UCLA CSW Update Newsletter

Title Imagining a Genetic Seed Bank

Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9bk9w08w

Author Cassarino, Stacie

Publication Date 2012-12-15

eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Stacie Cassarino is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at UCLA, studying the intersections of American food culture, literature, and visual in the twentieth century. CSW u p d atDECEMBER e 2012

Susan Anker’s exhibition at the | Sci Imagining Gallery showcases the transformation of matter to challenge viewers to a Genetic think about environmental change. Seed Bank By stacie cassarino

f “magical thinking,” to use her words, impression of being undersea, eye-level with inorganic material? And yet the scenes do not is essential to Suzanne Anker’s practice of aquatic as it coexists with industrial deceive—the coral is flourishing. Anker’s exhibit Iintegrating science and visual art, it is also matter—vibrantly colorful bits of coral grow is a testimony to the power of nature to triumph. indispensable to the viewer entering her recent on concrete discs placed on a lattice of PVC, a But more than that, it demands to know: What exhibition, Genetic Seed Bank, at the Art | Sci plumbing plastic. One thinks of pictures of ma- is the place of beings in regard to other Gallery in the California Nanosystems Institute rine organisms regenerating in the ruins of ship- living beings and the environment? What are at UCLA. wrecks, only this is a controlled environment, the new ethics and epistemologies surround- Anker’s “silent animation” in large-scale composed by an artist. How can this multihued ing issues of artistically conceived partial life, digital photographs of marine life creates the spectacle of animate forms persevere from such particularly in this genetic age? What are the

6 By engaging activities that have been traditionally associated with an essentialized theory of femininity in the lab, a historically male domain— the reproduction and nurturing of new life forms, the modeling of new communication, the cultivation of symbiotic relationships, the valuing of affect— Anker disrupts reductive notions of Astroculture (Shelf Life) by Suzanne Anker. gender, procreation, (Detail) 2010, inkjet print, 24x36 in conception, and art.

7 UCLA Center for the Study of Women z csw update: december 2012 values embedded in works of art? How does art ence, producing a disorienting encounter with that brings to the forefront the artistic, social, preserve life? art-as-specimen. By repurposing signs from and scientific implications of using bio/med Part bio lab, part art exhibit, “Genetic Seed the natural world into the aesthetic realm, technologies for artistic purposes. Bank” showcases the transformation of mat- literally moving images from the lab to the Most importantly, Anker’s speculative and ter to get us to reflect upon the structural and gallery, Anker creates a new social field of im- practice-based research is approached with environmental changes occurring all around us, ages to interrogate questions of human agency, Oron Catts’s concept of an “ of care.” revealing the ways and means that life is being stewardship, knowledge, and ethics. With the Her work asks, What is the responsibility of altered in the twenty-first century. One might goal of integrating visual thinking into the liv- the artist in the preservation of living forms, situate Anker’s work in the realm of Bioart, a ing, she underscores the artist’s as well as the and how does such care, implemented in the relatively new genre that sprang up in response viewer’s personal responsibility for all aspects practice of art, contribute to a broader, global to the emergent field of , which entered of the living world. initiative to revitalize and diversify the planet? into popular culture in the late 1980s. Bioart Anker’s installation includes a series of five In this particular manifestation, coral adapts refers to the overlapping domains of the biologi- pictures, inkjet prints on watercolor paper, to and ultimately thrives within the foreign cal sciences and plastic arts, much like Trans- most at 24 x 36 in, the largest of these pro- environment in which it is aesthetically cir- genic Art, which involves the use of genetic jected onto the wall with a slight impression cumscribed, and in this way its restoration is engineering to invent new life. Bioartists work of movement replicating an oceanic current. achieved. However, Anker also uses art to see with live matter, often experiment with biotech- The images portray MOTE Laboratory, a coral and show the ways in which nature rebels. She nology, and produce artworks in laboratories, research and recovery program in the Florida highlights the variety and complexity of coral: studios, and galleries, with the aim of querying Keys where scientists are developing methods not just a plant, it is a “collective aggregate of the social, ethical, and aesthetic values rooted in to reduce the increasing destruction of coral individual animals operating as a community,” art. Anker, a visual artist and theorist working reefs, which house the matrices of entire eco- with symbiotic and parasitic relationships. Her with traditional and experimental media at the logical systems from corals and plants to fish dioramas enfold nature and culture (technol- intersection of art and the biological sciences, and birds. The concept for Anker’s coral seed ogy), considering their interdependencies and founded the first bio lab in a fine arts depart- bank derives from the work of these scientists, rendering an evocative “ambiguity of conjunc- ment, the Nature and Technology BioArt Lab whose system of classification for corals is tions.” It is within these points of contact —be- at the School of in NYC, where she based on genetic sequencing. She uses art as tween coral/PVC, nature/human, artist/specta- creates ecosystems in terrariums composed of an interventionist yet analogous means with tor—that transformation is possible. living and industrial materials. which to envisage the genetic seed bank as a As part of this exhibition, Anker lays out an The intentionally dimly lit gallery containing form of “repair” and “reformation.” Her genetic interactive mini-lab of petri dishes filled with Anker’s work simulates the laboratory experi- sequences of coral reefs are a recovery attempt fragments of things from the sea, such as coral,

