensional installation of an anatomically-correct heart made of steel created by the volunteer-based Group Flaming Lotus Girls (fig. 7). Like a human heart, it also has four chambers, but instead of blood

31 Norman White, “The Helpless Robot - Artist’s Statement,” n.d., http://www.year01.com/archive/helpless/statement.html. 20

flowing in them, the iron version pumps fire through them at the same rhythm as a beating heart. Furthermore, its metal structure is reminiscent of arteries and veins running across the organ. The name Pulse refers to the aortic arch that keeps “pulsing” towards the sky,32 as well as to pulsating life itself.

While robotics, or works on artificial life, are man-made objects mostly modeled on parts of the human body, or imitating life, and which interact with their environment, computer simulations reflect the natural environment by creating their artificially-living version or even, artificial “evolution”. 33 Karl Sims’s video Primordial Dance from 1991 (fig. 8) is an early example of working with genetic algorithms. It was made with computer software and is based on the idea of natural selection. The work is described as “a virtual laboratory where genetic algorithms create an uninterrupted play of colours [sic] and shapes. This work […] proves the beauty of scientific simulation.”34

In constructing MRI Butterfly (2008), Suzanne Anker also used Maya, a three- dimensional modeling software that makes the inkblot juxtaposed on a brain scan turn into numerical code.35

The above-mentioned fields derived from the increasing development of computer technology. Transgenic art comes from biology, more precisely from genetic engineering. Based on this, Kac first created a luminescent dog by implanting the DNA- sequence of a jellyfish in its DNA. Because the jellyfish has green fluorescent protein (GFP) that is visible in ultraviolet light, the dog emits this green light, too. With the next project GFP Bunny (2000) he took this experiment out of the laboratory into the public. In the installation The Eighth Day (fig. 9), made in 2000-2001, Kac made an ensemble out of transgenic organisms and animals, such as fluorescent plants, amoebas, fish, and mice, placed under a Plexiglas dome. The name of the installation refers to the Old Testament, where the Earth was created in six days, and God rested on the seventh.

32 Flaming Lotus Girls, “Pulse,” accessed October 25, 2019, http://www.flaminglotusgirls-serenity.com. 33 Reichle, Technoscience, 168-175. 34 Stuart Wright, ed., Computers and Art (Portland: Intellect Ltd., 2008), 123. 35 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 100. 21

The eighth day represents the twenty-first century, when humanity creates the world according to its ideas, in its own image.36

Another example for transgenic art is the traversing of the human and animal in the works of Patricia Piccinini. Her hyperrealistic sculpture New Born (2010) depicts a newborn baby with a tiny elephant snout, lying on fur, pointing out the alternative consequences of the alteration of nature, raising bioethical and philosophical questions (fig. 10). 37 It is hybrid also in its technique, using human hair mixed with silicon and other inorganic materials.

Breeding plants counted as a daring step towards the intersection of biology and art in the 1920s and the 1930s. In its modern form, breeding became cloning. But who should decide their features, who says which are the desirable ones and which ones are not? The project OneTrees initiated by the organization OneTrees and artist Natalie Jeremijenko is dedicated to reflection on this question. With the creation of one thousand saplings sharing the same genetic make-up and distributed across different environments by volunteers, they wished to track the outcome of the different impacts these plants would receive in different places. (fig. 11)38

On questions of approaching society, the role of artists, as Suzanne Anker and other artists see it, is to point out the contradiction of scientific facts. With these facts, science is always objective, since once something is discovered, it has universal validity. However, society is influenced by these facts and the reverse is also true: ideas and comprehension set by a certain layer of people marks the way for science, too.39

36 Reichle, Technoscience, 121-130. 37 Anker, Suzanne, ed. Mark W. Scala: Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012), 38-39. Exhibition catalog. 38 Wilson, Art + Science, 20-21. 39 Reichle, Technoscience, 38. 22

Figure 6. Norman White, Helpless Figure 7. Flaming Lotus Girls, Robot, 1987-96 Pulse, 2016

Figure 8. Carl Sims, Primordial Dance, 1991

Figure 9. Eduardo Kac, The Eighth Day, 2000-2001

23

Figure 10. Patricia Piccinini, New Figure 11. Natalie Jeremijenko and Born, 2010 the OneTrees, OneTrees, 1998-1999

2.1.3. Employed Techniques

Suzanne Anker also questions scientific concreteness and abstraction and cultural codes by using everyday materials in her works. In her 1992 installation Sugar Daddy: The Genetics of Oedipus, on a table covered with velvet, she arranged sugar bits that at first sight look like they were chromosomes under microscope. (fig. 12) She plays with human perception – the eye has to get used to the images being made of sugar.40

Artists engaged with genetics started to use photography as their medium in an extended form. This was an important step, because before the 1990s, its usage concerning art and science collaborations was limited to documenting its exhibitions and plant breeding projects.41 Suzanne Anker makes use of photography to trigger emotions and show the ultimate natural beauty of our environment and the human body. Through this beauty, the works prompt us to question our responsibility towards them.

40 Ingeborg Reichle, Kunst aus dem Labor: zum Verhältnis von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter der Technoscience (Vienna: Springer Verlag, 2005), 32. 41 Gessert, Green Light, 117. 24

In Suzanne Anker’s photographic works, the sizes of the pictures have different roles and impacts. In the five inkjet prints of Genetic Seed Bank taken in the MOTE laboratory, no work is bigger than 24x36 cm and as such, they render the true size of the depicted objects. This causes the viewer to approach the prints as close as possible to examine the imperiled corals.

Photographs accompany the majority of Anker’s artwork. Another example is the The Glass Veil (2009), an installation exhibited at the Museum of Medical History of the Charité in Berlin. (fig. 13) Here, seven images mounted on sintra are presented, from the very large to the very tiny. By changing the size of the original image, enlarged photographs make an alternative reading possible, out of the viewer’s comfort zone after getting used to computer-screen photos or images printed in books. In the case of the Glass Veil photos, the view of blown-up human remains causes an intensive kinesthetic experience42 especially after visiting the original objects exhibited in the medical museum.

Using mixed technique, the media artist Jill Scott created an interpretative sculpture called the Somabook (2012). The underpart is sculptured as a slice of a neurotube and nerve cells that sends information to the muscles responsible for moving. Here, these muscles are designed as a “digital book”, made from two touchscreens. When the viewer touches them, the dancer Meret Schlegel introduces metaphors and processes about the neuronal circuits and their somatic reactions with associative metaphoric elements of performance art. (fig. 14) The piece was made in cooperation with the Institute of Molecular Life Sciences of the University of Zurich that studies brain malfunctions in chicken eggs; thus, in one of her dances, Schlegel introduces scientific data of an embryo suffering from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome.43

In Sugarbabe, made in 2014, artist Diemut Strebe, collaborating with Boston-based scientists, used the tissue of Theo van Gogh’s great-great-grandson to rebuild Vincent

42 Sabine Flach and Suzanne Anker, “The Glass Veil”, in Habitus in Habitat: 1: Emotion and Motion, ed. Sabine Flach (Bern; Vienna: Peter Lang, 2010), 142- 147. 43 Jill Scott, “SOMABOOK- Art and Neural Development,” n.d., https://vimeo.com/61559326. 25

Van Gogh’s chopped-off ear with a bioprinter. (fig. 15) In 2014, an important discussion has been pursued in the exhibition of Karlsruhe’s ZKM Center for Art and Media: a debate about the possibility of the recreating a famous, dead artist by combining the deceased person’s DNA with a living relative’s tissue.44

Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990) is an example for new media tools, such as film engaged with mutations. The movie is divided into Kurosawa’s eight dreams, where the seventh dream shows the vision of the consequences of the mankind’s immediate intervention into nature. A traveler (the main character) finds himself on a misty, dark and barren hill where he encounters a demon with horns on his head. The demon explains the traveler that due to a nuclear holocaust, people and flowers turned into mutants. Humans grew one, two, or three horns; dandelions grow to be the size of a human; and roses grow on top of each other, meanwhile no healthy nature is left on the planet. (fig. 16)45

Figure 12. Suzanne Anker, Sugar Daddy: the Genetics of Oedipus, 1992

44 Christina Hamedinger, “Wie Kunst Wissen schafft: Künstlerisches Wissen und kuratorische Inszenierung am Beispiel der 55. Biennale in Venedig und der dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel” (Master’s thesis, University of Graz, 2015), 11-15. 45 Dreams, Blu Ray, directed by Akira Kurosawa (1990; Japan: Warner Bros., 1990). 26

Figure 13. Suzanne Anker, The Glass Veil, 2009

Figure 14. Jill Scott, SOMABOOK, 2012

Figure 15. Diemut Strebe, Sugarbabe, 2014

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Figure 16. Akira Kurosawa, Dreams, 1990

2.2. Biology as Key to the Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Aesthetics

Physical sciences reigned through the twentieth century and influenced the art world, amongst others the artists of Impressionism, Cubism, and Futurism. It slowly gave way to biological sciences, as Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923) discovered X-rays in 1895 and for the first time, the previously invisible areas of the living body became visible. Amongst others, the Czech painter Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957) was interested in the new invention and the idea started to appear in his works which he created from 1906. In his 1923 publication Creation in the Plastic Arts, he wrote about how important it is for contemporary artists to study modern science, especially the x-ray images of bones and tissues.46 The artwork Fantaisie Physiologique from 1923 shows a fantasy study of a human body, completely fluoroscoped bones, veins, and nerves. (fig. 17)

With the appearance of newer technologies that have been invented in the field of biological sciences, molecular biology became one of the most employed and researched sector by the end of the 1930s.

46 Linda D. Henderson, “X Rays and the Quest for Invisible Reality in the Art of Kupka, Duchamp, and the Cubists,” Art Journal 47, no. 4 (December 1988): 328. 28

The role of biology for arts became more and more relevant in the 1950s when molecular biologists James D. Watson and Francis Crick published results showing the double helix structure of DNA.47 Along with this, they discovered that DNA was responsible for passing on the hereditary structures across generations. Thus they claimed to have found “scientific proof” for personality and subjectivity and the transformation of the molecule into the metaphoric level had begun.

One of the earliest examples of artistic representations of the molecule is Salvador Dali’s Butterfly Landscape, (The Great Masturbator in Surrealist Landscape with DNA) (1957- 1958). (fig. 18) Between 1955-1978, Dali was deeply interested in genetics; after reading Watson and Crick’s 1953 article called Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, he stated that DNA “is the real proof of the existence of God.”48 In the painting, the double helix itself is colorful, dream-like and takes up almost half of the picture’s lower part. It is surrounded with similarly colorful butterflies placed in a brown, barren landscape, further emphasizing its vibrant novelty.

While Kupka used the image of X-rays and Dali the double helix in his work, another way of transforming DNA was the integration of semiotics in artworks.49 Semiotics and molecules are similar to each other not only in their form, but also in their content. Their connection has been examined by visual theorists W.J.T. Turner and Rosalind Krauss in order to understand images. In the 1990s, the art historian Norman Bryson and the cultural theorist Mieke Bal suggested semiotics as a neutral, scientific metalanguage.50 In the pieces of the series Codex: Genome, created in 2000, (fig. 19) Suzanne Anker employs animal chromosomes reminiscent of an ancient alphabet, turning them into a comprehensive, universal system of languages. These images are based on karyotype,

47 It was actually a photograph taken by Rosalind Franklin; Watson and Crick used it without her approval. The center of their investigation was based on her “Photograph 51”. 48 Guardiola, Elena and Josep-Eladi Baños, “Dalí and the Double Helix”, Nature 423, no. 917 (2003): 917. 49 The idea was conceived in the 1920s, as Dadaists melded different techniques and materials in their collages. 50 W.J.T.Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 87. 29

the number and visual appearance of the animal’s genetic structure: reading them together, one can identify the animal.

Cryptology is also built upon the relationship between semiotics and molecules. As written in the catalog of the 1999 Ars Electronica: “A new field of science is biosemiotics which interprets communication and characterization procedures that have been performed in living systems. It is […] successful to use a DNA strand as a cryptographic data storage medium.”51

Because in art DNA can be perceived as a semiotic structure that carries individual information, it started to be seen as the molecular metaphor of life.52 The language of the visual representation of life is analogous in both art and science: In biology, a microscopic picture consists of patterns, structures, geometrical forms that work as visual information on the examined objects, and artists use laboratory tools and microscopic image patterns in order to create an artwork.

