|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Source: http://www.ncal.verio.com/~leftcurv/LC25WebPages/rabbit.html
 |
|
Photo:Chrystella
Fontaine; posted on: http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html
|
by Dale Hoyt
I'm not worried
about the rabbit. She's living a better life than any animal born and raised
to be lab research fodder. And since there have been other animals dosed with
this phosphorescent gene without major (observable anyway) health problems,
she stands to live a pain free life. One does wonder though if animals ever
go through adolescent trauma as we humans do, in which we realize that we "didn't
ask to be born." But the animal was born and she was made to be born, and
not out of any natural inertia. She was made to be born--with a Green Fluorescent
Protein (hence the "GFP" piece's title: "GFP Bunny") no
less--to be a person's art work, and I personally think that's a lot to ask,
especially from a little bunny. But I'm not calling the cops or anything.
And I'm not worried about what this project will reveal about bio-technology.
I am not a Bio-Luddite. I have all the worries and concerns about the scary
new world as the next guy, but I'm also a atwitter over the possibilities of
what mankind will learn about itself and the universe in the coming age. In
fact, I run a think tank, C.A.L.F, (the Coalition of Artists & Life Forms),
which explores the possibility of artists using bio-technology as an art form.
I also teach a Bio-Art Survey class at a local art school.
I'm delighted to see this notion of artists using bio-tech growing in popularity
to the point of being a full-fledged fad. Just as they have for the last 40
years with 16mm film, video portapaks, virtual reality, CD-Roms, web sites and
other technologies, artists are drooling at the possibility of getting their
hands on this science. This was especially vivid to me on a recent trip to New
York City where this season's hottest show is the "Paradise Now" exhibit
at ExitArt. It was there as I watched Bio-Art ascend from rumor to legitimacy
that I realized there was one bonus I hadn't counted on: the field had produced
its first superstar, Eduardo Kac.
This has prompted
me to realize the need for some basic critical tools. For instance, we should
be bold enough to observe that some Bio-Art is better than other Bio-Art, and
that some of Kac's pieces are better than others--although they are all brilliant,
inspiring and thoughtful.
What I'm try to say is that I think "GFP Bunny", his most recent piece,
which has been making headlines around the world, has a lot of problems. So
many that it is an alarmingly flawed work of art, especially coming from someone
of Eduardo;s accomplishment. It looks so weak compared to his "Genesis"
installation at Exit Art, where he used the arbitrary aspects of biology to
express the frailty of language, and vice versa. With all due respect to Eduardo
I feel compelled to list these faults at length. There is too much at stake
here not to.
The media coverage took everyone, including the artist, by surprise. The work
is now the talk of both coasts, and not just the art world. The wire services
are abuzz with the news that an artist has created a glow-in-the-dark rabbit
and about the outraged response and actions of the French government bio-tech
laboratory that created the critter. The rabbit, named Alba, was to have traveled
back to Chicago with Kac to live with him and his family. Instead Alba is presently
under house arrest at the laboratory, at the behest of its director, who was
mortified at the thought of a live animal being used in an art exhibit. Mortified,
in fact, to the extent that there is a very real chance that Alba will live
out her years at the laboratory leaving Kac permanently S.O.L. But the work
still exists, the rabbit still exists and even if Kac's original project is
cut short, its well nurtured legend will live on.
Here's where my list of grievances begins. The spectacle and event incited by
this piece threaten at first glance to trivialize GFP Bunny as a stunt. But
Kac has already constructed a win-win scenario in which the furor suffices for
the work itself. I'm fully aware that for some works of art, controversy can
be an essential component. Sometimes that very controversy intentionally becomes
"part of the piece" (anything by Jeff Koons or in the Saatchi collection,
for instance). If Kac is orchestrating provocation in the form of a media frenzy,
that should be fair game. But "GFP Brunny" also claims to be about
discussion, not just debacle. Where do the well-voiced opinions of the French
government as well as European animal rights groups fit into the work's evolution?
Or is it all just Showbiz first and last?
In the wake of Jesse Helms' Culture Wars the media has developed, for better
or worse, an efficient template for interpreting an art crisis. Any artist willing
to do so could knit an entire career together using the news media alone as
raw material. Is this what Kac is trying to do or is he really oblivious to
the facts concerning his infamy? I am just as mystified by whether Kac sees
his narrative/legend as artistic ingredient or just a mechanism to get his curious
project done. Could he honestly be so surprised that people are upset and mad
and are denying him their full co-operation and approval? Yet he complains of
the party-pooping French government, which won't let him have his animal. He's
either planning for this to be a disaster and thus a news story or he really
does believe that anything done in the name of Art should be beyond bureaucratic
interference. Whatever the scenario, the fact remains that this is a very public
piece whose clamorous life has no ironic context.
Hopefully "GFP Bunny" was not just conceived to create a bio-tech
controversy. Bio-technology generates its own debate and outrage all by itself.
