I am a bio artist. My artistic practice encompasses the exploration of blurry borders, shady ethics and the domestication of scientific and electronic technologies. What interests me in particular about biological materials are their fragile locations within science which are always linked to cultural and political processes, perceptions and constructions. I like border creatures that have monstrous overtones which “threaten to smash distinctions” as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen so eloquently expresses it. To me, monsters and science go hand in hand. Monsters are declared and categorised through scientific language and practices and simultaneously the monster and science charge against each other in glorious conflicts over these much cherished biological distinctions. It makes sense to consider them in bio art. The monster is essentially the name given to the inhabitant of the multiple zones of biology which is of interest to the humanities practitioner with a nose for a juicy scientific story.
Biology as a science relies upon binary distinctions such as living/dead, human/non human and self/not self. These distinctions are definitions which allow biology to go about the business of abstracting, categorising and explaining the processes of life. Without these distinctions, biological exploration would encounter the problem of ambiguity. As the methodology of biology is scientific and empirical, it can not function in nor include the problem of ambiguity as this would complicate the predilection in biological practice to define objects of study. Binary distinctions in biology are rendered problematic when they are revealed as ambiguous through practices such as bio-art and cultural theory which adopt a humanities methodology that is well equipped to include an exploration of the ambiguous. It is in this space of tenuous and ambiguous binary distinctions that an artist may be instrumental in revealing or posing questions about biology by using “monstrous” scientific tools.
In my work as a bio artist, I ultimately seek to explore, question and reveal.
This piece is more of a reflection about why these scientific tools are of interest to me as an artist, rather than an account of particular practical process. It is also a reflection of the many ways in which I see these tools of science to be of assistance in revealing “the question” through artistic methodology rather than revealing
“truths” through scientific methodology. My interaction with on one such scientific tool, the HeLa cell line and the resulting artistic project The Anarchy Cell Line, worked in this way.
My journey begins with an encounter with the “Cell Line”. The cell line is possibly the most notable inhabitant of ambiguous scientific zoning. The cell line is a “workhorse”, “tool” or “material” of science- and it came to figure heavily in my work. In The Anarchy Cell line I added my own blood cells to the existing controversial HeLa cell line. A cell line is an immortal line of cells which usually originates from cancerous cells. “Normal” cells divide around fifty times; cancerous cells are mutated and divide continuously and are thus called “immortal”.
These cell lines, because of their vigor and their ability to divide are preferred tools for cellular experimentation in the lab. The cell lines immortality is defined by relativity to the normal. Cell lines are therefore “abnormal”;
that which is set against the normal and are therefore defined as diseased, uncontainable and uncontrollable despite their scientific usefulness.
It was during my artistic research as an Artist in Residence at SymbioticA in The University of Western Australia, that I had come across the story of the HeLa cell line which is considered to be the most controversial of human cell lines. The story, be it the story of abstraction or the social story of its origins, not the science was the heart of, and the seed for this project. The cells which constitute the HeLa cell line were taken from an African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, during the fifties, without her or her family’s consent.
They have become a multi billion dollar industry, they are alive well after their donor’s death and their mass outweighs Henrietta’s original body mass in tons. The HeLa cell line (He from Henrietta and La from Lacks), because of its persistent social story, is particularly good for revealing the inconsistencies in the supposed fixed binary distinctions that biology adopts, making it a valuable artistic tool. It has been described as monstrous, horrific, uncontrollable and uncontainable (having ‘infected’ many other cell cultures in the 1970’s). It is monstrous. It is a line of cells which locates as self while simultaneously being othered; it is living when its donor is dead; it is active while utilised and in stasis when not- all monstrous properties. The properties and ambiguities of the monstrous can assist in revealing the movable boundaries that biology so readily adopts. But like most metaphors the monstrous requires translation through creative application in order to reveal its potential to smash distinctions.
These monstrous properties that made the HeLa cell line so appealing to me as an artistic material include the ambiguity of the boundary between self/not self which is illustrated in the origin of the HeLa cell line. The HeLa cell line is derived from the body of Henrietta Lacks and nevertheless still viewed under the veil of abstraction through the microscope; an effective instrument of the biologist (who is the master of abstraction ). The veil of abstraction challenges the link of donor to material through its mechanisms which enable the scientific gaze. Is ‘it’, the HeLa cell line, Henrietta? The notion of self when viewing biological material under the microscope, is so abstracted, notes Anne Enright in her article What’s Left of Henrietta Lacks? that the question of location of self is perhaps not even worth asking. I suggest that the notion of self is, nevertheless, persistent and
possibly revealed through new stories in such materials when viewed through transdisciplinary practices such as bio-art.