The structure of an organism is created by nature, its understanding and portrayal is organized by human consciousness. György Kepes draws attention to the importance of image-making devices: since both fields have them, such devices are necessary to transfer ordering elements of experience into the realm of the visible.53 Today, as Suzanne Anker and Dorothy Nelkin state:

Molecular vision has increasingly dominated the assumptions and methods of the biological sciences. Reducing life itself to molecules, it has displaced the visceral references that had once defined the authenticity of the body and the authority of traditional biology as a descriptive science. Despite the complexity of life, this vision implies that we are but a sequence of nucleic acids, a “code script” of information. This transformation of biology from organism to code and/or text parallels developments in art. Artists are adapting images revealed through hightechnology [sic] apparatus, and their pictorial and sculptural products have shifted toward the abstract. They have recognized in genetic

51 Richard, I-Biology, 36. 52 Nelkin and Anker, Molecular Gaze, 27. 53 Reichle, Technoscience, 2-3. 30

iconography an underlying narrative that resonates with the familiar forms and issues in the history of art.54

Figure 17. Frantisek Kupka, Fantaisie Physiologique, 1923

Figure 18. Salvador Dali, Butterfly Landscape, (The Great Masturbator in Surrealist Landscape with DNA), 1957-58

Figure 19. Suzanne Anker, Codex: Genome (Mycroglyph (Soma Font)), 2000

54 Nelkin and Anker, The molecular Gaze, 19. 31

2.2.1. The Scientific Image

In order to determine the definition of scientific image, first we should examine the word image on its own. Art historian Barbara Maria Stafford, whose main focus lies on the connections between the visual arts and the biological and physical sciences, says that “image” is an umbrella term for every form of visual representation. Within images, she distinguishes expressions and illustrations. For her, expressions are untranslatable forms of cognition, generating new discoveries or meanings in the process of its creation. In contrast, illustrations are images equivalent to discourse and their main function is to render an already existing text.55 Because (mostly) colorful pictures appear primarily in children’s books, we associate images with infancy. Pictures then, gradually disappear from novels and we encounter only informational images in scientific works. Paradoxically, visual images challenge the primacy of the text: since we live in a world of constant language exchange, an image can achieve a universal language that is understandable for everyone. They can define and embody words, sentences, phrases and stories, so today visual images become more and more popular, and practical. This results in the fact that our world that is based on pictures more than ever before.56 Therefore, its existence is increasingly necessary. Thus, visual images help us to look, and help us to focus the information we cannot read, only see.57

The purpose of the image is, therefore, to convey its content into information. A scientific image, therefore, conveys scientific information into pictorial form.

Described by James Elkins (from the perspective of art history), scientific images are “half-images”, and because of their necessary informational function, they cannot “mean freely” – that is, they cannot be treated as a picture with “full value”. What makes the

55 Barbara Maria Stafford, Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press,1996), 27. 56 The iconography of an art historical era shows the conveyed message in a picture. Today, in everyday life, examples can be found almost everywhere, such as street signs, IKEA instructions, and the like. 57 Christine Finn, “The Convergence of Images and Technology,” in Know This: Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments, ed. John Brockman (New York: Harper Perennial, 2017), 546-548. 32

scientific image different from pure artistic form – and thus, separates Stafford’s terms of expression and illustration – is that its primary function is to communicate information as articulately as possible. Because it closes out experimenting, it cannot be termed what Stafford calls expression. Furthermore, I argue that a scientific image is neither an illustration, since it is not intended to illustrate a text, but to replace it. However, this does not mean that esthetics has less of a role in their shaping; on the contrary, they are built up consciously, showing only essential elements and thus, creating elegancy and an illusion of distance for the public viewer.58 They are informational images, as James Elkins terms them. In Elkins’s theory, different images have different meanings and shapes in art. As he explains, informational images

engage the central issues of art history such as periods, styles, meanings, the history of ideas, concepts or criticism, and changes in society; […] they can present more complex questions of representation, convention, medium, production, interpretation, and reception than much fine art; and finally, that far from being inexpressive, they are fully expressive and capable of as great and nuanced a range of meaning as many work of art.59

Anker masterfully combines images that evoke colorful, fantasy-like image and mixes them with scientific facts: they transmit the imaginary combined with relevant scientific issues. They create a special atmosphere where all we know about science is completed with visual beauty. The artist herself writes about the scientific image with the main purpose of document and elucidate, as follows:

The enchanting beauty of many scientific photographs, diagrams, and models has entitled us to explore the comparative difference between the role of aesthetics in visual art and science. Scientific images can be truly beautiful, but their beauty may very well have little to do with aesthetics as professionally defined. […] In science, beauty is a subset, a by-product, nor a primary objective. It is secondary to the goal of precision and communication.60

58 Julia Marshall,” Articulate Images: Bringing the Pictures of Science and Natural History into the Art Curriculum,” Studies in Art Education 45, no 2. (January 2004): 136. 59 James Elkins, The domain of images (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 4-5. 60 Nelkin and Anker, Molecular Gaze, 189. 33

Elkins divided the informational pictures into seven subcategories.61 These are: allographs, semasiographs, pseudowriting, subgraphemics, hypographemics, emblemata, and schemata. Allographs deals with keeping the identity of the alphabet but changing its shapes. Examples for allographs are calligraphy, paleography, and typography, or even Anker’s work, Zoosemiotics. (fig. 20) The silver objects in that installation are like writing based on chromosomes: the identity of the content or information stays the same – “collating” them, one can decipher the animal, but its shape changed from alphabetical shape to chromosomes. Semasiographs, similarly to allographs are pictographic scripts where the images create writing, or are the writing itself, such as computer icons or musical notations. Pseudowriting is, as its name suggests, a set of signs that looks like alphabets and therefore, like a writing system. However, it is one that cannot be read: it does not function like a transcription or a language. An example for that could be the piece Microglyph (Soma Font) from 2000, in which Anker employs enlarged chromosomes reminiscent of hieroglyphs or other ancient letters. In the interpretation of Barbara Maria Stafford: these pieces translate the genetic code into a universal language system, the lingua franca of life.”62

The fourth category is subgraphemics: this term indicates clear signs that could be taken as language elements, but they do not show arrangement or order, so they cannot be taken as a text, but as “pure” pictures that still are different from pictorial images. In the installation of Difference and Repetition (fig. 21) created in 2000, Suzanne Anker points out Elkins’s definition clearly: a bunch of capital letters made of computer-generated foam spread on plexiglass shows the concept of subgraphemics. Hypographemics are pictures that could be read, but they contain only undetached signs like potter’s marks63 or some works by Cy Twombly. An example would be Untitled (1970), in which one can

61 Since Elkins himself doesn’t tend to erect an optimal classification with his seven categories, rather an alternative structure as an orientation point,61 the mentioned works below are going to be analyzed this way as well, adding the scientific aspect to them. He says if he starts to take the categories seriously, he will end up at who knows how many categories. He needs these 7 so he can put up his own questions and anyway, lots of images just don’t fall into any of them. (Elkins, 1999, S.91.) 62 Nelkin and Anker, Molecular Gaze, 29. 63 Elkins, Domain, 182. 34

recognize numbers and signature-like writings, some of them fade into long, gestural lines. (fig. 22) An emblemata volume contains images as well as explanatory texts for each of them, since the text is necessary to be able to understand the picture. Examples of these are: a coat of arms, medallion, or coin. And finally, schemata include pictures with or without texts, but in any case, a high proportion of notation.64

The category of schemata better suits the works of Suzanne Anker. The term comes from the word schema which, as David Rumelhart and Donald Norman explain, are “generic concepts […] represented and then applied in specific situations.”65 Nowadays, sociologists of science and historians use the term to get a better insight into what scientists are engaged with, and the graphs they create have also become objects of examination.66 According to Elkins, the definition pertains to the category of strongly notational images, containing several different forms that we encounter in books: framing elements, pictures, but also writing, etc., many having geometric forms. However, the main characteristic of the schemata is, that it puts information in form of an image.67

Taken out of their original context, MRI Butterfly, Stem cells, the pieces of Codex: Genome, the photographs belong to the Vanitas (in a Petri dish) series and The Glass Veil form a special conglomeration of artistic images with non-art origins.

In the case of the MRI Butterfly Engram Series and the video Butterfly in the Brain, the images show the brain in action as perceiving time and information. They visibly use the notation of neurosciences: the images of the pieces are themselves represented as Rorschach-test-type inkblots that have been turned into numerical data to reassemble the picture, then turned back again in order to feed it into the 3D-program that makes

64 David Crow, Left to Right: The Cultural Shift from Words to Pictures (Lausanne: AVA Publishing SA, 2006), 13. 65 C. J. Weibell, “Principles of learning: 7 principles to guide personalized, student-centered learning in the technology-enhanced, blended learning environment,” Retrieved July 4, 2011 from [https://principlesoflearning.wordpress.com], accessed June 16, 2019. 66 Elkins, Domain, 32. 67 Ibid, 213. 35

rapid prototype sculptures from the inkblots. Another notation here is the grid in which these images are arranged. Narrow lines cross the projected brain and the background, as they were there for scientific explanations of the visible parts. Still, the pictures are complete without them; that makes these pieces twisted emblemata, in which an accompanying text makes sense of the image.68 Charts, arranged by size and numerical order, are also a kind of notation.69 In the different works of the series Codex: Genome, karyotypes, the chromosomes of an animal arranged in order, are also charts of chromosomes.

In the case of the Golden Boy (Stem Cells), the title refers satirically to the first born, who is expected to achieve much. By depicting “him” as stem cells, it points to the technology that predefines congenital characteristics of a person already in the fetal phase. Geometry, as a possible feature of scientific images that makes them also notational, appears here in a distorted form (originally circle-shaped) that represent the different stages of the embryo’s development process.

Like Golden Boy, the Vanitas pieces are also photographed from above so the petri dishes can be viewed as a perfect geometrical form. The objects placed in the dishes appear as diverse (mostly also circular and circular-like) forms. Their colors range from complementary colors to ones that only differ from each other by shades. The arrangements can be seen as mostly notations by placing the organic and inorganic, found and naturally-grown objects next to each other. On an esthetic level, George Glenny, a Victorian horticulturist, made a list of the ideal qualities of flowers. He wrote that geometry in this regard is of major importance: perfect circle-shaped flowers look like spheres, half-spheres, or other fractions of a sphere. The color has to be “clear and distinct, not running into one another, not confused, but dense, smooth at the edges of the stripes, and well defined. The colours must be bright and clear, whatever they may

68 Ibid, 196. 69 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 109. 36

be; if there be two colours, the darker one cannot be too dark, or form too strong a contrast with the lighter.”70

According to him, obeying these rules as a landscape designer of his time is the definition of excellence.71 Glenny’s standards were popular and became widely accepted. Because of their clarity, it was possible to evaluate esthetic qualities with relative objectivity. Vanitas (in a Petri dish) 42 (fig. 23) and the marguerite placed as the most eye-catching object in it, meets all of Glenny’s ideal qualities. Since every exhibition contains objects from the country of the show, each petri dish and each object within it are also a reference to the relevant culture.

In The Glass Veil photographs, (fig. 24) Anker explores another component of these images- emotion. Fragments of human body parts, such as brain and embryos ripped out from their original context and environment photographed and enlarged are potent sources for eliciting different reactions, from shock to discomfort and empathy. Reaching back to the origin of life with the embryo photos and animal corpse introspection or peace and tranquility, even memories can emerge. Furthermore, organs enclosed in glass, like to unicellular animals, pickled vegetables or plants, can cause disturbing or mixed feelings, although the images possess a strong esthetical quality. As a mixture of scientific facts and a deep connection to individual lives visualized in a beautiful way, emotions cannot be anticipated, since all viewer bring their own personal experiences, and possess different levels of literacy and readiness to participate. Because of their strongly visual nature, The Glass Veil images can be triggers of lived experience.72

70 Gessert, Green Light, 54. 71 Ibid. 72 Flach and Anker, Habitus, 143. 37

Figure 20. Suzanne Anker, Zoosemiotics (Fish) 1993 Figure 21. Suzanne Anker, Difference and Repetition, 2000

Figure 22. Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1970

Figure 23. Suzanne Anker, Vanitas (in a Petri dish) 42, 2016

Figure 24. Suzanne Anker, The Glass Veil (Mask), 2009

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2.3. The Significance of Suzanne Anker in the Bio Art Field

Anker belongs to the group of artists who first realized the need to pursue a dialogue about the increasing power of biological sciences in our society, which she calls the genetic revolution. She constantly invents new ways to visualize these issues by intersecting biotechnological matter and topics in fine art – as happens to the styrofoam in Golden Boy or 3D printing in Remote Sensing. By abandoning conventional practices, she draws attention to the responsibility of mankind towards nature. Remote Sensing works as a vision that evokes Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx and Crake – the earth we live in is artificial and mankind made this by exploiting nature. In the piece Origins and Future, Anker uses rapid prototyping, whose name symbolizes the way we think about world: in the developed world, we want everything now and fast, even if it is beyond one’s control, like the laws of nature, like pregnancy and giving birth. These naturally take time and should be about the relationship of mother and child, while both – ideally – progressing to another level, becoming mentally and physically mature. In being fast, one misses this development, because there is no time to live them through. However, making work that critiques ethics and morals, concerning behavior and the human ego on a metaphoric level, is only one side of Anker’s artwork.

She was one of the first artists who realized the need for literal practices as artworks. Being aware of the endangered species of the ocean, she visited (as she continues to visit institutions) a coral research station in Florida, observing their work and taking photos from it, raising awareness about our responsibility towards the ocean by having a documentary form of the final work. An even more literal practice is demonstrated in the group project of Myo Tomato that was made with the goal of eliminating the need for meat by producing a tomato with myoglobin, a protein found in the human bloodstream.73 This project points out the increasing population and the entailing

73 Anker, interview. 39

consumerism, in particular the raising of cows that produce methane, which in turn affects global warming. The tomato was a flesh-and-blood outcome of an individual approach. Suzanne Anker not only creates artistically- and esthetically- remarkable artworks, but actually does her best to offer solutions to the problems in connection to our environment, showing an example to follow.

