CRITICAL INTERDISCIPLINES
Artist Statement
“LifeBoat” is a prosaic title indicating both the physical reality (the project is contained within a ship’s lifeboat) and somewhat more conceptually, as the lifeboat has become home to a Biotechnology lab; to the processes of life itself. On a metaphorical level, this project is designed to deal with concepts of sustainability, survival and notions of biological, cultural and ideological re-generation, and naturally its obverse, the degradation of life and all its manifestations.
When the Maori people of New Zealand first encountered Cook’s ship [the Endeavour] they thought it to be a floating island. Although at first this may seem a ‘quaint’ reaction, the Maori were perfectly accurate. As a device of European expansion and exploitation and as a scientific voyage] the Endeavour was in fact a highly compressed version of English culture. This was no simple floating transport, but a microcosm of Language, mathematics, philosophy, foodstuffs, social and political structures, religion, not to mention sexual appetites and exotic diseases. If England itself had somehow drifted into the South Pacific, the effect would have not really been any differentI
On board of SILJA Opera, The SymbioticA crew inhabits a standard (fully enclosed) ship’s lifeboat and develops a working Biological Laboratory that focuses on tissue culture of elements of the local marine environment. The lab produces small biological survival packs as well as (instructional) starter packs for reestablishing and/or deconstructing cultural and political structures (e.g. starter packs for alternative democracy seem to be a good idea in the current political climate!). In addition to exploring Life on the Baltic, the LifeBoat crew will carry out preparatory lab work at Heureka’s Open Lab.
We conceive “LifeBoat” to be a highly self-reflexive critique which encourages an ambiguous view of both political culture and the culture of biology. The -LifeBoat- can either function as a positive and optimistic ‘survival mechanism’ or become a broken mirror, reflecting contemporary colonialist endeavours and carrying the threat of contamination and Imperial cynicism (implicit in the collision of Cook’s vessel with the South Pacific). In this respect “LifeBoat” may not be the panacea that it at first might appear; rather it could as easily represent yet another Utopian and ill-conceived scheme.
“LifeBoat” can be read as a symbolic attempt to create an anti authoritarian version of the ‘mobile labs’ that so terrify the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. In Powell’s address to the UN on the 6th of February (plagiarised from a US student thesis apparently) he quotes:
“One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq’s biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents”.
What kind of ideological danger will our lab present? Perhaps not a reason to begin a world war? However, certainly a pointed critique of the forces of reductionism and unilateralism that constantly calculating destruction on a massive scale and threatening both political and biological diversity. Let’s face it – in the final analysis, Lifeboats are only necessary when the real-ship is sinking!!!
Dr Nigel Helyer (AU) has a reputation for his large scale sonic installations, environmental sculpture and new media projects.
Cofounder and Artistic Director of SymbioticA Oron Catts (AU) is tissue engineering artist.
They are accompanied by biological artist Ionat Zurr (AU), live artist Sarah Jane Pell and Stuart Hodgetts.
www.life-boat.org
www.sonicobjects.com
www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au