Tactical Biopolitics Art, Activism, and Technoscience edited by Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip Popular culture in this “biological century” seems to feed on proliferating representations of the fears, anxieties, and hopes around the life sciences, at a time when such basic concepts as scientific truth, race and da Costa and Philip, Philip, Costada and Tactical Biopolitics gender identity, and the human itself are destabilized Beatriz da Costa does interventionist art using new media/biology/art in the public eye. Public and expert discourses have computing and biotechnologies, and Kavita Philip converged to grapple with the ethical and creative studies colonialism, neoliberalism, and technoscience “Scientists and engineers, if they care for a better world, must more fully understand Tactical Biopolitics challenges that lie at the intersections of life, science, using history and critical theory. Both are Associate the consequences of their actions. Artists must learn more about science and take up and art. What do inquiring, curious, or anxious publics Professors at the University of California, Irvine. the challenge of illuminating our technological world to those who are shaping it. Both need to understand about biology and its current communities, in making their work more accessible to the other, will benefit. Not everyone Art, Activism, and Technoscience research frontiers? How might scientists assess myriad A Leonardo Book will agree with the politics argued here—but that is fine. The need for dialogue has now and often contradictory concerns about informed extended far beyond Snow’s The Two Cultures, and so has its urgency. Tactical Biopolitics takes publics, national priorities, and academic freedom? up that challenge; it is one of the most stimulating books I have read in a long time.” How can historians, anthropologists, and philosophers —Charles Taylor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA contextualize the intersections of concerns about editors biological research, personal choice, social freedom, D T S E E N Contributors T C OR K A R and civilizational progress? Tactical Biopolitics takes RI OS A AB EM Gaymon Bennett, Larry Carbone, Karen Cardozo, Gary Cass, Oron Catts, Gabriella Coleman, P C L M D up the challenge of speaking across these fields. Critical Art Ensemble, Beatriz da Costa, Gwen D’Arcangelis, Troy Duster, Donna Haraway, Contributing authors practice and theorize biology Mark Harrington, Jens Hauser, Kathy High, Fatimah Jackson, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan Y T T (Richard Lewontin, Richard Levins, Fatimah Jackson, King, Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, Rachel Mayeri, Sherie McDonald, Claire Pentecost, ION S ION UNI MEN K Jonathan King), bioart (Paul Vanouse, SymbioticA, T T at Kavita Philip, Paul Rabinow, Jacqueline Stevens, Banu Subramanian, subRosa, Abha Sur, at IG RIS OR T Claire Pentecost), tactical media (Critical Art Ensemble, DON LI Samir Sur, Eugene Thacker, Paul Vanouse, Ionat Zurr PP INVES O subRosa), anthropology (Paul Rabinow, Gabriella Coleman), critical theory (Eugene Thacker), sociology L act (Troy Duster), science studies (Donna Haraway), health CA R Cover artwork by Natalie Jeremijenko I T D activism (Mark Harrington), feminist science fiction TISSUE ON ME C (Gwyneth Jones), and more. Tactical Biopolitics suggests that the political The MIT Press challenges at the intersection of life, science, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology art are best addressed through a combination of Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 artistic intervention, critical theorizing, and reflective http://mitpress.mit.edu practices. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, 978-0-262-04249-9 contributions to this volume focus on the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences and explore the possibility of public edited by Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip participation in scientific discourse, drawing on research and practice in art, biology, critical theory, anthropology, and cultural studies. Tactical Biopolitics Leonardo Roger F. Malina, Executive Editor Sean Cubitt, Editor-in-Chief The Visual Mind: Art and Mathematics, edited by Michele Emmer, 1993 Leonardo Almanac: International Resources in Art, Science, and Technology, edited by Craig Harris, 1993 Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age, Richard Coyne, 1995 Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, edited by Mary Anne Moser with Douglas MacLeod, 1996 Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real, Richard Coyne, 1999 Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program, edited by Craig Harris, 1999 The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, edited by Peter Lunenfeld, 1999 The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, edited by Ken Goldberg, 2000 The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich, 2001 Metal and Flesh. The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over, Ollivier Dyens, 2001 Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia, Geert Lovink, 2002 Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, Stephen Wilson, 2002 Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Oliver Grau, 2003 Women, Art, and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, 2003 Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, Alexander R. Galloway, 2004 At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet, edited by Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumark, 2005 The Visual Mind II, edited by Michele Emmer, 2005 CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy, edited by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, 2005 The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Eugene Thacker, 2005 Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture, Matthew Fuller, 2005 Art Beyond Biology, edited by Eduardo Kac, 2006 New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, edited by Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss, 2006 Aesthetic Computing, edited by Paul A. Fishwick, 2006 Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation, Steve Dixon, 2007 MediaArtHistories, edited by Oliver Grau, 2007 From Technological to Virtual Art, Frank Popper, 2007 META/DATA: A Digital Poetics, Mark Amerika, 2007 Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond, edited by Eduardo Kac, 2007 The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science, Cretien van Campen, 2007 Media Ecologies, Matthew Fuller, 2007 Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology, Susan Kozel, 2008 Video: The Refl exive Medium, Yvonne Spielmann, 2008 Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, edited by Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip, 2008 Tactical Biopolitics Art, Activism, and Technoscience edited by Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip with a foreword by Joseph Dumit The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email [email protected] This book was set in Garamond 3 and Bell Gothic by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tactical biopolitics : art, activism, and technoscience / edited by Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip; foreword by Joseph Dumit. p. cm.—(Leonardo books) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-04249-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Biology–Social aspects. 2. Technological innovations—Social aspects. 3. Biotechnology—Social aspects. 4. Biopolitics. 5. Art and science. I. Da Costa, Beatriz. II. Philip, Kavita, 1964– QH333.T33 2008 306.4′5—dc22 2007032375 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Series Foreword ix Foreword: Biological Feedback xi Joseph Dumit (Anthropologist of Media and Technology) Acknowledgments xv Introduction xvii Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip I. Theory and Practice: Biology as Ideology 1 1. Interview with Richard Lewontin 3 Interview by Gwen D’Arcangelis, Beatriz da Costa, and Kavita Philip 2. Living the Eleventh Thesis 25 Richard Levins (Biologist and Public Intellectual) 3. Interview with Richard Levins: On Philosophy of Science 35 Interview by Abha Sur II. Life.science.art: Curating the Book of Life 41 4. Biotech Patronage and the Making of Homo DNA 43 Jacqueline Stevens (Political Scientist) 5. Soft Science: Artists’ Experiments in Documentary Storytelling 63 Rachel Mayeri (Media Artist and Curator) 6. Observations on an Art of Growing Interest: Toward a Phenomenological Approach to Art Involving Biotechnology 83 Jens Hauser (Curator and Media Studies Scholar) III. The Biolab and the Public 105 7. Outfi tting the Laboratory of the Symbolic: Toward a Critical Inventory of Bioart 107 Claire Pentecost (Artist and Public Amateur) 8. The Ethics of Experiential Engagement with the Manipulation of Life 125 Oron Catts (Artist Working with Living Tissue) and Ionat Zurr (Artist Working with Living Tissue) 9. Labs Shut Open: A Biotech Hands-on Workshop for Artists 143 Oron Catts and Gary Cass (Scientifi c Technician, Agricultural Science) IV. Race and the Genome 157 10. Selective Arrests, an Ever-Expanding DNA Forensic Database, and the Specter of an Early Twenty-First-Century Equivalent of Phrenology 159 Troy Duster (Sociologist of Science and Public Intellectual) 11. Discovering Nature, Apparently: Analogy, DNA Imaging, and the Latent Figure Protocol