The subject can create more shouting matches than politics, religion and college
football combined. Society hardly needs an artist/provocateur to get the conversation
started. So I am further puzzled by whether this is an out-of-control ego or
a man with a mission. I'd settle for either one. Sadly, though, I think Kac
wants it both ways.
So if it's not a Grand bouffe and it's not a political crusade, what is it and
why should we care? Take away the outrage and the spectacle of "GFP Bunny"
and I'm not sure you have anything left other than a modest animal-husbandry
project slightly more ambitious than a standard 4H project. That and a lot of
fuzzy artistic maneuvers.
Let's get a couple of things straight:
First, it doesn't really glow in the dark. It glows when you shine a black light
on it. And so does my granny and we didn't have to send away to France to make
her.
Secondly, scientists have been creating these glow-in-the-dark animals for some
time (for research purposes). It's just art catching up to science.
Lastly, Kac contracted the animal from the scientists. He didn't think of the
idea, he didn't develop the technology; he claims "GFP" is his art
because he says it is. I have no problem with something being art just because
an artist says it is. It's the one of the great modernist traditions. For that
matter, I don't have any argument with an artist getting someone else to make
their work for them, although it's less defensible. The problem is that Kac
would never call himself a Modernist. This is the New Future! Yet to introduce
us to that future Kac relies, with astonishing regularity, on a Rogues Gallery
of old, road-tested art-making strategies, all of which are slouching towards
retirement.
It's been years since I said this sort of thing but I'm not sure that "GFP
Bunny" is art. If it is, then it's a very old-fashioned version despite
the fact that Kac says it is completely of the moment. He describes the work
as creating a new canvas on which we must all work (what this has to with painting
I have no idea). If this is true, then it's composed with a very pale palette
of exhausted modern props: self promotion as Art, Art as extension of the artist's
ego, that it's all about the process and not an end product (even though a very
living breathing end product covered with fur and a little pink nose is caged
somewhere in France wondering where his Daddy is).
This is warmed-over conceptual art with neither stylistic innovation nor historical
invention.
I'll give you another example: we all know of the near century-old tradition
of making the mundane and banal into works of art. The aesthetics vary from
Duchamp to Warhol to Cage but all can be said to agree that anything can be
a work of Art, provided that the Artist says so. There's even a hallowed tradition
of scatological monuments: Duchamp (who liberated the urinal from the shithouse
for a more fulfilling life in SFMOMA); Manzoni, (who laboriously canned his
own crap and topped it off with elegant labels); to performance artist Kim Jones
(who has kept and stored every single bowel movement he's had over the last
15 years). And, as we all know, most artists DON'T think their shit stinks.
But what Kac has done has got them all beat. In his own particular solipsistic
version, he not only claims that the artist's shit doesn't stink, but that the
artist's bio-waste is good enough to eat and suitable for framing. For he has
created nothing less than bio-waste in the form of Alba, an animal who will
likely never know the domestic bliss that Kac had planned to provide... in exchange
for his art and career.
Alba should get
a good lawyer and sue Kac for a wrongful life suit.
For a finale, Kac trots out that all-time favorite, the great granddaddy of
all art clichés: the Cave Paintings of Lascaux! He describes this as
"a new kind of art" that will cure us of from--ready for this?--needing
to "paint as we painted in the caves." So this piece aspires to nothing
less than leading us out of the darkness of our past ignorance. HOWEVER, I can't
help but notice some startling similarities between "GFP Bunny" and
your garden variety caveman art, most notably the hostile, superstitious relationship
to content. As any first-year art student knows, the cave paintings were most
likely used as part of a ritual the night before the hunt. It was art that gave
confidence and power to the tribe over animals and nature. But isn't that what
"GFP" is doing? It shows a profound impatience with life as it is,
bunnies as they are. It's the same engine--the will towards mastery and domination
of flora and fauna, the artist as protector. He, as bio-technologists do, finds
the natural world terribly inadequate and in dire need of repair and revamping.
"But why?" the world asks. A biotechnician would bark back the usual:
"because it's good for you!" "What, you LIKE getting cancer?"
"But your child, he could die! Little Tommy, DEAD!"
Kac knows, of course, to answer with the gentility of an artist. He quotes from
his own "Transgenic Art" manifesto: it's all really about the ongoing
public discourse, it's a collaborative process involving all who engage, it's
going to cultivate a continuing discussion and dialogue that will benefit all
in the end...
Awwww, hamster poop! Here's the real answer: because I can and because I want
to.
It's happy talk, the same happy talk that would have explained and justified
the performance/installation phase of the piece--the living room constructed
to accommodate public viewing of the rabbit's normal, healthy home life as part
of the Kac family, who are also installed in the fish bowl. But is this full
disclosure or pure propaganda? How "normal" is it to build an exhibit
for the purpose of showing viewers how "normal" you are?
But it's all moot. France joined in the dialogue all right: it said, "Nope,
no bunny for you" (only in French).