Bio Art has a history with more and more artists now thinking, participating in, and exhibiting it. It has become one of the most discussed topics in the history of contemporary art. It is not unusual anymore to include organic materials in a collage, experimenting with bacteria painting, or discuss the morality of cloning; still, the works of Suzanne Anker are one of the richest in terms of material usage, in its visual aspect, and in its style, regarding the wide range of genres, from collages and miniature sculptures to installations and video works. Life shows itself in many forms and ways and Anker untiringly comes up with more and more questions, reflections, and newer approaches to put them into the spotlight. For one of her main influences she mentions Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary theory, but also Margaret Atwood, a prize- winning writer, whose books have a dystopian character. She also refers to cultural philosophers, such as Jürgen Habermas, among others.74 These writers and scientists have been leading figures in their disciplines, and contribute to the world with highly complex, mentally and emotionally brilliant masterpieces. Being able to benefit in a practical way from such remarkable personalities proves that Suzanne Anker herself belongs to the most advanced and influential characters in her own discipline and whatever she engages in – be it theoretical or practical – with the result being a great adventure for the viewer and of lasting significance for the Bio Art field.

Many of her works, such as Material Power or Origins and Futures, concentrate on questions of pregnancy and the connection between the female body and how we all – both men and women – think about it today. In the age of gender studies and post- feminism, this issue is increasingly necessary to think and talk about. While, movements

74 A broader list of Anker’s influences is introduced in the chapter In Conversation with Suzanne Anker (5.) 40

in the topic try to come up with a new equality based on gender and try to find an identity concept for everyone, Anker’s concern comes from living the deep feminine self without restricting its concept. This does not dictate to the viewer or reader definitions about maternity and womanliness; it does not involve hysteria. It concerns only the individual, and the debatable bond between the female and her offspring. Moreover, esthetically, the works that mediate disturbing facts and questions are rendered with smooth forms, containing few colors, which creates low-key elegance and beauty. Her works are feminine, without emphasizing it; the powerful presence of these works mirrors back the radiance of the artist too, making the artworks genuine too.

Another factor demonstrating Anker’s significance is that she has been working as a Bio Artist (and as such, an experimenting artist) since the field first received attention. Like Madonna in music, Suzanne Anker has been continuously present in the art world for over 40 years, and presenting Bio Art pieces for 30 years now. Her works are known in all parts of the world and have been shown all over the United States, Europe, Colombia, Japan, and China. Since 1978, she has had over 50 solo and group exhibitions, her works are presented in galleries and museums as well. She is the author or co-author of countless articles, and has co-written many books. The Bio-Blurb Show (broadcasted between 2004 and 2006 in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art in New York City) shows her scope as an artist: she has hosted a radio show on exploring the connection between art and biosciences, their esthetic and ethic. Furthermore, she curates exhibitions, teaching classes and workshops, involving continuously evolving new ideas and technologies in her artworks. Besides her activity as a visual artist, Suzanne Anker is also a teacher and chair of the Fine Art Department of the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She was key in founding the School’s Bio Art Lab. This laboratory was created as a means for artists to get in touch with biological matter as building blocks, and lab technologies as creative tools. Focused on the meeting point of biological sciences and visual arts, the Bio Art Lab is one of the few existing art laboratories (only the one in the United States) that was built in an art school and as

41

such, one of the scarce spaces where artists can get access to biology in order to pursue reflections on current issues in society.75

As she sums up her activity,

It is this combination of activities that continue to engage me and offer clues into the deep recesses of the ideas I wish to explore further. By moving back and forth between the literary, scientific, and aesthetic, a more complete engagement is attained to access and assess the combinatory practices necessary to make art. Speaking in public allows me to justify, and explain my ideas, recalibrate nuance, and pose questions that still need to be clarified.76

This master thesis deals with more than 30 years of active presence in one of today’s leading art fields, presenting works in the most renowned institutions around the world, giving speeches, workshops, and lectures. Along with this, 30 years of knowledge gathered from these experiences inspired by the greatest, like Darwin’s teachings, and institutionalized in the unique Bio Art Laboratory makes Suzanne Anker a pioneer of Bio Art.

2.3.1. Organic and Inorganic Materials

“The materials of bio art tend to challenge anthropocentrism. Living things can remind us that nonhuman forms of life are not simply raw materials but entities that do not need us for validation or improvement. Bio art represents a window of opportunity for producing new kinds of consciousness.”77

What makes an object organic or inorganic? In which ways is nature being altered in our century? What is the transformed being under consideration? The substances Suzanne Anker works with “have their own language and politic”, meaning, they are used as

75 See more in the chapter “The SVA Art Lab” (4.). 76 Julia Krolik, “Creators-Suzanne Anker,” Art The Science Blog, March 29, 2017, https://artthescience.com/blog/2017/03/29/creators-suzanne-anker/. 77 Gessert, Green Light, 139. 42

metaphors for referring to different issues through their consistency. The artist draws attention to the beauty of life and “the necessity of enlightened thinking about nature’s ‘tangled bank’” through the materials she uses, and working strictly with the aspects of time.

Anker’s installations include a wide range of material variety. In The Glass Veil, she uses seven parachutes reminiscent of huge squids from nylon that looks like veils. They are inorganic materials referring to nature. Installed within ruins and photographed in the building’s medical museum wing, natural circumstances stand against an artificial environment. In Astroculture (Shelf Life), astro-science is represented through living nature, where seeds become plants in metal cubes. In Vanitas (in a Petri dish) organic but non-living things like dead insects and withered flowers represent the living, handmade products purchased from shops mirror the inorganic and a warning for an all- too material, consumeristic culture. Miniature sculptures, like the pieces of Origins & Futures were made with rapid prototype technique to make the phenomenon of artificial wombs even more visible.

She works with the same intention while highlighting the characteristics of plants, unicellular and multicellular animals, both living and dead, but also employs human cells. A transition between organic and inorganic matters are wax models and foam; completely inorganic materials are represented by prints, ceramics, and bronze casts or, the above-mentioned products from shops. All are used because of their cultural significance coming from politics, epistemology, or history, emerging in connection to techno-scientific culture. 78

Anker’s interest in nature and the natural word shows already in her early works, such as in Gene Pool (1991) (fig. 25) or, chronologically, the paper reliefs she was working on in the 1970s. From that time till the end of 1980s, while she was living in Colorado, the core of her work was influenced by physical sciences; as result, she casted paper in

78 Flach and Anker, Habitus, 142. 43

pulp form or in three-dimensional molds.79 As she notes in an interview: “the paper pulp for me was a matrix into which I could add pastels, glass, plaster, shell fragments, and more to create fossil-like amalgams. The powdery snowfall glistened with crystalline sparkle which I recreated with the use of shattered glass.” 80

Loader (1979), is a cast-paper relief completed with graphite. (fig. 26) In the 1980s, as the first influences of the biological sciences reached her, Anker started to focused on the concept of alloying organic and inorganic objects with cultural backgrounds. Using paper-thin bronze castings gave the works a delicate character; still, bronze casting was typical in the art of the 1980s. From paper pulp, Anker also gradually began casting objects in bronze, creating a fusion between natural and cultural messages.81 One of these pieces was made from a branch bent into a circular form and a soccer ball. By alloying organic and inorganic materials together, she pushes her works to their limits. The next, similarly constructed work called Fixed Gaze, is a still-life sculpture, composed of 100-year-old eggs, a copper bowl, and small vases which were nailed onto kaleidoscopes. They had an esthetic function: when looking into the vases, the image of reminds us of a cellular form. This piece brought chromosomes, and thus genetics, into Anker’s central interests.82 However, this does not mean that she abandoned combining different objects. In a later work, in 2009, she continues to put together car parts, toys, and tools with natural components: branches, nests, flowers, and leaves. These works can be seen as the forerunner for the Vanitas-Installations in their concept. Also, she transforms these otherwise ordinary and familiar objects with different backgrounds into an abstract and unknown combination of work; by casting them into

79 Suzanne Anker, ed. Linda Johnson Dougherty: A Dialogue with Nature: Nine Contemporary Sculptors, 15. Washington, D.C.: Phillips Collection, 1992. Exhibition catalog. 80 Krolik, “Creators.” 81 Bronze has a history and a cultural meaning in the history of art: apart from decorations that would ornamenting weapons, from the early Bronze Age on it was used extensively for making head- and whole figure sculptures in all cultures, with religious and political significance. It also appeared as a casting material; for example, in Wenzel Jamnitzer’s bronze animals it is an interplay between artificial and natural meanings. 82 Krolik, “Creators.” 44

bronze, her intent is to “preserve” nature, making the volatile permanent, making us dependent upon time.83

The raw material of the Biota pieces (fig. 27) are dead sponges that have been transformed into porcelain. They are sculptures and objects at the same time: they have the characteristics of a ready-made object; however, the sponge itself disappears through the process of burning the ceramic matter and what remains is the “ghost of the sponge”, as the artist terms it.84 When Anker transforms them into ceramics, she perpetuates their movement of the actual moment.85 After they have died, she casts these creatures in porcelain. A type of ceramic, porcelain has its own history in art as well: it is clay, which has been the most important raw material for making utility objects and sculptures in ancient times, used from the third century. Extracted from nature, clay consists of different kinds of minerals – including lime and quartz – that gives it an organic character.86 In the Carbon Collison of the Diamond Mind, a metal glaze covers the porcelain. (fig. 28) The use of this material also dates back to the third century. It was invented in China, and the ancient Greeks brought it to Europe. Here, the glaze is a glass-like “coating” that makes ceramics waterproof. The next step is to burn them at 750°C in a kiln, where lead oxide powder, previously added to the object, makes a chemical reaction with the silicate that is contained in the clay. Glazed terracotta sculptures were common in the Renaissance era in Florence between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the process of making ceramics was also depicted in miniature paintings in medieval books. By covering originally organic sponges in their condition as dead organisms, with organic source material that has been transformed into inorganic substance, the question arises: where are the borders of nature and art, organic and inorganic materials?

83 Johnson Dougherty, Dialogue, 15. 84 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 149. 85 Sabine Flach and Suzanne Anker, Naturally Hypernatural I: concepts of nature (Bern; Vienna: Peter Lang, 2016), 40. 86 Antonella Fuga and Carla Ferrucci, Techniken und Materialien der Kunst, trans. Caroline Gutberlet and Suzanne Fischer (Berlin: Parthas Verlag, 2005), 212. 45

In Genetic Seed Bank, (fig. 29) Anker captures the interaction between organic and inorganic means through the sinker and the coral. It shows the strong adaptiveness of the organic materials and its high potential in their use for artistic purposes. The coral reef forms a complete ecosystem, kind of like an organ. They function as communities, thus, each entity reflects the destruction that has been made to any member of the group.87

The series Stem Cells (2004-2005) (fig. 30) is made from polyurethane foam and it aims to highlight the endless potential and ephemeral beauty of the material – organic or inorganic – by taking up various, unrepeatable forms under air pressure. It consists of miniature sculptures – forming cells and body parts, fetuses and animals – and photographs of this foam under air pressure. Even the slightest change can generate extreme transformations in their form.88 On another level, it also investigates the mystery of the self and how we were shaped by our genetics and surroundings from the very beginning. Golden Boy (Stem Cells) continues to deal with this issue of the self. Today’s imaging and reproductive technologies are making it possible to assess and pre-define the sex of the yet-unborn offspring. This means the implanted zygotes are treated as objects as well. In general, research has shown that there is a preference for having a male offspring, which shows the male-dominance of our society to this day.

Figure 25. Suzanne Anker, Gene Pool, 1991

Figure 26. Suzanne Anker, Loader, 1979

87 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 30. 88 Ibid, 118. 46

Figure 27. Suzanne Anker, Biota #105, 2012 Figure 28. Suzanne Anker, Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind, 2013

Figure 30. Suzanne Anker, Golden Boy (Stem Cells), 2004-2005

Figure 29. Suzanne Anker, Genetic Seed Bank (Big-Brain), 2007

2.3.2. Natural, Artificial, and their Fusion

“Our relationship to nature ultimately defines our culture. Nature’s structural motif is manifested in cycles: Life/Death, Lightness/Darkness, Energy/Matter. Such structures integrate opposites. Hence, nature’s labyrinth emerges as the central feature in forming the subject matter of my work.”89

Before delving into the analysis, I find it important to distinguish natural and artificial from organic and inorganic, which has been dealt with in the previous chapter. The terms

89 Johnson Dougherty, Dialogue, 14. 47

organic and inorganic always refers to the original or resulting material of a work: a starting point to what becomes natural or artificial. The latter two definitions are used here for the outcome of the artworks and for their message, but also the technique used in producing the works.