The HeLa cell line through creative re-textualising (humanities practice), reveals a persistence of origin from Henrietta Lacks; a kind of reverse abstraction. The characteristics of bio art are unique in that regardless of the mechanisms such as the microscope, it is ultimately the context which allows for a multiplicity of readings. Bio artists have the luxury of privileging creative context which is conducive to other readings when exploring science. I love the microscope: with the right context we can as artists shift the gaze to include thought of the cultural and thought of the connections between things.
These connections are also made by creating and considering the multiplicity of states of being between artist and work, or in this story also between HeLa and Henrietta Lacks. It is not difficult to imagine why I was compelled as an artist to explore the implications of the story of Henrietta and her cells.
The manner in which the HeLa cells are abstracted through biological processes, and the attempt to declare the HeLa cell line as a new species Helacyton gartleri, are revealed as ineffective forms of re-categorising through denial of origin from with in science partly because science itself tells us that a genetic link to the human exists thus challenging the division of human/non human. The many artistic interventions which occur in the grounds of the ambiguous, multi zoned workhorses of science act to highlight the necessary interrogation of fragile and ambiguous borders embraced so readily and unquestionably in modern biological discourse.
The abstraction of the cell and the question of the self/other demarcation combined with additional questionable binary distinctions such as living/dead and human/non human formed a source of constant inspiration for The Anarchy Cell line. The Anarchy cell line project was ultimately the artistic result of these and many other reflections. This artistic cell line was created by adding my whole blood to the existing HeLa cell line in an ‘act’ of abject, performative, domesticated anarchy and anarchistic domestication provoking engagement with the complex ideas of women in laboratories as workers, artists and remnants of women as lab tools. I hoped the new cell line would become a dialogic artifice regarding issues of tissue ownership, lab techniques, tissue patent/copyrighting, the aesthetics of the inner body and the science and social/human connection (or lack of?) in the petri dish, the biological, social and historical representation of women and the personal story of Henrietta Lacks. I anticipated that exploration of this artistically manipulated cell line would ultimately enable me to explore my fascination with the many ambiguous boundaries that the cell line inhabits.
I wanted to attempt to play with the inevitable provocation of language through the visual and juxtapose “words” which speak of “combining” “cohabitating”, “collaborating” or “sharing” in the dish. I hoped that these verbal images would conceivably be exemplified and debated through the act of adding of my own cells to Henrietta’s cells. The artistically mediated cell line is anarchistic in that it proposes and somewhat adopts the idea of “not-science” - what cells survive, if they combine, hybridise or if they biologically coexist, essentially the science of things, is not in focus in the same way that the process and interactions of making the cell line, the possibility of hybridization, the question of zonal location/ambiguity and speaking of the process of appropriation of biological materials are in focus.
The project was fraught with challenges. This “opening up” of questions through art rather than provision of truths through science, is the vehicle by which I hoped my work on the Anarchy Cell would inspire critical debate about bio-ethics and the story of Henrietta. This opening up is obsentatio vulnerum “the showing forth of wounds” essentially wound making for the questioned and the questioner, and I hope it occupies the processes and works of many other bio artists who also desire to seek a question - no matter how much it hurts. The question of colonisation and appropriation, as an example in this work, are achieved through processes in The Anarchy Cell Line that implicates activist art. Activist art occasionally attempts to make its fast and hard impact through appropriated and often criticised processes of the “oppressor”. In my practice, however, these acts are subtle (though complex) through their highly conceptual and performative nature which I endeavored to retain in the project to also challenge my own perception of practicum.
Henrietta, her cells and my intervention (interference?) with them still figures heavily in my written work. No matter what the outcome, the experience of working in a lab, thinking about transdisciplinary practice and ultimately working with the HeLa cell line, forms the foundations of my current bio artistic practice. These kinds of thoughts, questions and revelations result from the unique opportunities offered through the now growing number of interactions between art and science. Not only had many stories which encompass many perspectives, questions and ambiguities of the HeLa cell and ultimately the human condition been revealed to me, I was inadvertently as artist in a lab, transformed into conduit for thought between these many perspectives that inhabit the many bodies that populate our scientific and social communities.
Cynthia Verspaget
(formerly an artist in residence at SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia and currently located as a Sessional Academic at Curtin University of Technology in Media, Society and Information), is a diverse artist who routinely attempts sometimes seemingly un-attemptable artistic works. Her artistic work hopes to challenge knowledge and practice systems in general such as biological and technological sciences and artistic practices. Verspaget’s latest collaborative project with Adam Fiannaca, IncuBra which will be performed and exhibited at TekniKunst 06: GenderTopia, explores the playful domestication of bio-technology, A.R.T (Assisted Reproductive Technologies), the complicated mappings of the science of beautification and body as breeder/body as lab. IncuBra ultimately playfully attempts to poke at the gendered secrets that are kept in the “chest”.
