artwork 2
Natural Reality SuperWeed kit 1.0,
by Heath BUNTING (United Kingdom), 1999
MANIPULATING LIFE... BEFORE IT MANIPULATES US
If one had to define bioart's moment of inception, some1 would likely point to 1936, when The MOMA exhibited photographer Edward Steichen's pictures of giant delphiniums that he had produced through seed selection and chemical processes.
The fact that Steichen was an artist and that he purposefully modified living organisms to produce a work of art is enough to distinguish him from horticulturists, or other manipulators of the organic life, like cattle raisers or dog breeders, who might perform the same operation, but not with an awareness of all the ethical and aesthetic issues.
One might also say that bioart was born with the publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in 1818. Shelley certainly didn't manipulate living organisms herself, but she placed such manipulation at the heart of her work; she turned it into a work.
The issues at stake in that foundational novel have continued to evolve, following developments in science, ethics, and religion. While the Frankenstein monster could embody the challenges to religion from science and man's new technical supremacy, the weakening of religion has allowed us to shift the terms of the debate. No longer a question of challenging the creator - thankfully, the heavens are empty! -, but of living up to the possibilities that science provides for making art. As Eduardo Kac said in the article already mentioned: since we can do it, and since others do it for commercial purposes, why can't an artist follow suit. With that observation standing as justification, each artist must make his or her own way.
With SuperWeed kit 1.0, activist and performance artist Heath Bunting2 chose to liberate weed seeds by means of a rocket, provocatively named Protest.3 Briefly, the device consisted of the following: capsules containing seeds of various weeds - nettle, wild radish, mustard - are placed in a rocket fuelled by a compound of polyethylene and laughing gas (N2O). When the rocket reaches its maximum altitude, about 5,200 metres, the capsules are released and fall to the ground - not just anywhere, mind you, but right in middle of a field of GM crops, which they contaminate with their natural qualities!
One may even foresee weeds mutating on contact with with GMOs to become "super weeds" that resist such herbicides as Monsanto's Roundup®.4
Thus put, it may seem like harmless provocation. Yet, considering the work's rocky reception, Bunting must have hit a nerve. One only has to recall the raging debates that followed SuperWeed kit 1.0's creation, in 1999 - including the position held by Joe Davis,5 himself a bioartist, who staunchly condemned artists who ventured, as Steve Kurtz had also done, onto the dangerous territory of "contaminating" works.
For Joe Davis, of high-brow MIT, artists who go in for contaminating works are no different than terrorists who might blow up a gas station6 simply because its existence bothers them, or its destruction justifies their action. Bioartists, like bio-terrorists, should simply be put behind bars.
Yet, if one follows Bunting's reasoning, bio-terrorism may be the only means available to average citizens wanting to protest the control exerted over organic life by corporate agribusiness.
Need we mention that any art wishing to toy with biology is venturing into transgressive territory?
Though SuperWeed kit 1.0 has obviously not been put into operation yet, and remains a construct of the mind, one must point out that it is raising the right questions. It's not the actualization of SuperWeed kit 1.0 that constitutes it as a work, but simply the fact that it exists and that it sheds light on the far more dangerous actions of the agribusiness conglomerates.
Just as it is inconceivable that Steve Kurtz and his friends of the Critical Art Ensemble7 start spreading dangerous bacteria, we cannot suspect Heath Bunting of wanting super weeds to cover the planet.
Such is the ambiguous predicament of bioartists, who manipulate living substances while taking care that their manipulations don't go astray… like a certain creature of Dr. Frankenstein's?
Other bioartists - like Eduardo Kac, Damien Hirst, or the controversial Gunther von Hagens,8 with his plastinated corpses - have chosen instead to be more forward in distributing their work.
The fact that none of these works escapes controversy shows, at the very least, that bioartists are exploring one of art's last frontiers.
Notes
1 : See Eduardo Kac, Transgenic Art, in Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN 1071-4391), Volume 6, Number 11, 1998. 
2 : See Heath Bunting's biography.
3 : See the mode of distribution proposed by the N55 collective.
4 : See Monsanto, Roundup® Agricultural Herbicides.
5 : See Joe Davis's biography.
6 : See Randy Kennedy, The Artists in the Hazmat Suits, in
New York Times, July 3, 2005.
7 : See Critical Art Ensemble's website.
8 : See La « Von Hagens plastination Ltd », histoire de commerce de cadavres, in Novascoop News, Saturday, January 24, 2004.
Xavier Malbreil
(Translated from French by Ron Ross)
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