Following the artist’s words above, this chapter opens with the example of the already mentioned example of Fixed Gaze. This work, made in 1989, is an extended, three- dimensional version of a still life consisting of a vase fitted with a kaleidoscopic lens and a bowl of ceramic eggs. They are both set on pedestals. Here, the natural component is the eggs. The artificial aspect is its material: by looking through the lens in the vase, everything one can see becomes distorted and dematerialized, including the eggs, which through the lens appear like a row of patterns and circular forms. Anker connects them to genetics: she sees them as DNA patterns and cell structures. The work explores the commentary on nature via the eggs, and a commentary on science through the ceramics, reflecting their relation and contradiction.90 As active participants of the installation, we too get in touch with nature in a distorted way, therefore it describes our relationship to the natural world and how detached today’s civilized culture is from it. Like any other piece by Anker, this is calm and disciplined, but it is also a powerful statement about the contradiction between man-made, artificial alterations and natural, real experience.

As she sees it, in today’s society, nature is not part of our everyday life anymore, only in a fused form, where the artificial imitates, or even replaces nature, and nature depends on the artificial. Origins and Futures (fig. 31) shows it very clearly: the technique of rapid prototyping symbolizes imitation and stands for the artificial – one puts one’s picture into the 3D printer and the image is printed. This is fast, easy, and repeatable anytime. If it goes wrong, it is easy to remake, as can be done with the “savior sibling” – a genetic copy for a very ill or already diseased individual.91 The pieces portray fetuses and embryos but they were created using 3D computer-techniques that evoke the conception of life in an artificial womb. It accents the contradiction between pregnancy and imitation

90 Ibid, 15. 91 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 114. 48

as a domestic and ongoing issue of the wealthy societies.92 Embryos enclosed in jars being dissected in The Glass Veil, Sons and Daughters, and Water Babies lead to further questions on the margins of artificial and natural: what attitude should we have towards them? Does their naturalness hold true even if they are kept artificially? What about genetically modified fruits and vegetables? After human intervention, are they still natural? Myo Tomato was engineered in order to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Thus it is an artificial method for helping nature.

Laboratories – scientific, man-made venues to study nature – are integral elements of Suzanne Anker’s work. As part of the scientific life, they appear in different positions. The Genetic Seed Bank was photographed in a research lab and functions as a living Wunderkammer, where different kinds of valuable objects of different origin, scientific discipline (biology, geology, art, early technological experiments, etc.),were collected together and their knowledge of the given era, first appearing in the 17th century. Also Laboratory Life refers to the “update” of the twenty-first century Wunderkammer, involving medical history.93 The plants and their process of growing in the Astroculture series were made in a lab and communicates an artist’s first-hand experience in vegetable growing, Vanitas (in a Petri dish) evokes a Wunderkammer placed in galleries and thus, viewer-accessible.

Medical Museums are also a new and challenging venue for introducing Bio Art. They are also important scenarios in the works of Suzanne Anker. She has visited several historical medical museums. The photographic series Water Babies (fig. 32) and Sons and Daughters are both photographic series that were taken in the Museum Vrolik Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam to pursue a dialog about mortality and aspects of living. On the one hand, the specimens preserved here raise economic and social questions about how little we know about them: we do not know what economic or social class they represent, and the personal history at the origin of the fetuses is unknown as well. They have medical and political importance as documentary evidence in medical

92 Johnson Dougherty, Dialogue, 15. 93 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 130. 49

history. Also, there is the question of what to consider them: are they living? Are they dead? What are they, babies? In any case, they elicit a dual, contradictory emotion between feeling inconvenient and watching them in awe because of their silent and peaceful beauty. They originally served as matter of representation in teaching medical sciences or collected as curiosities for a Wunderkammer. Another intriguing question is the way different cultures handle ethics. For example, in certain states in the United States, fetuses after a certain number of weeks are considered to be persons, and as such, there is an ongoing debate about their rights. That is why it is rare to see a collection of fetal specimens94. In contrast, in the Netherlands, the medical collection, consisting pathological specimens, anomalous embryos, odd skulls of the Vrolik museum are fit to the public, as it fits to most medical museums in Europe.

Like nature and life, so too nature and death belong together as part of life that constantly renews itself. For Anker, looking at a fetus as the very beginning of life is at the same looking at death “in and of itself”.95 For her, death is the other side of life. When looking at species in the bottle of The Glass Veil or Water Babies, this is what we face. Anker calls it a wonder. Because we cannot verify the end or endlessness of life and we cannot enter that existence condition that we call death, the closest one can get to is the reaffirmation of life, regardless of its form. Are they babies just because their outside morphology tells us that? In the words of Anker, it is a “quote-unquote baby” that stands in between the ideas of where life begins and where it ends: it looks like one, but it´s “a never been-born, un-dead specimen.”96

94 One of the institutes that has not only fetuses and embryos on display, but also wet specimens from every part of the human body is the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. 95 Sarah Franklin and Suzanne Anker, “Specimens as Spectacles: Reframing Fetal Remains,” Social Text 29, no.106 (2011): 114. 96 Ibid, 116. 50

Figure 31. Suzanne Anker, Origins Figure 32. Suzanne Anker, Water and Futures (Detail), 2007 Babies (Blanket), 2004

2.3.3. Art History References

Looking at the photographs of Laboratory Life (2006) (fig. 33) from a distance, at first sight, the images seem like they were printed on crumpled paper. Drawing closer, one can discover different photos superimposed on each other that evokes the double exposure-technique used by the Surrealists in the 1920s and 1930s. A common feature of this technique is, on the one hand, its documentary character (layering several photographic strata also creates a “tapestry effect” in Anker’s work). On the other hand, the subject that Surrealists documented with double exposure was intended to reflect on the unconscious, interpreting dreams and memories, as an undefined, mysterious space produced by the human brain. However, it also examined the relationship between nature and ongoing technical developments – the technological revolution, approaching science in a “visionary” way. An example of double exposure and the above-mentioned topic is El Lissitzky’s Record (1926) (fig. 34) which shows a runner, who is about to jump over a cordon, superimposed on another photograph depicting a theater and city lights. 97

97 Lissitzky’s image demonstrates the increasing speed of the world itself: the running as metaphor for speed, the cordon as sign of every barrier that technical development will win over, the city and its lights shows the future, the theater building on it shows its culture – as if it were referring directly to Stephenson’s 51

In our century, science is being carried out in laboratories, where materials are altered and getting new meanings. Anker’s Laboratory Life can be viewed as an extension of the reflections of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art movements. In Laboratory Life, the images show the interior of a laboratory with its most recognizable equipment, double-exposed with views of gardens. This double view of images gives the works a multi-dimensional, material character. The piece Rome, (fig. 35) for example, reminds us of a wool fiber – an organic material that is created by an artificial system. It is a still-life that contains plastic bottles, containers and pipettes with different geometric shapes. Their dominant colors are yellow, red, and blue – making a reference to the primary colors of the color wheel and also to the compositions of Piet Mondrian. (fig. 36) The Vanitas (in a Petri dish) installations (fig. 37) are three-dimensional versions of still lifes. As a painter is free to choose components of a still life on the canvas, Anker likewise varies and mixes different components of life in petri dishes. They are reminiscent of the genre not only in their form, but also in their art historical reference that goes back to the seventeenth-century vanitas still lifes.98 (fig. 38) Recurring elements of the genre are candles, an hourglass, a glass vessel, sometimes soap bubbles that stood for inorganic objects, while withered flowers, fruits, and dead animals formed the organic part of the set. Usually they are depicted together in the same painting, symbolizing the volatility and transitory nature of life. Shaped by Christian culture, a moral message is also mediated through the represented objects: they juxtapose spiritual values and earthly goods, warning against an overly-material world view.

locomotive, the invention of photography, and automobiles, and all the inventions throughout the nineteenth century. 98 They were a characteristic part of Netherlandish baroque painting, and also the term was coined here (stillleven, composed of from still, “still”, and leven, “life”). 52

Continuous technological development, along with how it effects everyday life and the morals of a society has served as a constant subject of the arts since the seventeenth century. As Suzanne Anker put it, Vanitas (in a Petri dish) is an “update” to this topic.99

Anker applies the same concept as these still lifes – juxtaposing fruit flesh, living or withered plants, dead insects, butterflies, bones but also metal, glass, and plastic – there is a mixture of organic and inorganic in the same petri dish. They are symbols for the living and the dead, incessant and finite at the same time. They represent life in transmission; each fragment in a petri dish is a piece of the process of decomposition, showing a perfect circle of life: that which decomposes will become nutrition for other organisms. Also, the pieces have the same cultural importance of the given country as the paintings: while the objects of the baroque paintings refer to Christian values, Anker’s installations feature materials (be they natural or artificial) that can be found in the land of the specific exhibition.100

The 3D-printed versions of the petri dishes are the series called Remote Sensing. (fig. 39) They look like miniature landscapes, evoking the uncountable forms of natural wilderness. Since they are small, it is necessary to go close to examine and analyze them, just as natural philosophers and artists examined nature from a scientific point of view throughout the centuries. As the contemporary art critic and editor James Jackson Jarves expounded: “By unfolding the laws of being [...], [science] carries thought into the infinite, and creates an inward art, so perfect and expanded in its conceptions that material objects fashioned by the artist’s hand become eloquent only as the feeling which dictated them is found to impregnated with, and expressive of, the truths of science.”101

99 Today, the constantly changing of nature by human interaction is an incessantly emerging subject in the field of bioethics. 100 Ibid. 101 Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 47. 53

Art led by science makes a parallel between Remote Sensing and the landscape paintings and design of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As geology, meteorology, botany, and many more scientific disciplines were integrated into art, so, too, Anker involves the newest scientific technologies developed in the aforementioned disciplines to challenge remote sensing, which is the process of monitoring and detecting physical characteristics of a place that otherwise are not visible to the eye.

Another aspect in landscape architecture and paintings are plants: as French and English gardens had their own system that mirrored the cultural and social norms of their culture, Americans also gave their landscape paintings a national concept. (fig. 40) For example, the French baroque garden type that spread to most of Europe1 was a very strictly organized, geometrical concept that referred to “the order of God”: plants were subordinated to the whole, and symbolized the citizen subordinated to religion and the law of the state. In eighteenth-century England, gardens were “landscape gardens”, where the irregularity in the design, individuality, and diversity of the individual plants had a predominant position, analogous to a liberal society, where humans as individuals have freedom and right to “grow”. The English writer and garden designer Batty Langley’s book New Principals of Gardening (1728) played an important role in the spread of English garden types. American landscapists relied on several theories: on the one hand, Linnaeus’ taxonomy, the scientific classification of plants and animals that is still widely used today, on the other, Goethe’s theory of the Urpflanze102 that considered plants as a primal form of living constantly taking up more complex shapes and organic structures. Also, the French-American writer Crèvecoeur’s analogy – “men are like plants” – meaning that the physical environment plays a crucial part in the development of both plants and humans – was seen as an “early source for the idea of a national art rooted in American soil.”103 The diversity of gardens and landscape ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are reflected back in Remote Sensing, where

102 Urpflanze literally translated means “fore-plant” and is a concept of the archetype from which all plants are derived. 103 Novak, Nature and Culture, 105. 54

miniature landscapes, based on two-dimensional photographs of different petri-dish objects “grew” into different, artificial landscapes based on the country where their original content was collected. They are like cultural statements, exploring the diversity and colorful differences around the world. The originally employed flowers, leaves, insects, and other organisms melt into a map of nature – monitored, tracked, and surveilled by the viewer.

For Anker, the language of materials and the content of her works manifests in metaphors (as Linda L. Johnson puts it, “poetic substitutions”), similar to collages, where every piece is part of the complete message, but not interpretable on its own in every case. Like collages, her work also combines and highlights the contrast between the primitive, the unconscious, and the civilized/scientific.104

Figure 33. Suzanne Anker, Laboratory Life (Jump Cut), 2006

Figure 34. El Lissitzky, Record, 1926

104 Johnson Dougherty, Dialogue, 15. 55

Figure 35. Suzanne Anker, Laboratory Life (Rome), 2006 Figure 36. Piet Mondrian, Composition in Red, Yellow, Blue and Black, 1921

Figure 38. Peter Claesz, Still life with Turkey Pie, 1627 Figure 37. Suzanne Anker, Vanitas (in a Petri dish),Twilight, 2016

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Figure 40. Thomas Cole, Distant View of Niagara Falls, 1830

Figure 39. Suzanne Anker, Remote Sensing (38), 2016

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3. Selected Artworks

3.1. Territories of the Human Body

The body and its parts are iconic images calling into question identity, natural history, longevity, and disease, as well as fashion.105 The opened eye in ancient cultures denoted wisdom, the vulnerable heel of the Greek mythological figure Achilles stood for his weakness; the positions of Proserpine’s hands holding a pomegranate in Domenico Rosetti´s painting106 shows the conflict between fall and abstinence. The chapters below deal with the brain as the primary organ in charge of will and achievement, the womb as a symbol of motherhood and fertility, and chromosomes as carriers of our sex and the seed of our personality.

