Genetic Engineering and Society Center

The Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center, NC State University Libraries, and Gregg Museum of Art & Design hosted a full-day symposium to discuss the Art’s Work/Genetic Futures exhibition. The symposium brought together artists, humanists, and social/natural scientists, using the exhibition as a departure point for conversations about the future of biotechnology and genetics.

The exhibition provokes questions about who has the standing to comment on or even create our genetic futures. It shows how artists and designers can contribute materially, rhetorically, and conceptually to biotechnology’s development. The selected works question the all-too-common assumption that scientists and engineers hold the power to create new futures that will come to pass without the input of other people. By highlighting artists’ contributions in these areas and bringing the public into the conversation as a partner rather than a recipient of technical knowledge, visitors will be encouraged to consider the contributions artists and scientists are making toward shaping our genetic futures, the effects these innovations and ideas will have on their own lives, and their own roles in this process.

The symposium places art at the center of discussions about the future of biotechnology by presenting works in which artists appropriate tools and techniques of modern biotechnology that have until recently been the exclusive purview of scientists. The event used the exhibition as a departure point for conversations about the future of biotechnology and genetics. The morning session was held at the Gregg Museum of Art & Design and continued at the NC State’s D.H. Hill Jr. Library Auditorium in the afternoon. The morning session consisted of responses from scientists, humanities scholars, artists, and members of the public to specific artworks in the show.

In the afternoon, three panels of artists convened at D.H. Hill Jr. Library Auditorium to discuss:

The symposium concluded with an open conversation on how we develop richer interfaces between artists and scientists in determining our genetic futures.

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Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping Our Genetic Futures will be an art-science exhibit and symposium of artists, scientists, and humanities scholars, led by the the NC State University Libraries and the Genetic Engineering and Society Center, held at the Gregg Museum of Art & Design, the physical and digital display spaces of the NCSU Libraries and the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA). These activities will elicit discussion about genetics in society through the lens of contemporary art and offer viewers new ways to think about their role in the genetic revolution.

By combining science and art and design, the artists, and artworks chosen for display, will contextualize genetic engineering by bringing it out of the lab and into public places; challenging viewer’s understandings about the human condition, the material of our bodies, and the consequences of biotechnology. The exhibit(s), integrated curriculum, and cross-campus dialogues will raise awareness and discussion about biotechnologies and their consequences in our society, while drawing in art practices for reaching new communities.

Art’s Work/Genetic Futures began as a collaboration between Fred Gould, an evolutionary biologist and co-founder of NC State’s Genetic Engineering and Society Center (GES), and Molly Renda, a designer with NCSU Libraries’ Exhibit Program. Gould wanted to create an art exhibit that addressed the same ethical and practical questions being discussed among GES’s interdisciplinary scholars—including ecologists, social scientists, historians, philosophers, and anthropologists. The Libraries was a natural fit with its record of engaging exhibits, its understanding of the research life cycle, and its access to subject specialists and new technologies. Gould and Renda proposed the concept of a multi-site exhibit to Roger Manley, director of NC State’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design in the months leading up to the opening of their new building. We soon found our curator, Science, Technology, and Society scholar Hannah Star Rogers, whose specialization in the history of art and science was a fortuitous match. Our core planning team also includes GES senior research scholar Todd Kuiken, communications director Patti Mulligan, and Elizabeth Pitts, assistant professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, who formerly served as a postdoctoral researcher at GES.

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About the curator: Hannah Star Rogers is a curator, scholar, and poet. She received her MFA in poetry from Columbia University and Ph.D. at Cornell University on the intersection of art and science. She curated Making Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott, which received an exhibits prize from the British Society for the History of Science and resulted in an invited lecture at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. She is past Director of Research and Collaboration for Emerge: Artists and Scientists Redesign the Future 2016 and served as Guest Bioart Curator for 2017.

Spaces & Technology: The multi-site exhibition will be held simultaneously at NC State University’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design and in the physical and digital display spaces of NC State University Libraries D. H. Hill Exhibit Gallery and the James B. Hunt Jr. Library. The earthwork, From Teosinte to Tomorrow, a 100 x 100-foot corn maze, will be planted at the North Carolina Museum of Art’s museum park.

Our project team consists of interdisciplinary scholars and artists from inside and outside NC State, including Molly Renda, Fred Gould, Todd Kuiken, Elizabeth Pitts, and Patti Mulligan.

Artists include: Joe Davis, Jon Davis, Heather Dewey-Hagborn, Richard Pell, Kirsten Stolle, Paul Vanouse, Adam Zaretsky, Emilia Tikka, Emeka Ikebude, Jennifer Willet, Charlotte Jarvis, Maria McKinney, Kerasynth, Ciara Redmond, Aaron Ellison, David Buckley Borden, and Joel Ong.

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