Artists Statement

A performance project

The aim of our research is to develop artworks that are informationally ‘grown’ for the art-market to become part of an ecological economics. In our performance/installation ‘Hare’s Blood +’ we designed a gene to allow the audience to speculate on artworks that incorporate animal relics in the light of a counter-economy as envisioned by Joseph Beuys. We opened one of the multiples in which Beuys had shrink- wrapped hare’s blood. We then isolated the catalase gene from the blood which protects against aging and spliced it into living yeast cells. We then programmed an interface able to activate the synthetic gene. The transgenic Beuysian creature was then put up for auction to act as an ‘eco-political agent,’ whose life would now be governed by the commercial interests of the auction attendees. We currently assign economic systems to cellular processes with expanded xDNA alphabet. We use systems biology to program logic operations interfacing between the living artwork and the art consumers. Artworks thus become inalienable objects between artists and consumers who both are in a state of reciprocal dependence that establishes a qualitative relationship between the three transactors.