3.1.1. The Brain

Neuroscientific examinations were practiced already on Ancient Egyptian mummies. Approached from scientific, philosophical, and artistic angles, they tried to decipher the processes of the brain and its internal structure in order to understand the self and the nature of human. They saw the origins of emotion coming from the brain too, with the brain and its synapses (the structure that makes it possible for one neuron to pass a stimulus to another) creating language, locomotion, and memory.107 Visual representation always accompanied the explorations, such as Avicenna’s in the tenth century, Leonardo’s drawings in the fifteenth century, or fMRI in the twentieth century (fMRI was meant to optimize scientific information). Hence, the question is rightfully

105 Flach and Anker, Habitus,148. 106 Domenico Rossetti, Proserpine, 1874, oil on canvas, 61 x 125.1cm. 107 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 94-95. 58

posed: are these visual representations only screen images that underpin technological knowledge or do they actually provide the core levels of our reality?108

Recent studies in the social sciences and humanities have provided us with endless illustrations of the centrality of the brain and “the paramount cultural and material importance of the mind”109 from Descartes’ famous quotation (I think, therefore I am), and sayings such as “have you lost your mind?” (meaning one is not acting like oneself) to zombie-apocalypse films, neuroscientific research results. The brain or its absence refers to having or not having a personality, or better said: personhood.110

3.1.1.1. Biota

In the Biota pieces, (fig. 41) Anker works with sponges that she casts into porcelain. For her, sponges are the perfect metaphor for the brain, since they have the ability of soaking up much information from their environment and then select between them, just as the brain soaks up and understands spoken language. Also, both a brain and a sponge have individual characteristics and thus, special features that result in a series of complexity and variety between them.111 Little silver figurines made by rapid prototyping are also a part of the installation. The idea came from the ancient Venus statues. Some theories state that the form of these little statues are reminiscent of animal brains (among them frogs, rabbits, alligators, etc). The living sponge is an organic creature, possessing sensory organs, and is multi-cellular. However, it lacks inner organs, stem cells, or symmetry of the body. As the brain is part of a bigger complexity – the human body – so, too, do these silver figurines belong to the sponges as their “brains” – as part of an inorganic organism. Furthermore, because Venus sculptures are

108 Wilson, Art + Science, 64. 109 Ira van Kaulen and Martyn Pickersgill, “Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences,” in Advances in Medical Sociology 13 (October 17, 2011), 100. 110 Giovanni Frazzetto and Suzanne Anker, “Neuroculture,” in Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10, no. 11 (November 2009), 816. 111 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 140. 59

symbols of fertility and refer to life’s ability of self-regenerating, they are metaphors for brain cells.

Figure 41. Suzanne Anker, Biota (2011)

3.1.1.2. MRI Butterfly/Butterfly in the Brain

Continuing with the exploration of the brain, MRI Butterfly (2008) (fig. 42) is also engaged with neurosciences, more precisely, with perception in time. The title MRI comes from one of the newest neurotechnological process called fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). It is used in healthcare strategies and legal policies as well as ways in which individuals can think of themselves, their bodies, or their mental disorders. Another reference for the tile is the expression “having butterflies in one’s stomach” that refers to an explosion of anxiety mixed with excitement, and is produced by hormonal reactions to an external circumstance. It is used for positive experiences, when one has something to lose but does not back out from the situation, because the

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process itself can bring benefits, be it an audition or a date.112 Going with this expression and connecting it to the exhibition title, it shows the substitution of the brain for the gut: the gut works as a “second brain”,113 therefore, they react to information on a physical level, because they both are charged with neuronal transference. In MRI Butterfly, Anker focuses on the motion of the brain over time. The butterfly is a metaphor for metamorphosis, as the caterpillar turns to the fully-developed animal. For Anker, it is reminiscent of the change that occurs when one chromosome merges with another, turning first into a zygote, then growing into a fetus, and child.114 The images of the MRI Butterfly are 15 scans of the same brain. In each of them we can see different inkblots reminiscent of a Rorschach test, overlaid on an image of a butterfly. This butterfly has the same position of all 15 pictures; yet, superimposing the three images make them differ from each other, resulting in a subtle optical illusion.115 Juxtaposing these images, we get the impression of a brain dealing with perception in time. MRI Butterfly also recalls science and its subjectivity by emphasizing the intuition and interpretation of a scientist when examining the unambiguous nature of functional neuroimages. They intend to remind the viewer of the complexity of the data processing that the mind carries out. Part of this project is also is also a 54-second-long video called Butterfly in the Brain accompanied by the music of Eric Satie. It shows us the aforementioned optical illusion in motion: in front of the same black background, we can see two of the brains enlarged next to each other, showing the same Rorschach test symbols projected after each other, at a higher speed. The motion stops when the music arrives at the end of a phrase and starts again when a new phrase in music comes. They interact each other as the two parts of the piece interact: sometimes it seems that the inkblot in one of the brains follows the left hand of the piano and its move in eighth-notes, while the other brain follows the movement of the right hand and its ornamented melody playing sixteenth-

112 The Glass Veil, 95. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Frazzetto and Anker, Neuroculture, 817. 61

notes. The vivid movements of the inkblots correspond to the playful piano playing, and shows how perception evolves over time as well; in this case, listening to or playing music triggers fantasy, playfulness, and the vibration of life itself. The shape of the Rorschach-inkblots changes randomly at any given moment. Because they are known to the wider public too (for instance, it often appears in movies as a tool for defining a person’s mental state), to a certain extent it has become a cultural icon and is strongly connected to psychiatry and patients’ mental condition. Anker created 3D rapid prototype versions from each inkblot: one group was made of plaster resin, and others were cast in bronze. By using a 3D-modeling program and turning the inkblots into numerical codes, fantasy and the mind become embodied and turned into a comprehensive language system that opens up the dialog between body and mind.116

Figure 42. Suzanne Anker, MRI Butterfly, 2008

3.1.1.3. Exhibition - Butterfly in the Brain

These rapid-prototype pieces are titled Rorschach and were made in 2004. At the exhibition, (fig. 43) they are placed under Plexiglas vitrines that reminds us of objects

116 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 100. 62

seen in museums. The installations also include the video and the MRI Butterfly images, at the exhibitions usually completed with more objects. At the show Butterfly in the Brain (2002) which was held in New York, the images were projected onto the wall, greatly enlarged. One could also see several digital prints from Anker’s Engram Series and Codex Eyespot series.117 The Engram-Series depicts engrams – alterations in the brain, dealing with physical and chemical changes – a kind of perception in time, just like MRI Butterfly. The pictures were created using the images of diagrams taken from neurology textbook images.118 They are placed on top of each other, just as the Rorschach inkblots and the butterflies on the brain scans and thus gain new interpretations and unique combinations. The names Buddha, Yogi, and Scarab refer to the individual results of this juxtaposition. The three parts of the installation together explore the deep symmetries that can be found in nature and art, and how art connects the natural with what is man-made, and what is organic with the usage of modern scientific tools – MRI scans, microscopes, and telescopes. The giant black drawing mounted on one of the walls depicts an inkblot-like butterfly (as if it was made of tiny Rorschach inkblots) and the rest of the exhibited objects also share this symmetry.119

Figure 43. Exhibition Butterfly in the Brain, 2002

117 Engram Series: Inkjet print on Watercolor paper, Codex Eyespot series: silkscreen print on frosted mylar. 118 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 61. 119 Barbara Maria Stafford, “From Genetic Perspective to Biohistory: The Ambiguities of Looking Down, Across, and Beyond,” in Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond, ed. Eduardo Kac (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 381. 63

3.1.2. The Womb

The womb is the very first environment in which human life exists. As an inseparable part of the female body, it is the symbol for motherhood and fertility. Since 1980, the year in which the first contract for surrogate motherhood was legally adopted in the United States, surrogacy became a technique for “womb renting”.120 From ancient to modern times, giving birth to a biological child is a strong part of female identity, ensuring the continuity of the self. Freezing embryos and other methods favor this image of continuity; it has increased in use and also led to the creation of artificial wombs. As part of the female body, the womb also raises the question of the role of women in today’s society. In countries with lower living standards, such as in India, surrogacy has become a possibility for making a living. In these countries, this phenomenon strengthened the view that women can be considered objects. The zygotes sometimes come from wealthy countries, which shows a clearly traceable cultural motif of working- class people who serve the middle or upper-class society and their desires.121 The phenomenon of ectopic pregnancy and also the fetus in the jar was influenced by Aldous Huxley’s science fiction novel, Brave New World, in which human embryos are ranked in five social groups, and their personal qualities are conditioned from birth. Huxley (who had several scientists in his family) shows a vision of the future that mixes fear and fantasy.122 As in Anker’s Material Power, discussed below, the citizens of Huxley’s future world are also pre-designed and grow in the artificial womb of an artificially-stimulated society.

3.1.2.1. Material Power

Its form is reminiscent of Zoosemiotics: the black and white print Material Power, (fig. 44) made in 1999, contains two bottles filled with different amounts of water. The bottle

120 Ibid, 113. 121 Ibid, 114. 122 Franklin and Anker, Specimens, 118. 64

itself is reminiscent of an artificial womb: to the left we can see a fetus, mysteriously surrounded by letter-like chromosomes that are reflections of randomly-organized qualities with which a person is born. The fetus is surrounded by a white, cloud-like material that highlights its enigmatic entity; one cannot be sure about its outcome as a person. Being affixed to the wall, these chromosomes are predefined, referring to the wish of designing the features of a yet-unborn child. The bottle to the right waits in a line to receive its implant. The two bottles together evoke different phases of the process of artificial conception, as though they were on a conveyer belt.

Material Power, as the name also hints, is about the presence and absence of human identity, as frozen embryo transfer,123 genetic engineering, and in vitro fertilization has made it possible to design a baby’s features before its birth, therefore, manipulating life is already a possibility. Hence, the question raised here is: will the womb be a territory of the body that contributes to creating altered life? Is the artificial womb going to be the next petri dish or test tube, used for examining and developing new, semi-artificial life? 124

Figure 44. Suzanne Anker, Material Power, 1999

123 Embryo transfer involves the length of time that embryos can be stored, to whom do they belong, whether they may be used in research, and the issue of the “orphaned embryo”. (Nelkin and Anker, Molecular Gaze, 140.) 124 Nelkin and Anker, Molecular Gaze, 123-124. 65

3.1.2.2. Origins and Futures

The Rorschach test inkblots have found their way into this installation, too. This series is a sculptural installation125 that includes tiny sculptures made by rapid prototype technique. (fig. 45) They are made of plaster, resin, and stainless steel and display embryos in different stages of maturity. They also contain the 3D-printed pieces of the Golden Boy (Stem Cells). The sculptures are surrounded by pyrite, the basic material for steel. It is one of the hardest organic material known. One of the simplest forms of life that serves as a counterbalance to the embryo, a flesh-and-blood human, at the top of evolution, containing all possibilities of life, but defenseless. The colors make a contrast that also symbolizes this statement: the embryos and fetuses are white, since they are innocent, and the pyrite is “steel-colored” with a crystalline structure that gives it a certain glimmer and catches the eye. The concept of using pyrite is based on the theory of molecular biologist and organic chemist, Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith,126 which states that the first “starter organisms” of life were minerals (in the starting argument, clay) when RNA, one of the three most essential molecules of every living form along with DNA and proteins, took over the minerals’ crystalline structure and learned how to duplicate itself. Consequently, the RNA, also gained the power of replication. Anker makes human and nature equally fundamental, showing the symbiosis between all living organisms, but also between the organic and inorganic through the materials she employs. Like in The Glass Veil, here Anker plays with oversizing the subject, too. First Fetus, Golden Boy, and Cubist Baby (fig. 46-48) are about 20x10x9” and 32x16x16” versions of their life-size or even smaller variants, made by rapid prototype, using urethane foam and acrylic.

125 Usually in the exhibitions Anker adds to them with prints: for example, at the 2007 exhibition Human Nature in Indiana, she included Mycro Glymph and the photographs of Golden Boy (Stem Cells). 126 Cairns-Smith dissects this theory in his books Seven Clues to the Origin of Life and Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life, both published in 1985. 66

Figure 45. Suzanne Anker, Origins and Futures, 2007

Figure 47. First Fetus, 2004

Figure 46. Golden Boy, 2004 Figure 48. Cubist Baby, 2004

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3.1.2.3. Exhibition - Human Nature

In exhibitions, Origins and Futures is often displayed together with some of the 3D- printed versions of Stem Cells, consisting of nine images. (fig. 49) They are placed together with the embryos and pyrites on a stainless-steel table. The photographed forms are made of polyurethane foam, and refer to actual stem cells: exploring the possibilities of the material by putting them under higher air pressure, this shows the infinite possibilities and chances of a human that has not yet been born, including its gender. At the exhibition Human Nature, held in 2007, in Indiana, Origins and Futures was shown together with the Codex: Genome images depicting animal chromosomes that look like a book of extended, endless chromosomal possibilities, unveiling the genetic map of the living.

