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Cultural Studies
  Publisher:  Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
  Issue:  Volume 17, Number 2 / March 2003
  Pages:  193 - 210
 
THIS BEING YOU MUST CREATE: TRANSGENIC ART AND WITNESSING THE INVISIBLE

Jane Blocker A1

A1 University of Minnesota, USA


Abstract:


'This Being You Must Create' uses the story of Frankenstein as a parent text through which to understand how the cultural phenomena surrounding genomics are shot through with stories of biological meaning, which remain unreconciled with the problems of invisibility. The essay examines two of Frankenstein's progeny: Scottish sculptor Christine Borland's work The Monster's Monologue (1997) and a piece called GFP Bunny (2000) by the self-named 'transgenic' artist Eduardo Kac. These works expose the ways in which biological meaning, just as in Mary Shelley's novel, is constructed through a dependence on scopic knowledge, the logic of representation and the powerful hybrid notion of the visible/invisible. Like the monster in Frankenstein, who begs his creator for a companion to his misery, these works demand a witness to invisibility, a witness who can testify to the fact that biological meaning 'is always already hybrid, monstrous, very often written or told in darkness'.


Keywords:

Eduardo Kac, Christine Borland, Frankenstein, genetics, contemporary art, witness

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