Designer
Bodies
Until June 6; Stills
It’s no use talking about the implications of genetic engineering
as if they’re all in the future; babies have already been born
with added genes, and others have been aborted because of defects
as minor as a cleft lip. It’s not even as if we’re on the
margins of the debate, when Dolly the sheep was made right here in
Scotland.
Surely the day will come when scientists see themselves as artists,
seeking to create the perfect human being out of DNA, just as Michelangelo
did in marble. It’s one thing if they see themselves as classicists,
and quite another if they turn to Cubism. This is no laughing matter
for the four Scottish artists at Stills, whose works explore the past
50 years of DNA research and its implications for those with inherited
conditions.
The gallery space is put to good use, providing a reading station
for each artist and avoiding any sense of overcrowding. The works
upstairs, by three women artists, present statistics with a personal
touch, bringing empathy into the equation. Downstairs Gair Dunlop’s
video installation shows us how our brave new world was imagined in
the 1950s and 60s.
Dunlop’s installation centres on archive footage of two gee-whiz
kids running around the 1962 Seattle World Fair in wide-eyed, technicoloured
ecstasy. On the other side of the darkened room, black and white archive
footage tells you that there’s “no limit except the imagination
of men who do new things”, a reminder of the naïve optimism
of those heady days.
Upstairs is a different story. Christine Borland’s two works
are simple in execution, but both have enormous impact. Home Testing
is comprised of four old-fashioned dice tables, with some simple instructions
for each. On rolling the dice, you are testing your chances of miscarrying,
of succeeding at IVF, or of conceiving a child with Down Syndrome
or Spina Bifida. It’s a lot more scarey when the numbers apply
directly to you.
Nearby Borland presents a sample of HeLa cells through a microscope.
These pretty purple cells are descended directly from those of a woman
who died in 1951. Henrietta Lack’s cells – and those cultured
from them – have been sold widely for research ever since. As
a result there are now thought to be more of her cells in the world
than there were in her own body.
Just across from the dice tables, Jacqueline Donachie presents her
small book, DM, as a series of 25 digital prints. They tell the touching
story of how her family found they had an inherited muscular disease.
It’s told as a personal journey, and accompanied by informal
photographs of experts in the field. Just as if they’d thrown
a dice, Jacqueline didn’t inherit the disease, and her sister
did.
Gina Czarnecki’s ambitious interactive installation, Silvers
Alter, dominates the space, with its fluid display of naked adults,
complete with genetic data and personal comments for each. By stepping
on pressure sensitive mats you can select individuals, breed them
with others and choose who should be saved from an early death. Unfortunately
for some reason I just couldn’t get them to breed. Which takes
us back to those dice…
Catrìona
Black, Sunday Herald 02.05.04