Figure 49. Exhibition Human Nature, 2007

3.1.3. Chromosomes

Chromosomes are made of DNA molecules and their respective proteins; they carry the sequence of genes. The structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 and it shaped science

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so much that the twentieth century has been called the “century of the gene”.127 By the twenty-first century, instead of one molecule, the entire genome, (the entire genetic material of a person) stands in the center of artists’ and scientists’ interest. As Mike Fortun puts it:

Like any other experimental endeavor, genomics is not only about promises – better drugs, better food, better you – but genomics is promising. Genomics is a science and an industry that works by speculating in, gambling with, betting on, or otherwise leveraging limited knowledge, incomplete information, and a network of diverse resources into a promised future.128

Artist Frank Moore says that Suzanne Anker has a significant role in shaping the way we think about genetics today: “[she presents] the visual tip of a submerged iceberg of information: […] crystallizing countless hours of discussion with peers and others, including scientists.”129

Visible under the microscope, chromosomes are reminiscent of language semiotics or even figurines. As part of the DNA, the signs of semiotics are elaborated as index, symbol, or icon in contemporary art.130 In the case of chromosomes, index means a marker of personal identity, an artificially produced pattern that only refers to the whole meaning of this identity, but not portraying it. Autoradiograph is a common tool for artists working on this. Symbols refer to their subjects too, but purely based on theoretically agreed-upon social conventions. In their physical form, chromosomes are employed in photography, painting, sculpture, but also in video installations. In the works of Suzanne Anker, they appear as relief-like installations affixed to the wall.

127 Mike Fortun, “Now then: Promising Speed Genomics,” in Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution, ed. Marvin Heiferman and Carole Kismaric, 17-25. (New York: Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery Skidmore College, 2001), 23. 128 Ibid. 129 Frank Moore, “Something’s Coming,” in Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution, ed. Marvin Heiferman and Carole Kismaric, 26-29. (New York: Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery Skidmore College, 2001), 28. 130 Nelkin and Anker, Molecular Gaze, 27. 69

3.1.3.1. Zoosemiotics

This piece was installed from 1993 to 2011 and it was one of the earliest works on the subject of genetics, more specifically DNA and its iconic function. Choosing the metaphoric way to refer to science, Zoosemiotics presents magnified silver chromosomes of different animals, such as fish, alligators, frogs, or gazelles. Cropped from their original context, they appear as ancient letters or small human bodies, taking on different “poses”. They seem to connect to each other through movement and communication, in the way that chromosomes pass information to each other in an animal’s body.

3.1.3.2. Exhibition - Devices of Wonder

The installation Devices of Wonder (2001) (fig. 50) was placed in the center of a gallery. A large glass in front of the wall was situated in a chair without a backrest. The glass is three-quarters filled with water. When looking through it, the glass and the water act as a reflecting lens, which distorts, enlarges and transforms the environment.131 The organized chromosomes appear upside-down, representing the random structure they can create in the human body. When looking at the semiotics on the wall, they turn into cavorting, dancing, human-like figures. This evokes the film technique that signals “remembering”, evoking a dream-like sequence of pictures, one picture floating into another. These silver objects are arranged by karyotype: they have a specific order. It is like writing based on chromosomes: based on the karyotype of genetic structure of different animals, by looking at them, the number and types of chromosome, it is possible to identify the animal. Every single creature is unique and possesses an unrepeatable individual genetic iconography.

131 Barbara Maria Stafford, Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 2001), 148-151. 70

In her installation, Anker proposes that this interaction happens when “life fractures”. By reducing an animal’s image to its chromosomes, nothing is left of their physiology – not even their cadaver – nor other information we know about them, be it habits or habitats, nothing left of our concepts about them, only the fragility of the portrayed animal. With Zoosemiotics, Anker also refers to the countless organisms and animal species fighting for survival by underlining their vulnerability and endangerment by exploring their unique and unrepeatable gene structure. Her view is unique, too: it contains nothing from the attractiveness of the animal as we would see them on movie posters or zoo advertisement – the chromosomes show only the core construction, therefore, only the truth about the depicted animal.132

On an opposite wall, the same construction of installation depicted human chromosomes in circle-shape. It appeared first in 1991 in an exhibition and was titled Random Sex (reflexion) but in contrast to Zoosemiotics, chromosomes here were randomly arranged, in the way that human chromosomes are randomly constructed at the conception of a new life. Looking through the glass changes the image, and yet, not truly: although the figures on the wall look upside-down through the water, the arrangement results in the same random order.

Figure 50. Exhibition Devices of Wonder, 2001

132 Stafford, “Genetic Perspective,” 380. 71

3.2. Territories of Living Space

A space to live is a primary right of any living microorganisms, plants, animals, and human. If we poison this living space, we destroy them, too, and we have to produce them artificially. Anker’s Genetic Seed Bank is engaged with the preservation of the endangered species. Preparation has been done to make it possible for humans to live on another planet, regardless of the fact that mankind cannot live on Earth either without causing significant damage to its nature. However, curiosity is unstoppable and it leads to destruction, but also discovery. Astroculture is an artistic part of this discovery. Vanitas (in a Petri dish) warns against an extreme material culture worldwide but also highlights the importance of being aware of cultural differences. The Genetic Seed Bank investigates underwater, while the Astroculture explores plant- growing in outer space, Vanitas is concerned with the earth we walk on every day, and finally, Remote Sensing transforms the installations into micro-landscapes by 3D- printing the contents of petri dishes.

3.2.1. Water

“Die Kunst kann nicht mehr vergessen, dass auch sie Teil eines lebenden Ökosystems ist, und sie ist darauf angewiesen, ihre gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Relevanz im Angesicht der enormen globalen Herausforderungen zu definieren, denen die Menschheit ausgesetzt ist.” 133 (“Art can no longer forget that it is also part of a living ecosystem, and it depends on defining its social and cultural relevance in the face of the enormous global challenges that humanity is facing.”)

Artists have been using water and the concept of water to draw attention to ecological problems since the 1960s. In his installation Reinwasseraufbereitungsanlage (1972), Hans Haacke deals with the problem of water pollution in the Rhine; Austrian artist Fedo

133 Sarah Bildstein, Konzept Wasser: Aspekte und Analyse Zeitgenössischer Positionen [Master’s Thesis, University of Graz, 2012],94. Quoted after Heike Strelow, Ökologische Ästhetik, Theorie und Praxis künstlerischer Umweltgestaltung [Basel: Birkhäuser, 2004], 94.) 72

Ertl draws attention to the responsible usage of drinking water through his Goldwasser (1992) installation; and many other artists have been and are engaged in raising awareness of limited water sources and human relations to water.134 Genetic Seed Bank, however, approaches water from a different angle: the work deals with the inhabitants of water and thus, human responsibility towards sea creatures and their living space.

3.2.1.1. Genetic Seed Bank

Five photographs (inkjet prints) on watercolor paper and a video compose an undersea- experience shown in the pieces of the Genetic Seed Bank. (fig. 51) They portray different kinds of corals in a terrarium, planted in a three-layered PVC pipe. In this way, Anker examines the phenomenon of the once-living forms in their natural habitat in an enclosed glass space.

The visible texture of the coral is reminiscent of the Biota and Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind objects; however, placed in a different medium, water, it emphasizes even more the interaction of a natural organism with man-made material: the coral and its artificial environment, the terrarium.

Arranging the corals together, we get something similar to a biobank that collects biological species of the same kind.135 The function of a biobank is to “regenerate” or “renew” a species, such as the MOTE laboratory’s coral research program. The aim of the program is to reduce the increasing destruction of coral reefs. The photographs that were taken of the project are tiny: even the largest one is not more than 24x26 cm and as such, reflects the real size of the objects they depict. It requires us to go closer and

134 Bildstein, Konzept Wasser, 84-91. 135 Nicole C. Karafyllis, “Die Samenbank als Paradigma einer Theorie der modernen Lebendsammlung.Über das Sammeln von Biofakten und ihre Liminalitäten,” in Theorien der Lebendsammlung: Pflanzen, Mikroben und Tiere als Biofakte in Genbanken, ed. Nicole C. Karafyllis (Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Karl Alber, 2018), 41. 73

examine it, in order to face the questions of our responsibility in the preservation of living organisms and how the practice of art contributes to taking better care of the Earth by revitalizing and diversifying it. Photographed in the Mote Tropical Research Laboratory, the Genetic Seed Bank draws attention to possible forms of preservation of nature and artists’ role in the issue.

In contrast with a Wunderkammer, where it is possible to encounter the dead versions of the coral reef, here they are put in life-supporting aquariums and have become an object of study and analysis. Imitating concrete slabs in the bottom of the ocean where the corals live, researchers applied PVC pipes as corresponding ground but also to bring them into focus so they can keep recording the condition and growth of the corals. Once they reach a certain size and condition to regenerate in the laboratory, they are released back to the ocean.

Coral is interesting for Anker not only as a living subject, and a subject to preserve, but also as a community composed of individual animals interacting each other, living in symbiosis, and also parasitic relationships. Fish, plants, and unicellular animals also belong to the coral reef. A coral is actually a composite of polyps that builds a structure that functions like organs in a body. Their significance is shown by their relationship to other organisms in their environment: any destruction (for example pollution or temperature changes) inflicted on them has an impact on the whole system.136 An interesting parallel from the work of the MOTE laboratory, is when researchers recorded the history of every coral with their finding data, along with their conditions and composition.137

136 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 130. 137 Ibid. 129-130. 74

Figure 51. Suzanne Anker, Genetic Seed Bank, 2007

3.2.1.2. Exhibition - Genetic Seed Bank

The exhibition of this artwork also contained a large table with vanitas-like petri dishes, arranged with different fragments of marine organisms: algae, crabs and crab shells, corals, and urchins, composed as they are in their underwater ecosystems. (fig. 52) Similar to the Vanitas (in a Petri dish) installations, here they are also metaphors of the contemporary scientific and cultural position.138

There are 9 photographs that show 6 different tanks from different angles and degrees of closeness. The diversity of the corals is emphasized by their arrangement and color:

138 Ibid. 75

a big, fleshy coral similar to a flower-bouquet is juxtaposed next to a small and narrow one, orange-colored corals next to blue ones. The picture (Brain-Drain) graphically reflects the brain-like structure of the sponges that we can also see in the pieces White- Cloud and Green Ring.

The video itself is one minute long and is on loop for 30 minutes and can be seen as the motion picture-version of the photo Genetic Seed Bank (Blue Square): both show the same tank, captured in whole.

Figure 52. Exhibition Genetic Seed Bank (Detail), 2012

3.2.2. Outer Space

Many artists have been inspired by space sciences throughout the centuries. In the Renaissance, Copernicus explored the heliocentric model with the sun in its center and Albrecht Dürer created works like Melencolia I to show this discovery. In the era of great discoveries, Johannes Vermeer’s The Astronomer (1668) reflects on Kepler’s law of planetary motion, and the 1888 engraving by an unknown artist appears in Camille Flammarion’s L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire which tells about the idea of analogous spaces which could be habitable – just like Astroculture (Shelf Life) and Eternal Return reflects on a NASA project that analyses possibilities for another livable

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place besides the Earth; the Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind explores the wonder of the universe itself.

3.2.2.1 Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind

The pieces of the Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind (fig. 53) are made of ceramics with a layer of metal glaze, which makes them look like metal artworks. This glaze is also intended as a metaphor; the pieces recall meteorites – objects from outer space. Their texture is roughened as they pass through Earth’s atmosphere, and little fragments crumble from its surface. They aim to remind us that coincidences in outer space are permanent and they are beyond human control: it is a territory that the human brain does not have access to. Thus, Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind shows us how little we know about life in outer space and how tiny we are in it. Even the name alludes to it: our knowledge about this subject is valuable, and yet we are always restricted to the periphery, of knowing nearly nothing. Diamond Mind also refers to something spiritual: according to a Buddhist philosopher, an invocation of brightness and centeredness manifests in creating art and thus, giving energy a form. This was the theme of a piece by Anker from 1978 entitled Diamond Cutters, which eventually led to this work. 139

Figure 53. Suzanne Anker, Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind, 2013

139 Ibid. 149. 77

3.2.2.2. Exhibition - While Darkness Sleeps

While Darkness Sleeps was displayed at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas, in the year 2013. (fig. 54) Here, the pieces of the Carbon Collision of the Diamond Mind were set on a low table with transparent Plexiglas surface and cubes as legs. The different-sized, glazed objects were arranged in a scattered way, giving the impression of an unorganized, not man-made order, like planets and rocks revolving in outer space. Having a similar theme, it was installed together with the Biota sponges and shown together with the photographic and 3D-printed version of Remote Sensing. On another wall, four pocket projectors assembled with light stands projected colored microscopic images of corals using time-lapse photography. They explore the beauty of the coral in detail, while on the other wall the video projection plays Genetic Seed Bank, where corals are shown in their diverse beauty as a community. Inkjet prints titled The Greening of the Galaxy (I. And II.) show aquatic creatures photographed at close range, following close-up photographs of dead birds. In each of these works, the scientifically- made image mediates the dynamic of life and its power for transformation.

Figure 54. Exhibition While Darkness Sleeps, 2013

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3.2.2.3. Astroculture (Shelf Life/Eternal Return)

Astroculture is an installation and photography series from 2009. (fig. 55-56) It is the artistic imaging of an ongoing NASA project called Veggies that deals with the supply of freshly-made catering for the astronauts in outer space. Furthermore, the special fuchsia color that is also employed in Anker’s series was produced for this purpose. Besides the strict guidelines concerning the eating habits of the astronauts, the following questions arise: how do plants grow and behave in weightlessness? To what extent are they different from plants grown on Earth?140 Using these questions to produce the work, a connection built on scientific facts, artistic creativity, and fantasy is established.

