ABOUT

Building on the ANAT SAHMRI residency, the ANAT DNA Library brought together a multidisciplinary set of artists, researchers and thinkers from across Australia to engage with issues around the ownership and governance of DNA material. The program provided a laboratory focusing on experimental, artist-led explorations of the ethical, philosophical, legislative and other frameworks surrounding this interdisciplinary field research. Facilitated by curator and artist Lucie Loy, the ANAT DNA Lab was held over four days in 2021 - probing the messiness and mystery of biology focused through speculation-workshops, presentations and reading groups.

Emphasising the importance of creating sites for the circulation of knowledge and questioning via artist-led research, ANAT commissioned a digital research repository to explore and extend on the research undertaken during the lab. At the core of this project are the eight DNA Lab participants, who have been invited to suggest sources that are representative of current debates around DNA ownership and governance across a wide variety of fields.

Some entries archived in this repository take the form of more traditional research outputs such as peer-reviewed articles, while others take the form of non-traditional research outputs such as fictional writing, cinema and podcasts. Through this project we are interested in transgressing boundaries between art, sciences, practice and theory by creating a site for collaborative, artist-led research and development. In this sense this website is an evolving, collective bibliography, as well as a tool that can be used by other artists, academics, scientists and researchers working in the field of DNA research.

HOW TO USE THE SITE

This digital repository is designed to be easy to use and fun to browse. There are several ways you can search for sources, which can be used in combination with each other for more refined or advanced searching. You could employ a category-based search, which will create results based on the form the source takes (such as artwork, article or podcast). You can refine your search further through tags, which provide general information about content. You can also scroll through the list or use the search bar. It’s really up to you.

ANAT

The Australian Network for Art and Technology was founded by the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (then the Experimental Art Foundation) in 1988. Since, ANAT has supported hundreds of extraordinary artists to engage with science and technology through a diverse range of programs and opportunities, expediating experimentation for artists to contribute meaningfully to Australia’s reputation for creativity, diversity and innovation. Collaboration is in ANAT’s DNA. We forge relationships across industry, academia, the community and government to create unique opportunities for artists. We deliver residencies, symposia, workshops and other professional pathways, supported by robust national and international networks.

PEOPLE

Lucie LoY – PROJECT COORDINATOR
Lucie is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and writer (currently) based in Northern NSW and Naarm (Melbourne). Alongside her independent practice which spans visual art, publishing, writing and curating she has committed much of her professional capacity to platforming independent, artist-led and experimental practice. From 2014-2020 Lucie co-directed BLINDSIDE, an artist-run platform based in Melbourne. Through her work with artist-run projects locally and internationally, Lucie has explored notions of the ‘artist-led’, platforming the importance of art and artists critically and creatively addressing global and social struggles. Working with the aesthetics of hope, resistance and imagination, as well as through policy advocacy, activism and frustrating bureaucratic frameworks, Lucie’s practice and work seeks to explore the intersection of art, political ecology, social and environmental justice and postcolonial globalisation. Lucie is interested in collaboration, ideas of the commons and critical, transdisciplinary projects. Her recent research explores biopolitics, notions of power and the philosophies and contexts of post-truth.

Dr Helen Pynor – CONTRIBUTOR
Helen is an Artist and Researcher whose practice explores philosophically and experientially ambiguous zones, such as the life-death boundary, the intersubjective nature of organ transplantation, and the animate-inanimate boundary in relation to prosthetics. Her work is informed by in-depth residencies in scientific institutions, including The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden; The Francis Crick Institute, London; and most recently The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Adelaide. Helen’s work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally including at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool UK; The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; Beijing Media Art Biennale; Science Gallery Dublin and London; and ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art). Helen has received an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, and national awards in Australia. Helen holds a PhD, a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a Bachelor of Science (1st Class Hons).

Guy Ben-Ary – CONTRIBUTOR
Guy is an artist and a researcher whose work uses emerging medias, in particular biologically related technologies (tissue culture, tissue engineering, electrophysiology and optics). He currently works at SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning and hands-on engagement with the life sciences, which is located within the University of Western Australia. Guy specialises in microscopy (light, confocal and SEM), biological & digital imaging, tissue culture and engineering and artistic visualisation of biological data. His main research areas are cybernetics, robotics and the interface of biological material to man made devices. Much of Guy’s work is inspired by science and nature, which aims to enrich our understanding of what it means to be alive. Guy’s work has been shown across the globe at prestigious venues and festivals from the Beijing National Art Museum to San Paulo Biennale to the Moscow Biennale. His work can also be seen in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work Bricolage won an award of excellence in the Japan media art festival, cellF & Silent Barrage were awarded an Honorary Mention in Prix Ars Electronica (2017, 2009) and Silent Barrage also won first prize at VIDA, a significant international competition for Art and Artificial Life. Interested in how art has the potential to initiate public debate on the challenges arising from the existence of these liminal lives, Guy creates artworks designed to problematise current and emergent bio-technologies’ influence on the shifting forces that govern and determine life, death and sentience.

Dr Svenja Kratz – CONTRIBUTOR
Svenja is a contemporary artist interested in transdisciplinary creative practice, particularly the intersections between science and art. Significant bodies of work include: The Absence of Alice – a series of mixed media exhibitions inspired by the artist’s engagement with the Saos-2 bone cancer cell line and The Human Skin Experience/Equivalent Project – a jewellery project involving tissue engineering practices. More recent individual and collaborative projects such as Ghost Writer, Monument to Immortality and Posthuman Genetic Legacies, interrogate concepts of immortality via technological intervention. Svenja holds a PhD in Biotechnology and Contemporary Art from QUT and has exhibited her works at a range of national and international venues including The Science Gallery, Dublin in 2010, The Sydney Powerhouse Museum in 2013, Experimenta Recharge, 6th International Biennial of Media Art, touring Australia from 2015 – 2016 and The Science Gallery, London in 2019. She has undertaken artist residencies at UWA's Symbiotica, Perth in 2010, the Art and Genomics Centre and Leiden University, The Netherlands in 2013 and the University of Queensland in 2015. Svenja is currently based in Hobart and works as a Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Creative Practice within the Fine Arts discipline at the UTAS School of Creative Arts and Media.

Dr Andrea Rassell – CONTRIBUTOR
Andrea is a media artist and interdisciplinary researcher in science art. Working in nanoart — artforms that engage with nanoscience and nanotechnology — she creates experimental films and moving image installations that explore scale, technological mediation, and the multisensory perception of the sub-molecular realm. Her work has been shown at the New York Imagine Science Festival, Oaxaca FilmFest in Mexico, the New Zealand International Film Festival, White Night in Australia and Sónar+D in Spain. Andrea was the 2019 recipient of the Australian Network for Art and Technology's Synapse residency, where she developed moving image works that explore the social and cultural implications of diagnostic systems in collaboration with the Ian Potter NanoBioSensing Facility. In 2020 Andrea was an artist-in-residence with Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), and a member of the ANAT Ideate programme. In 2021 she began as a Research Fellow at SymbioticA and the School of Molecular Sciences, University of Western Australia.Class Hons).

The website was built and designed by Isabella Sanasi