But let's say Kac finds a way to "free Alba" and mount this installation;
what is this "performance" suppose to prove? That an adult man and
his family can successfully take care of a rabbit? He ordered it, had it built
to his specs and now deems it his pet. This is a great gesture? Most people
care for their animals, even without an audience sharing in the "dialogue."
This proposed installation echoes and owes a huge debt to Joseph Beuys' piece,
"I Love America, America Loves Me," in which the artist lived for
five days with a coyote; both locked into a corral built for the occasion in
a popular Soho gallery. The piece also accommodated a steady stream of spectators
during gallery hours, as would the "GFP" installation. The difference
is that Beuys' thematics, the environment, cultural territory and living with
a situation on it own terms---not re-engineering it according to your caprice
and convenience---was dramatized every day, through a very real tension and
peril. Compare this with the Ozzie and Harriet utopia which was promised by
The Happy Bunny Family.
Beuys lived as an equal with the animal, respecting it and in turn making the
dog respect him (which included marking his territory with his piss, as would
the coyote). The piece enjoyed major hype and yet maintained its integrity.
Kac is influenced by these conceptual strategies, but ends up using them like
a paint roller to put a happy face on his problematic "GFP Bunny."
It's simply not applicable because Kac's work is not about harmony and the realities
of species cohabitation. It's about ownership and the appearance of nature and
normality when there is none.
 |
|
Joseph
Beuys: How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare, Photo from Performance
on Nov. 26, 1965.
|
There is a another
piece by Beuys, though, that Kac unwittingly quotes from and that is none other
than "How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare." For, as anyone who
has actually tried to explain paintings to a dead hare will tell you, it doesn't
work, and it bothers the hare. I fear that this little bunny's creator/ conservator
has an equally impossible campaign ahead. Try as he might, Kac can't seem to
share or explain his personal exuberance at having done this thing to this beast,
let alone convince us to share in his joy.
IN CONCLUSION
I guess maybe it's
not fair to dis an unfinished work--although if "GFP Bunny" is one
of those ongoing pieces, exactly how long do I have to wait before I can hate
it? It's a conceptual piece, right? I happen to hate the concept and doubt it
can be redeemed by reuniting Eduardo with his floppy-eared child. It's a fucking
rabbit not Elian Gonzalez. The worst that could happen here is that Kac will
have to make that long march back to the drawing board. And on behalf of all
future Bio-artists everywhere, we salute you!
Now I'm talking directly to Eduardo:
It serves you right, dude. PEOPLE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE MAD AT you BECAUSE
THE PREMISE IS AS TOXIC AS HELL. NO AMOUNT OF DIALOGUE OR FEEDBACK IS GOING
TO CHANGE THAT.
The purity of your intentions doesn't matter. Creating An Animal In Service
of Art sure looks reckless and mean and will be used by reckless and mean people.
Your art is a silent endorsement for countless others who will Do It For All
The Worst Reasons.
There is no fourth wall in bio-art. And no artist immunity, either. All of us
will learn this the hard way, and perhaps save future bio-artists from needing
the same harsh lessons. Or perhaps he'll give the whole field a reputation for
indulgence and arrogance. What concerns us right now is that "GFP Bunny"
is a failed work of art.
(Ed. Note: Below are a list of web sites that Daly Hoyt compiled for his
"Bio-Art Survey" course at the California Collage of Arts & Crafts,
San Francisco campus.)
Bio-Art Web Sites
The Biospace Glossary
http://www.biospace.com/b2/gls_index.cfm
Glossary of technical terms on genetics
The Human Cloning Foundation
http://www.humancloning.org/
In terms of links, this is probably the most provocative site you'll find, with
connects to all the wacky bio-tech superstars from Dr. Richard Seed to Ian Wilmet.
The Missyplicity Project
www.missyplicity.com
The web behind (or in front of) the legend. Be also sure to check out the sister
project geneticsavingsandclone.com
The Male Pregnancy Project
www.malepregnancy.org
Here"s one of the all time great smartass art projects. Although based on fact--see
The Clone Age to confirm the info--it's doubtful that it's real, although who
knows...
Art in the Genetic Age
www.geneart.org
This is a sponsored project from the Gene Media Forum, an organization housed
at Syracuse University in upstate New York that was responsible for the educational
component of the "Paradise Now" show in New York City.
Clones R US
http://www.d-b.net/dti/
I thought that this site was real for about 15 minutes before realizing that
it was a hoax. All the same, it's a great satire.
Clone All
http://members.tripod.com/~Saulm/clone.htm
More cloning satire although not as inspired as Clones R Us.
genetiX action
http://www.artactivist.com/geneact/
"genetiX action! is a Bay Area group committed to resisting genetic-engineering,"
which says it all.
BAN, the Bioengineering Action Network
http://www.tao.com/~ban/
A great site for those suspicious of the coming bio-tech world (and who isn't)
and what you can do about it.
Dale Hoyt is an artist who lives in San Francisco. He runs the Coalition of Artists & Life Forms (C.A.L.F.), which explores the possibility of bio-technology as an art form.