Shelf Life was part of the exhibition Corpus Extremus (Life+) and depicts an “inner garden”, in which herbs and vegetables were planted. The installation is similar to a modern cabinet of curiosities (Wunderkammer), where objects are placed behind glass, but it is also reminiscent of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century version of these cabinets, where art, nature and science were collected together in the same space.

The installation consists of three terrarium-like metal boxes, both divided into three smaller sections, in which there are small plastic bags filled with peat. After a couple of days, plants start to germinate, later putting out stems, blossoms, and finally fruit or seed, just as in “normal” circumstances. They appear to be fuchsia-colored, although intrinsically they are green. LED-lamps provide artificial sun for them, making it possible to keeping plants in indoor locations where there is not sufficient natural light.

The photographs depict the exhibitions and the process of growing. They are large-scale photographs, which were not edited with any graphic software or other methods or technologies; therefore, they show the exact same saturated colors that can be seen in real life.141

140 Ibid. 155. 141 Suzanne Anker, “Bio-ethers and Luminous Ores: Welcome to Wonderland,” in Embodied Fantasies: From Awe to Artifice, ed. Suzanne Anker and Sabine Flach (Bern; Vienna: Peter Lang, 2013), 42-43. 79

Eternal Return (2014) was made using the same concept, built up from the same elements. The difference lies in the environment: here, the metal boxes have been taken out of the exhibition space and placed in the Cathedral of St. John the Devine in New York. The cathedral, a space of Catholic faith, is a symbol of the eternal return of Christ and with this, the piece gets a reference to the Christian cultural sphere.142

Figures 55-56. Suzanne Anker, Astroculture (Eternal Return), 2015

3.2.3. Micro-landscapes

The cycle of life never stops. Walking in a forest, one can see that dead trees become a host to mushrooms, moss, lichen, and many other organic forms; from its roots maybe a new tree grows that produces leaves and crops. Vanitas (in a Petri dish) and Remote

142 Giovanni Aloi, “The Greenhouse Effect,” in Why Look at Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art (Boston: Brill, 2018), 138. 80

Sensing work as a fragment of a “digital” cycle of nature: the actual petri dish pieces have been photographed; the photographs were put into a program that produces 3D models, which in turn were also photographed. While petri dishes provide us with a cultural landscape from all over the world, the Remote Sensing pieces bring us a small, man-made, fantasy landscape like Oz (from Frank L. Baum’s Wizard of Oz) or the one in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.

3.2.3.1. Vanitas (in a Petri dish)

The Vanitas (in a Petri dish) series are installation pieces that consist of objects found in nature as well as handcrafted ones, arranged in small petri dishes. In every exhibition, the contents of these dishes are different, depending on the country: in Berlin, the table was displayed objects that can be found in Germany; in Shanghai, objects were purchased from Chinese shops. In Singapore, the installation included a “hundred-year- egg”, which is traditionally prepared over three months using a special method that causes the yolk to turn green and the texture of cheese. Also, the dishes are arranged by color: they range from purple-green complementary colors to colors that differ only by shades. In Shanghai, they created a rainbow effect, and accordingly received the title “Rainbow Loom”. (fig. 57) One can see a rubber duck in one of them as sign of mass- production, local dried fish that evokes crowded markets, different product packaging with Chinese writing on them, as well as marine elements like sponges and plants from the sea.

Regardless of which exhibition is being examined, the pieces of the Vanitas series show the status of national identity and also the inequality of society.143

In its form, it is similar to a Wunderkammer. The selected objects reflect the various and colorful quality of nature. Every single item here has a symbolic meaning and was chosen for their color, form, or texture. By compiling organic, inorganic, edible,

143 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, S.176. 81

poisonous, living or dead materials in the same dish, regardless of whether they can be directly connected, this installation refers to synthetic biology, in the sense of bringing new, artificial forms of life into being. Arranging a new kind of organism and fantasy of evolution involving microorganisms, Vanitas (in a Petri dish) creates another level of organic structure.144

The petri dish itself has a history. It was invented in 1887 by Richard Julius Petri, a colleague of Robert Koch. Both Petri and Koch were serving in the German army at the time. The invention of the petri dish made it possible for Koch to isolate the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis and that for cholera. Since then, these little tools have been standard components of scientific laboratories working with bacteria, fungi, and with embryos. It is not only a tool, but also an aid that has revolutionized scientific research and continues to do so to this day, despite the fact that its form has not changed since the nineteenth century. For example, it is used for plant cloning and separating animal tissues, and therefore, for holding objects with growth potential that do not possess their own body.145

As the petri dishes helped in separating the examined substances in biological laboratories, Vanitas (in a Petri dish) separates cultural “facts” around the world. Like the genes carrying our identity, identified in biology laboratories, petri dishes of the Vanitas series carry historical and cultural identity. The petri dish also received a fixed place in the field of Bio Art and Design too: microbiologist and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming was the first person who used this tool as a container for creating art – he painted with the bacteria he found in it. A number of artists have followed his example, among them Yacov Avrahami who paints landscapes with bacteria, or Maria Penil Cobo who uses it mostly for creating floral patterns. Accompanying many of her exhibitions, Suzanne Anker uses petri dishes for creating an extended, three-dimensional version of still-lifes.

144 Ibid, 169-172. 145 Karafyllis, “BioArt?,” 74. 82

Figure 57. Exhibition Rainbow Loom in Shanghai, 2014

3.2.3.2. Remote Sensing

Anker plays with the definitions of organic and inorganic, artificial and natural once again in Remote Sensing. This set contains 3D-printed versions of the Vanitas pieces, photographed in front of a black background, creating images that resemble icons, with high resolution. Subsequently, these images are entered into a computer program, which converts these photos into 3D pictures by assigning different degrees of brightness to different colors, but it is also responsible for the additional geometry the object gets and for great sense of depth and details. This process is called displacement mapping. In the next step, the new images are run through a software program that makes 3D-printing possible by adding a new axis – a z coordinate (for the height of the object) – to the already existing x and y coordinates (width and length, respectively). The same software is responsible for putting the diverse colors on top of each other

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while printing. For the last step, the 3D printer builds up the object based on those coordinates, layer by layer.146

The resulting work takes on new meaning: at first glimpse, it appears to be a three- dimensionally reduced still life – an organic space filled with originally organic and inorganic materials that has come to life as something artificial. Also, the concept of the work can be seen as an extension of our knowledge and notion about images in science and art. Since the objects are small, the title Remote Sensing is newly contextualized here: it refers to the actual process of remote sensing that captures places that are hard to see, or are toxic. When viewers look at a printed model, they turn into a remote sensor themselves: analysis is possible by getting closer and perceiving the details. (fig. 58)

Figure 58. Suzanne Anker, Remote Sensing (below), 2014-

146 Flach and Anker, The Glass Veil, 176-177. 84

4. The SVA Bio Art Lab

Thanks to a scholarship granted by the University of Graz, in the summer of 2019, I had the opportunity to meet Suzanne Anker in person and visit her Bio Art Laboratory at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Before the interview147, Anker greeted me cordially and showed me around the lab and the small office that belongs to it. In the office, a lively student was giving a brief “report” on developing it: the next step would be getting a couch, which is quite practical if one wants to sit and read next to the bookshelf containing purely literature on Bio Art.

The lab itself (fig. 59), founded in 2011, is reminiscent of a greenhouse: one can see indoor plants of different kinds under fuchsia-color, probably as part of the ongoing piece Astroculture. On top of a huge steel shelf are cast sponges or corals that are similar to the Biota pieces; below them, saltwater aquariums hold starfish, sea snails, coral, and crabs, and freshwater aquariums containing fish and frogs. On the bottom shelves, one could see succulents and cactuses. Right next to the entrance door, on a shelf, there was a terrarium with cockroaches brought by a student for making a project. They built a whole ecosystem around them and it became a symbol for the circle of life. As this case shows, open commitment towards searching for the new and bringing together technology and biology is a priority. The fine art building that Anker started in 2010 houses many new technologies that range from digital sculpture to digital sewing, AI, video photography, and much more. Moving onwards in the lab, you can see different kinds of microscopes, DNA testing apparatuses for tissue engineering and for incubation of bacteria; there are also projectors for representation and cameras for documentation. Of course, humidifiers and planting materials are also there, such as tools for sterilization, different kind of pipettes, and measuring equipment. On another stand, there are biomaterials like SCOBY and different kinds of mushrooms to create

147 The interview took place on August 14th, 2019, at the School of Visual Art in New York City.

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sustainable products. All these make the Bio Art Lab a “molecular cuisine”.148 Other materials to work with are animal skeletons, or even tomatoes, as the group project Myo Tomato proves (fig. 60-61). In this project, students genetically engineered a tomato to produce a protein similar to hemoglobin called myoglobin in a tomato, thereby eliminating the need for meat and meat products. So this tomato which could produce this protein would be available and, for instance, help mitigate global warming. That was a speculative project but that tomato actually had myoglobin in it. They did that as part of the Biodesign Challenge and placed as first runner up.149

Another school project by the members of the laboratory was a piece called Soiled. This one was about soil testing in the five boroughs of New York. Here they looked at the way in which we could define a new apparatus that would give readings on the different nutrients present in the soils of homeowners or people who had apartments that had access to land. In this project the members were able to determine the amount of nutrients and whether or not the soil was depleted. These nutrients range from aluminum and ammonium, to sulfides and nitrates. It was presented at IGEM, a conference on synthetic biology held in Boston, and won a gold medal in their art and design area. 150

The individual projects range from tissue engineering and creating projects that could essentially eliminate styrofoam to creating clothing out of biomaterials that are not toxic and other projects which are more about raising awareness of the role of biology in contemporary society, because, as Anker states as we discussed upstairs in the interview, “we all live under the umbrella of the genetic revolution”. By this term, she means that the genetic revolution is a way to assess genetic information and its potentialities in terms of both creating new living systems and assessing the degradation of existing ones. Thus in this revolution we are able to turn into code the constituent particles of a living organism and how they can be altered to become something else. There are also many social, political, and economic consequences of this revolution,

148 https://bioart.sva.edu/facilities/, accessed February 21, 2020. 149 Anker, interview. 150 Ibid. 86

meaning this information becomes a commodity and it affects the way in which we think about privacy, health, gender, patrimony, and natural resources. So for example, for companies, who are in the business of seeds and seed production, by patenting certain gene sequences, they can create seeds that have to be purchased every year, rather than essentially having seeds that can produce plants the following year. Another part of the genetic revolution, she says, has to do with the creation of the new medicines which can be used to target existing diseases or to create new organs for a way in which the transplantation of organs is now possible in human health. Who creates new crops? Who creates the possibility of genetically-modified organisms, and who owns those patents? Also, how are one’s genes extracted or owned by a company?

Competitions are not the only platforms where Anker and the laboratory are represented. The Bio Art Lab has been introduced via several news outlets, ranging from The Wall Street Journal to broadcast television, as well as the various competitions mentioned above. The students who worked on these projects have also presented their work at the Museum of Modern Art. Moreover, each semester brings a new opportunity to continue visiting other venues, as they have been hosted in Portugal and Berlin recently. As for exhibitions, one of the most important worth mentioning is the one called Where is the Art in Bio Art? Anker curated this show in 2014, and it was held in the School’s Flatiron Gallery. Its program focuses on the phenomena of Bio Art, as it is a very contested term: there is no agreement on its origin or what it means.151 The exhibition therefore was a comment about many other exhibitions in which there was no art in the Bio Art. Such exhibitions may simply display, for example, a petri dish or a microscope, lab-code, or some kind of electrolysis gel. These exhibitions point to science’s encroachment, but do not relate it to the history of art and its visual presentation. Hence, Where is the Art in Bio Art? addressed this question and focused

151 Anker’s position is that Bio Art consists of three sub-genres: there is the wetware that includes laboratory experimentation. There is also an aspect that consists only of the cultural imaginary, which can exist in painting, sculptures, films, and texts in which the issues about altering nature are of major importance. The third subset has to do with computer generation of the analysis of form and substance, using the binary system of zeroes and ones to convey meaning. (Anker, interview) 87

on the fact that Bio Art not only has scientific, philosophical, ethical, and social elements, but it has a visual part, that reaches back to art historical genres.152

In Anker’s view, Bio Art laboratories have a lot in common with gardens: they are both artificially made, alloying cultural, visual and natural aspects; and as such, they need daily care in order to maintain life.153

As for future plans for the laboratory, it will stay the size it is, but become more complex in the kinds of projects that it hosts. For example, in 2019 the laboratory had a visiting artist-scientist come in to do a project on grafting. Sam Van Aken´s work was recently shown at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in Manhattan, in which he produced a tree that had forty different kinds of fruits on it. He did a workshop with the students in order for the lab to be able to continue with grafting. An expert in mycology was also invited. He will help define some projects about mushrooms which, besides their culinary use, are now being used as an alternative to styrofoam. Flowers are treated as sources of investigation. Anker terms this ethnobiology. Plants may have originated from other place, but they have become a part of the European or American landscape. This allows them to be studied from the perspective of migration. A further element studies the plants as biographical sources: many people remember flowers from their childhood or from their neighborhood, even if they do not know their names, or where they come from. In the laboratory, Anker and her students also look at the differences between native plants, invasive species, ornamentals, food sources and so on. The uses surrounding flowers and plants go far beyond their nutritional value.

