This essay works on the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians such as Zylinska, Thacker and Munster, in relation to the claim that bioart is led by a problematic moral power to challenge a 'pancapitalist' bioeconomy (Zylinska, 2009: 156-157). It looks into some of the dominating theories surrounding the field of this specific art movement and presents various points of view on the ethics of such an interdisciplinary entity.
Bioart, as a deliberately new art movement has always been a controversial topic. As said by Thacker, “the term bioart is often used to refer to projects that deal with biology as an artistic medium” (Thacker, 2005: 307), but in many cases the artists’ work is much more complicated. According to Zylinska, “the so called “bioart,” which stands for art utilizing biomaterial such as tissue, blood, or genes as its medium, evokes a lot of controversy, both within and without the art community” (Zylinska 2009: 149). As the author carries on claiming that “typical responses to bioart reflect a wider public anxiety regarding the current transformation of human and nonhuman life and its mediation by technology” (Zylinska, 2009: 149). As the author finds out while analyzing the work of Critical Art Ensemble: “there is an ambivalent relationship between moralist pronouncements and ethical forcework can also be identified in the work of CAE” (Zylinska, 2009: 156). She then carries on to positioning CAE “as both artists and activists, whose task is to “resist (…) authoritarian structures” of the dominant biopolitical regime and envisage a new techno-apparatus which will counter the “obsessively rational” military and corporate drives of “pancapitalism” (Zylinska, 2009: 156-157). As Zylinska finds the artists’ words prophetic, they carry on to explaining the mechanics at work which surround the world of eugenics, bioart, and the financial issues involved in these processes:
If big science can ignore nuclear holocaust and species annihilation, it seems very safe to assume that concerns about eugenics or any of the other possible flesh catastrophes are not going to be very meaningful in its deliberations about flesh machinepolicy and practice. Without question, it is in the interest of pancapitalism to rationalize the flesh, and consequently it is in the financial interest of big science to see that this desire manifests itself in the world. (CAE in Zylinska, 2009: 156-157)
The above quote “highlights the deeply problematic role of the biotechnological industry in shaping the current political and social consensus about the “value” of life” (Zylinska, 2009: 157). According to these words the pancapitalist machine creates two major issues surrounding the debate on power relations within the bio-industry: firstly, attaching different values to flesh and life; and secondly, creating an extremely closed economy - a centered power layout where big science and military are the only ones to explore and benefit from the potential of the genetic code.
A more positive view on bio-economy is presented by Thacker, where she claims that bioart “(…) not only marginalizes (or niche markets) art, effectively separating it from the practices of technoscience, but the notion of a “bioart” also positions art practice as reactionary and, at best, reflective of the technosciences” (Thacker, 2005: 307). This positioning of bioart as opposing the dominant power structure within the industry via creating something new via an exploration of the uncovered and separation from the dominant schemes is followed by an even further reinforcement on the powers surrounding the discussed. According to Thacker, bioart has a unique political power of pointing “(…) real fissures in the social, cultural, and material effects of biotechnologies” (Thacker, 2005: 318) throughout the world around us.
One could say that the view of opening the biotech industry to the amateur might be an illuminating experience for both the arts and humanities, but nonetheless various complications may surely arise. One example can be found while analyzing the work of Adam Zaretsky - a self-declared “vivoartist”, who according to Zylinska “(…) is all for reinserting “fun for fun’s sake into the social” and for “things getting really weird”. He admits he would be keen to see some more “interesting mutations”: “iridescent humans, spotted and striped, with multiple limbs” (Zylinska, 2009: 160). According to the author, Zaretsky takes on a role of a Nietzschean philosopher, attacking the “established values around biotechnology and “life” with a double-edged hammer of serious play, in order to undertake their transvaluation” (Zylinska, 2009: 160).
