biopunk text soft launch

Here is a free, readable online version of a biopunk book I recently self-published to accompany my current exhibition. Enjoy!

Mangling Methodologies in biological art and display practices (moderated by Dr Tagny Duff)

It was my great honour to sit alongside Dr Andrew Pelling, Jens Hauser, Tristan Matheson and Dr Tagny Duff as a panelist for the panel session entitled, Mangling Methodologies in biological art and display practices (organized by Tagny Duff). This panel took place this past Thursday, just before the opening reception for my thesis exhibition, Biomateria + Contagious Matters, as part of the RE-CREATE: Theories, Methods and Practices of Research-Creation in the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Media Art Histories International Conference. It was a packed house! Thanks to everyone who came to listen and ask questions. A video recording of the panel should be made available soon. For now, here are the text and images I presented in a seven-minute presentation (click to enlarge the images).

BODILY ENGAGEMENT

Textile and other craft-making practices assume and privilege a direct bodily engagement with materials. These hands-on making methodologies require dexterity, haptic understanding, a textural interpretation—in essence, a material fluency developed through corporeal translation. I’ve dubbed this process, “haptic epistemology”, or the method of generating knowledge through touch or membranous contact with forms.

This forms a core principle of my working craft methodology. However, it’s one I’ve had to rework and adapt in negotiating the intersection of textile and biological craft. The same practices and rule sets cannot necessarily apply across disciplines but some bridging has happened and I’ll address that in a minute.

Some textile-based haptic methods I’ve abandoned out of necessity include:

·      using my mouth and teeth as an extra hand for holding, pulling or cutting string;

·      using my saliva to smooth the fuzzy end of a thread before threading it through a needle, or to spin yarn;

·      using my fingernails as tweezers;

·      holding my work close to my face to see the tiny details, holding it directly in my hand to feel its texture and assess its form;

Engaging in these tricks, shortcuts and assessment methods in producing textile objects would literally destroy laboratory-based microorganisms—this is of course due to the bacteria and fungi ever-present on my hands, my breath, my hair, every part of me. So, there are new rules to follow, new barriers to accept, new protocols to adopt and invent, in order to grow live tissue on a textile.

ADOPTED METHODS 

ASEPSIS AND BARRIERS

Working with tissue culture, coaxing a ‘life’ form to re-form itself into a sculptural object on a predetermined woven scaffold, requires self-containment, asepsis and the institution of various levels of barrier. Biocraft methodology—and I say “biocraft” when referring to tissue engineering because it IS a craft process, in the production of a functioning form—requires preventing direct skin contact with any of your materials or tools. Some materials are toxic to humans, but usually it's humans who are the mortal threat to vulnerable cell cultures.

The imposition of a handcraft process on an aseptic environment, attempting to mesh direct engagement of the body with an elaborate system of establishing bodily barriers, is challenging to the act of making.

If weaving is meticulous, weaving in the miniature under a flow hood, wearing gloves and misting everything with ethanol, is painstaking, and hazardous: precision is lost, your endurance is challenged and touch becomes a very complicating factor. The haptic epistemological methodology can be the process of destruction, erasure, and cell death—and for the artist, it could mean the epic failure of a months-long project.

FAILURE AND FUTILITY

Failure and futility are inherent principles in life science methodologies, principles that the practitioner must come to terms with. The majority of experiments will fail. This is especially true in bioart where nonspecialists apply protocols of tissue engineering, with very little initial understanding of what they’re doing. Artists with product-oriented agendas will be disappointed. One may argue that failure is also an inherent principle in art-making but it is all the more poignant when working with “living” or semi-living materials—these are organisms dependent on the researcher for life support. 

Negotiating, accepting and even embracing failure, is a key component of adopting scientific research as an art-making practice. This implies accepting a lack of control.

BUREAUCRACY AND BARRIERS

Elaborate controls are put into place to regulate the use of biological materials. The perception of disembodied bodily materials, such as human cells, are that of contagion regardless of whether or not anything is actually contagious. You can’t catch cancer. You can’t infect yourself with mouse tissue. These are the materials that I’ve worked with and that I’ve had to complete numerous certifications in order to handle, transport and display. These bureaucratic barriers may or may not be entirely necessary all the time—however, one currently must embrace and work within these rule sets in the adoption of bioart practice.

INVENTED METHODS  

WET WEAVING

I want to switch now to elaborate on my invented method for producing biotextiles, one that respects laboratory rules and switches the focus of haptic epistemology from my process to that of the microorganisms themselves.

Textile scaffold production happens through a process I call “wet weaving”. In wet weaving, textile materials are stored in fluid and manipulated while soaked. Fibres are immersed in ethanol for a period of hours or days in order to induce and maintain sterility. Throughout the weaving process, the weaving materials are kept wet with ethanol, and later rinsed with phosphate buffer solution to prepare them for in vitro use. The entire life span of the textile is within a wet ecology, including its later immersion in cell culture media as an engineered scaffold for the cells, to its eventual ‘fixing’ in paraformaldehyde once the experiment has concluded and the biotextile must be preserved.

In the wet ecology of my textile scaffolds, it’s the cells themselves who perform the haptic epistemological process. The resourcefulness of these non-neuronal (supposedly non-thinking) cells is displayed in how they anchor themselves at fibre axes, at the intersection of threads, extend towards each other, communicate through touch and collectively build multicellular bridges within the woven structure. As the bridges widen, the grid becomes the skeleton for new tissue formation. 

NEW PROTOCOLS

I want to end with this image, which is an emergent development of new mingled protocols and performance, in the disrupted gallery display and art administrative methods—here, staff have adapted, embraced and upheld a new set of rules, specifically for this display of biological art across the hall. I want to state that I consider this as much the work as the work on display.