GenTerra

2001-2003

a project by

Critical Art Ensemble
with
Beatriz da Costa

GenTerra pwas the first step in a long process toward developing a notion of contestational biology that could be used by nonscientists. In GenTerra, we were interested in people's responses to contact with transgenic creatures (in this case, colonies of bacteria containing a random human genome library). While these creatures were harmless and inert in any biological sense, they tended to make people quite nervous and even afraid. Our other interest was to see whether we could dispel this nonrational fear. To accomplish this task, we created a situation in which we had personalized dialogues with individuals on biological risk assessment, before they were offered a chance to interact with transgenic wetware.

View Project Website (flash file!): GenTerra