The plants (which are seen as demographical sources) aquariums, tools, and materials in the lab as much as its function evoke a Wunderkammer. The function of such laboratories is somewhere between a scientific laboratory and an “atelier”, a free space for composing art with the usage of organic materials. With the medical museums, medical history is added to today’s Wunderkammer, giving the chance for an overview

152 Ibid. 153 Ibid. 88

of the knowledge gained from life into the twenty-first century. With the increase of human interaction in nature, the line between natural and man-made has become blurred.154 As an extension of the Wunderkammer, Anker’s Bio Art Lab has become an interactive ground for bringing together knowledge from different disciplines and creating new forms of art.

Figure 59. The SVA Bio Art Lab in New York City

Figure 60. Genetically engineered snack of student project Myo Tomato from Biodesign Challenge 2016

154 Flach and Anker, Habitus, 144. 89

Figure 61. Exhibition of student project Myo Tomato from Biodesign Challenge 2016

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5. In Conversation with Suzanne Anker

Beata Fenyvesi: Which arrived first in your life, science or art?

Suzanne Anker: Both at the same time. And I think it had to do with my amazement of collecting butterflies and also hatching them in my house as a child. I was amazed that a butterfly could emerge from a caterpillar as it went through its metamorphosis. I still to this day am amazed by that. And that kind of sense of wonder was also coupled by my drawings of creating a world that I could participate in in awe. They both came together but I never realized that until many years later, till I started working really with natural forms in my art in the late 90s.

BF: Before that, in 1974 you already made paper reliefs that deal with inserting organic matters in your work.

SA: Yes. And it is interesting that it follows uncertain obscure ways of Charles Darwin. Because when I made these paper reliefs, I was living in Colorado and the whole geological imprint of the mountains with the snow was extraordinary to me. So as a child it was the physical world of the insect and as an adult it was the geography and climate and then it came together.

BF: You also worked with bronze. Could you please tell more about your early bronze works?

SA: What I started doing in the bronze work, was to take an object from nature, like a twig, or a pinecone and match it up with something that came from culture, like a dog’s soccer ball. After that, everything was converted to bronze, then put together which meant that it became a hybrid of the nature-culture dyad. At the same time, I was reading Donna Haraway and engaging myself in the critical theory of the time to look at nature as a continual with the cultural production. So the bronze work is this transition between geography and biology.

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BF: Do these works have a reference to art history?

SA: Yes, they do, in many ways, concerning anti-metamorphoses. I mean, what happens when you convert the twig into a bronze twig? The regular twig disappears and then it reappears as bronze. All of the work has some relation to art history because nature has always been a predominant factor in the history of art.

BF: Talking about nature, Darwin’s On the origin of species is considered to be the foundation of evolution and natural selection. This and his other works put an influence on artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and onwards. Where do you see an impact of his work on yours?

SA: It’s like an untangled bank of possibilities, it’s about the enormous opportunity to make and remake the world and you know, Darwin’s work is even hard to believe at this time, because of the subtle differences he was able to observe. We are still thinking about those observations today. I wonder what he would say about the new creatures that exist now, because Darwin’s conception of time was very different to what happens in a laboratory. There was no genetics in his time and the fact that we can manipulate species – even a mouse – in a very short time, allows us to conceive the world in a different way. The other thing that’s different is how the global phenomena of extinction, toxicity, climate change and invasive species, was not as rapid in the nineteenth century as it is now. Of course, we think of it as the beginning of the industrial revolution but initially, Darwin’s findings were based on a more “natural” world.

BF: Do philosophers and writers influence your work as well?

SA: Absolutely. Donna Haraway, for sure, Jürgen Habermas, Margaret Atwood, David Freedberg, of course, Aristotle, and also, Nicole Karafyllis, who is a German philosopher who coined the term “biofact”.

BF: I went through a book where Karafyllis also published an essay about biobanks. Can you make any references between your work and biobanks?

SA: I don’t think there is a direct reference and I know her – she is a friend of mine. She talks about the distinction between nature and culture as it appears in Aristotle’s time 92

and she holds it as true that this distinction still takes place but much more subtle now. But she also brings up the fact that whatever we do with these entities that arrive on a laboratory table, living laboratory life, and have really no place in the natural order of things: what are they? Are they artefacts? But they are living and breathing, and an artefact doesn’t live and breathe. So it’s the result of some kind of man-made concoction. I don’t think I have created any work that has a direct reference to the term. Well, I’m going to take that back, because if we take the Vanitas series, which are concoctions of something from the natural world and something from the living world. So if I have a rubber ducky next to a sunflower, there’s this hybrid persona of this thing that talks about this crossover, because it’s kind of a second nature: it’s not in reality, it’s a metaphor, it’s a conjunction, but what industry does is it simulates the natural world, so the yellow rubber ducky is the same color as a sunflower. So I would say that it relates to Karafyllis’ way.

BF: Talking about the Vanitas. For the exhibitions, you obtain every object in the country you exhibit. How does this process look like? Do you select a lot?

SA: Well, this is very interesting. What I’ve learned in this scenario – because I have done a lot of the Vanitas in Germany, in Shanghai and Beijing, and in New York City – that many of the entities are the same in every country, showing us the whole global spread of the materialization of different forms both living and man-made. But some are unique to the subculture of the country itself and that has been an expedition in looking at what are the differences in each one of these countries. For example, recently I was in the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador and I led two workshops in Vanitas in which my participants made vanitas, of course using the local flora and materials – they are quite different.

One of the things about the Vanitas series, is that it makes people aware of their surroundings, because people spend more time looking at something small than something big. They really pay attention to that.

BF: You travel a lot with this series. Is there one that is closer to you or having more meaning to you than the others?

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SA: Well, the last one I did, which was recently, last September at the Everson Museum. There I had very large-scale photographs of the Vanitas and I had the small-scale 3- dimensional prints in one space. It’s extraordinary to match them up to 2D and 3D as one kind of visual experience. (fig. 62)

BF: The 3D printed version of the Vanitas is the pieces of Remote Sensing. Would you say, that this work has a reference to landscape paintings?

SA: Yes, totally, landscape painting and to environmental surveillance the way in which satellite data can tell you what is going on around the world. In landscape painting too, because of the scale issues and everything in Remote Sensing is purposely proportioned the way a landscape is: for example, when you are on the airplane, and you see the way the land is divided up. You get that in Remote Sensing. And what is interesting is that the Vanitas are like still-lifes; and Remote-Sensing which come from those, are like landscapes, so you have two art historical genres that are connected.

BF: Staying with the artworks, what is the exact process of transforming sponges into ceramics in the Biota pieces? Are the sponges still there when the process ends?

SA: This is a very classical technique, similar to lost wax casting in bronze, but this is porcelain. So what you do is you take the sponge – sea sponge – and you dip it into liquid porcelain a number of times, dry it out, and then put in the kiln in the oven. The sponge is gone and what you are left with is the ceramic porcelain. It becomes an indexical sign. It has disappeared but you know it’s there. Like a footprint.

BF: Why did you choose ceramics for the transformation? What cultural or other meaning does it have for you?

SA: I chose the material because I was curating an exhibition in Istanbul about neuroscience and I wanted to come up with a metaphor for the brain. The brain is like a sponge and even some of the images of the sponges – the little corpuscles – are quite like the brain. Moreover, the sponge even appears in Emily Dickinson’s poetry talking about the brain as a sponge.

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BF: There’s even this saying that kids’ brain are like sponges, because they soak up everything.

SA: That’s correct, because the sponge is one of the first multi-cellular animals and it doesn’t produce cancers so it has been studied as an organism for other neurological diseases such as ALS or Alzheimer’s. Look at the brain – why does the brain and human cells produce cancer, why doesn’t the sponge? The sponge has 70 percent of the same genetic makeup as humans do and it has all of the attributes of making a nervous system but never did. So that was my interest with the whole Biota series.

BF: The figurines of the Origins and Futures are reminiscent of embryos made with rapid prototype technique. What brought you to choose this technique?

SA: It was the assisted-unassisted reproduction and there’s a lot of information in this work. The way in which embryos grow is automated, that essentially they’re put in a petri dish and I watch them grow. So nothing is happening internally, only externally and the way in which we think about producing new babies like in Brave New World is through this automatic process. Rapid prototype was a great way to say ok, if you like that one, I give you more of the same.

BF: Can you see any art historical references in your chosen technique?

SA: No, because it’s a very new technology. I mean there are artists who work with this technology now but in 2004, when I did this series, rapid prototype was not a common technology.

BF: Do you have works that require special requirements or spaces when exhibiting them?

SA: I try not to do that, because it gets too complicated. Seeds cannot travel from country to country, neither can any kind of living matter, be it vegetables or animals. This become a problem with our works that are alive. So in that case it is best to use the plants or the animals in the country in which the work is being exhibited. So for example when I was in the Daejeon Biennale in Korea several years ago, which was all about Bio Art, I had to buy all of my plants and seeds and soil in Korea. 95

BF: What are you working on at the moment?

SA: Right now, I am trying to integrate my experiences of reading Darwin and going to the Galápagos Islands, (fig. 63) experiencing the way animals are ever present in those islands and not afraid of humans. My visit there was fabulous. It was just like going into the Garden of Eden. The respect for the animals and wildlife is extraordinary there. Also, I am spending time in a cloud forest and essentially working on my own big garden, figuring out the effects of the insects, animals, and light sources in it. So I don’t know what that’s going to be yet, until a few more months, but it will be a new project called Reading Darwin.

Figure 63. Exhibition view 1.5° Celsius at the Everson Museum, 2019

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Figure 64. Vanitas (in a Petri dish) workshop in the Galapagos Islands, 2019

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6. Conclusion

Bio Art is flourishing today – not only have biological matter, techniques, and concepts been integrated into art, but festivals, workshops, university programs, and many collaborations between artists and scientists have emerged in the field.155 The New York City-based organizations Biotech without Borders and Genspace offer open workshops and lectures on Bio Art to all who are interested; moreover, mainstream exhibition spaces have also started to give place to nature.156 Bio Art laboratories, such as the SVA Bio Art Lab, founded by Suzanne Anker at the School of Visual Art in NYC offers residence programs among its initiatives.

Bio Art reflects on today’s advanced technologies and processes, mainly biological technologies with a genetic focus. It has a great impact on modern and contemporary visual esthetics. One of the pioneers of the genre is Suzanne Anker, who investigates life cycles (one example with the cockroaches was on display in her lab) and the self based on biology. The strongly metaphorical language which she applies in her chosen materials and modernist techniques allows a playing field between imagery and cultural reality, pointing out the most relevant issues of our society but also building a connection to the history of art. Furthermore, Anker makes the case for a practical and theoretical convergence between science and art. As we live in a techno-cultural society, this convergence is extremely necessary; if both artists and scientist exclude themselves from each other’s world, they cannot manage to deal with broader questions and produce answers, and by doing so cut themselves off from fresh ideas. Also, in a more practical sense, science offer new tools and matters for artists to experiment with, while

155 Wilson, Art + Science, 9. 156 George Gessert pointed out to the necessity of new forms of spaces in order to create and exhibit artwork containing living organisms: for him the ideal spaces for exhibiting genetic art would be traditional galleries or museums combined with a natural environment for species. For instance, he considered galleries involving gardens, zoos and wilderness. (Gessert, History of Art,.234.) 98

science also needs to gather the support and the broad interest of the public so they can get funding in order to work, as well as public consent for their research agendas.157

As for Suzanne Anker, she continuously studies Darwin, and with each of her works, she goes back to the origin of life, the origin of universe. We live among animals and plants, genetics and the genetic revolution affect us all, so these are not only the territories of science – this is life. And what makes Suzanne Anker so imaginative is that she not only involves life in her works, but her works have their roots in life. This mentality must be appreciated within science and on a human level, too, so we understand the phenomena in and of themselves.158 I argue that understanding nature and life relieves us of of a couple of bad effects that we unwittingly learned from society and technological culture, such as living in the future instead of perceiving the present. By studying nature one can discover that every single living thing has its own time and phase. So does everyone and this is one aspect Suzanne Anker demonstrates with her work on artificial wombs. Nothing can happen more quickly than it currently does.

Finally, I would like to close with a summary on the relationship of art and science that explores the motivation of innovational artworks in the Bio Art field:

Through the artist’s lens, science is not a dry mechanistic set of equations but an enlivening interrogation of the malleable dimension of life. By interweaving concerns in the biosciences with genres in art and its history, we illustrate some of the underlying motif structures engaging culture over time. ”159

157 Ibid, 200. 158 Ibid. 159 Nelkin and Anker, Molecular Gaze, 185. 99

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