8 UCLA Center for the Study of Women z csw update: december 2012 urchin, algae, and crab shell. The parts, though effectively resulting in a new and perhaps more “compelling narratives embedded in pictorial displaced from their natural habitats and for- impacting form of communication between icons” that constitute our own mutating cul- mations, are reenvisioned together as a whole and art objects or, more precisely, tural imaginary, itself a database. The semiotic ecosystem. One is reminded of the Renais- between humans and other living beings. While function of aesthetic images is a central tension sance-era encyclopedic collections of objects art is typically kept at a distance from the ob- in her work. By generating new life, art yields known as “cabinets of curiosities,” which server, at Anker’s opening visitors were on their new information. Art, Anker reminds us, is a depicted theatrical microcosms of the natural knees in the dark, huddled around the sampling vital form of knowledge production. Noting world. But in Anker’s project, life forms are of nature’s wonders. the resemblance of coral forms to the human transformed into art forms, which then ma- By decontextualizing familiar objects in new brain, Anker metaphorically reflects upon their terialize into new life forms, emphasizing not ecological networks within the art space, Anker convolutions. But beyond this, art as we expe- only the necessity for reparation but also the radically finds a way to evoke the mysterious as rience it in this exhibit is also a real means of vitality of art itself to sustain human life, to well as the pleasurable at the junction of science visual pleasure, and, in the case of the speci- influence the life-cycle. Anker shows us that and art. Her specimens are alluring curiosities. mens, tangible delight: a potential restoration life begets art begets life. Perhaps this is where Her images are pretty, mesmerizing, a salve. to the human spirit during disquieting times her sense of the “magical” is required. Visitors Yet they embody and incite action. She pro- of white noise. The gallery invites a certain are encouraged to move beyond the visual, to posed in her lecture that we consider the digital presence from us, temporary submersion in an touch the specimens, to examine their multi- image as a circumnavigatory “sign in action.” optimistic narrative in which we may become angular textural elements, an interaction Indeed, her work asks us to think through the agents of change to counteract our increasingly

9 UCLA Center for the Study of Women z csw update: december 2012 polarized cultural moment. At a time when ics of care” which she advocates is thus appli- the realms of nature and technology are only cable to an expanding idea of what it means to The Politics of Seeds growing further apart, Anker’s art exposes their be a citizen of the world. Her art enacts a mode A symposium, May 16 to 17 symbiotic relationship. Nature and technology of resistance by intervening in discourses con- may be unlikely allies, but the scene in which cerning the ecology of seeds, bringing aware- How have gender, ethnicity, and race they cohabitate is one of equilibrium, albeit ness to the ways in which the sciences inevita- shaped contemporary cultural and politi- magical. And we have a role in their prolifera- bly alter socio-cultural values in society, while tion. also revealing how the arts, conversely, shape cal movements related to seeds? How has When we address the task of art to mediate the bioethical imagination. global climate in relation to economic and the differences between nature and technology, “Genetic Seed Bank” anticipates a sympo- cultural crises affected food systems and we are eventually led to wonder how we might sium, “The Politics of Seeds,” organized by the place-based heirloom seeds? What socio- understand the aesthetic act of repair and Center for the Study of Women, which will restoration as gendered. While Anker’s project take place May 16 and 17, 2013. The symposium logical, ethnographic, and humanistic does not overtly confront gender, it is pos- is part of “Life Un(Ltd),” a multiyear research methodological tools have we integrated sible to consider the ramifications of such an project initiated by CSW Interim Director into the study of food culture and food aesthetic endeavor as it adheres to and defies Rachel Lee that addresses the question of what conventional ideas of gendered identity. One impact recent developments in the biosci- politics and to what ends? To what extent could even argue that Anker’s work is feminist ences and have had on feminist has research by corporations and engi- in approach—she uses the laboratory-gallery as studies, particularly regarding the rich connec- neers redefined the ecology of seeds and a twenty-first-century space for reproduction, a tions between food, ecology, propagation, and how have political and artistic forms of space in which she invests in the emotional la- metabolism. bor of cultivating new life. By engaging activi- __ resistance intervened? ties that have been traditionally associated with Author’s note: Citations are from Suzanne Anker’s lec- Join us as we explore some of these an essentialized theory of femininity in the lab, ture on November 13, 2013, at the Broad Art Center and questions in “The Politics of Seeds,” a a historically male domain—the reproduction are excerpted from her “installation notes” and website and nurturing of new life forms, the model- (http://www.suzanneanker.com/). Images are courtesy of symposium on May 16 to 17, 2013, co- ing of new communication, the cultivation of the artist. organized by Allison Carruth, a professor symbiotic relationships, the valuing of affect— in the Department of English at UCLA Anker disrupts reductive notions of gender, and CSW Interim Director Rachel Lee. procreation, conception, and art. The “aesthet-

10 UCLA Center for the Study of Women z csw update: december 2012