Other authors such as Der Derian explore the topic further by contemplating future perspectives carried out by the expected release of biotech basic knowledge and cheap and accessible equipment to the public domain. He believes that “bioart project might come to be seen as the material evidence supporting practices of bioterrorism speaks not of ideological but instead of information warfare” (Der Derian, 2001; in Munster 2011: 6). Still, this clear link between bioart and bio-terror is brought down by Munster, where she purposes an example of how to deal with the arising problem while working on thoughts of Thacker:
The linking of life through the nodes of the network materializes information in such a way that it becomes the giant regulating principle of a properly organized, databased and policed info-sociality. Contestational biology must therefore also dispute this application of a generalized network as the fundamental and overriding design principle organizing social, cultural, economic and biological life. In Biomedia, Thacker has suggested that a critical approach to the materialization of information design through the theory and practice of contemporary biologies could begin to operate by deploying a rather different idea of 'metadesign' (Thacker, 2004: 191-193).
Rather than a principle of (linked) design accounting for the interactions and connections that constitute living systems, the living system might be reconceived as one that is structurally open to the variability and contingency of whatever interactions, nodes and links it sustains. (Munster, 2011: 8)
Still, this utopian solution does not seem to be convincing enough: It would create a situation influx of network over this unique biological practice will generate further surveillance issues. Furthermore, linking life-practice via a networked system will not stop nor oppress terrorism, as most likely future bio-rebels will surely find ways around it (keeping in mind the popularization and accessibility of home made eugenics labs.
A far more positive perspective can be found while looking at the words of Stelarc, a world famous new media and bioartist. According to Zylinska “Stelarc repeatedly tells us that he has no ambitions to be a philosopher or a political theorist. He refuses to be prescriptive in his work and so will not instruct us as to how we should treat our bodies or how we should coexist with technology” (Zylinska, 2009: 173). As the author believes, “listening to Stelarc will allow us to envisage a more effective politics and ethics. This will be a technopolitics of distributed agency and suspended command, informed by an ethics of infinite - and at times crazy, shocking, and excessive - hospitality toward the alterity of technology (that is always already part of us)” (Zylinska, 2009: 173).
Looking at the above thoughts devised by both artists and theoreticians, one could say that the best approach to consider the golden middle expressed by Zylinska while talking about Stelarc: sampling openness towards biotech from artists such as Zaretsky, but keeping in mind the politics surrounding this newly emerging art of life manipulation. This would create a situation described by Zylinska, where “it is not to say that “we are machines” or that “we are all Stelarcs now,” as the Krokers put it. If humans and machines are collapsed—as they tend to be in some current accounts of “the network society”—into a fluid epistemology in which difference is overcome for the sake of horizontal affective politics (Zylinska, 2009: 173).
Bibliography and Readings:
Critical Art Ensemble, 'Transgenic Production and Cultural Resistance: A Seven-Point Plan', in Molecular Invasion, New York: Autonomedia, 2002, pp. 58-75.
Rebecca Schneider, 'Nomadmedia: On Critical Art Ensemble', The Drama Review 44.4 (2000): 120-131.
Eugene Thacker, 'A Biotech Hobbyist Manifesto', in Natalie Jeremijenko and Eugene Thacker (eds) Creative Biotechnology: A User’s Manual, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Locus +, 2004, pp. 38-39.
Eugene Thacker, 'Conclusion: Tactical Media and Bioart', in The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 305-320.
Anna Munster, 'Why is Bioart Not Terrorism?: Some Critical Nodes in the Networks of Informatice Life', Culture Machine 7 (2005), http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/31/38
Joanna Zylinska, 'Green Bunnies and Speaking Ears: The Ethics of Bioart', in Bioethics in the Age of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, pp. 149-174.
Beatriz da Costa, 'Reaching the Limit: When Art Becomes Science', in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008, pp. 365-385.
Michael Dieter, 'Issues, Process, AIR: Toward Reticular Politics', Australian Humanities Review 46 (2009), http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2009/dieter.htm
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