Steve Kurtz / Critical Art Ensemble, World InfoCon Amsterdam

H: First off: Could you, in a 2 minute time interval, try to recapitulate how you use biotechnology as a form of critique?

0.22 Well the critique is a critique of capitalism and how it deploys its products. And there´s various aspects of biotechnology that we´ve looked at. We started with reproductive technology and examined that in relationship to a reframing of what we would think of as eugenic consciousness from the early 20^th century and how it´s being remade in the current markets and how it´s been done and restratigized and done in a very different way 0.52 from there we moved on looking at the politics of transgenics, which is what we have done here in Amsterdam. And we started with looking at the irrational fears people have with transgenic organisms, that they do seem quite scary things because they are such an unknown quantity. 1.10 So we began with “Genterra” which tried to give people a hands-on relationship and participation with transgenic organisms, primarily bacteria in this case, and the kind of products that were done. Once they could see that it doesn´t necessarily have to be dangerous, that you can actually make transgenic products in the public interest, 1.34 things began to change for people. And I think in a more productive way. And they could understand that on one hand there are some that are pollutants and very dangerous, and that a hard resistance should be put against them. But also that the knowledge should not be censored in any way. 1.50 That it can be used in very utopian ways and to help tell the difference. So that project was risc assessment. And while that was going on people would ask us. “Well, what can we do. We´ve discovered that 2.08 a product is not very good, or that a specific corporation has a very sinister idea of how to use this technology. What position are we in then?” And that´s how we got to the project that we are experimenting with here. 2.25 Is how could GMO´s that appear to be dangerous to the public interest be used and reverse engineered, and that people from an amateur position could somehow insert themselves, not only into the discourse, but the actual production process”.

[WOW – 2 min 22 sek!]

Don’t you think that a big ingredient in this is the non-knowledge of what is going to happen in the future? Doesn´t that also work against you?

2.55 Well, a good part of the fear is not knowing what will happen in the future. Particulalry in the kind of germline research and GMO´s are released into nature 3.08 without proper engineering to make sure that they do not impact it. So a lot of those fears are legitimate. When they´re totalizing, when they think of it for every single thing, that´s when it a problem. 3.25 So yes, it´s one of the things that can be difficult for us. We certainly had a number of people coming to object to our project saying that we were only contributing to the problem. But usually we found that these objections are not really grounded in any real understanding of the science and the engineering processes. 3.40 So we try to bring that person in, to help them make their objections more sophisticated. Because normally they aren´t grounded in something that is very real. Kind of diluted, watered down by hype and disonformation. If you can sort through that with someone, usually the discussion becomes very constructive. 4.08

How did you first find out about how to do this? I mean, you are not a scientist.

4.18 No, I am not a scientist and neither is anyone in critical art ensemble, but we are great believers in amateurism. That in many ways you can participate in even the much complex procedures and discourses, in a way that is helpful from a public perspective. We may not be able to do science completely. If you ask someone who has a scientific problem I probably wouldn´t know how to solve it. But there are many other things that can be done. 4.45 (..)

So for us the idea was. Well we can use the information that is already out there – there´s a tremendous corporate commons of information on this where almost every kind of experiment has been done. So all you have to do is 5.04 to find where the research has begun in order to know where to start. Once you´ve done that, procedures for testing is simple – almost anyone can be trained to do in 24 hours. So even I you wouldn’t be able to understand necessarily the sides of why it works, you can through the process and do it correctly to get the right answer at the end. 5.30

H: like a baking recipe or?

Yeah exactly, it´s a recipe. Many people can do math when they follow a formula, but they can´t prove the formula. So it´s that level – amateur, not the expert level. But it is still a level where you can still participate, where you can have something to say. 5.50 So in this particular case we sat ourselves with the problem of how you would reverse engineer the enzyme in round-up ready crops, that makes it immune to round-up ready herbicide.

6.05 Maybe you should explain the term “reverse engineering”?

6.10 We are kind of using it in a differrent way than normally. And that is really, to invert the effect of it, to turn it into its opposite. (..) 6.38 To put it in biological terms, what we do is normally to take a trait of enourmous adoptability in an organism and turn it into a trait of susceptablitity. So that´s kind of the 6.49 reversal process. (..)

So concretely in the case of these Monsanto Round-up products, could you explain how that works?

7.00

Well, for round up products, the way that they´re designed is to resist a certain kind of herbicide and then Monsanto gets double the profit because they also sell the herbicide, consolidating the full agrarian .. 7.27 how it works: A particular enzyme in the plant produces aromatic amino acids, and what Round Up does is, it mimics the compound this enzyme is looking for to produce aromatic amino acids, so when the enzyme binds to it it can´t do anything, so it becomes useless. So when all the enzymes become malfunctionant like this, the plant basically starves to death, cause it does not get the nutrition it needs. Monsantos ideau was to import bacteria that do not fall for these mimicking compounds, that will only get what It needs to continue making aromatic amino acids. And it works pretty well. 08.11 And it works quite well, they were quite successful at producing this.

We were thinking”how do we put this enzyme back into it´s original state” how de we shut off it´s properties that make it immune or herbicide tolerant? What we did was to look at monsantos databank of the research and found the papers when they were trying to disrupt their own enzyme in the hybrids they were making. And from there we got ideas about what compounds could do that 08.40 and went through tests (..) We never found any compound that was field tested, they were all in vitro, so were taking it the next step and into the field, to see if these compounds will have the same disruptive effect in vivo. As they did in vitro. 9.05

H: Lay person would say – is there not a risc of a “Biowar” if this escalates?

9.25 Well I think it is already a biowar it´s already escalated quite a bit. One-sided until now – corps like Monsanto figuring how to design products that increases the dependency (…) even in whole continents – if you think of Africa. 9.44 And that´s whats disturbing. There´s a very explicit intention to consolidate the food resources of the world. And once it´s consolidated and the multinationals have control, it´s going to be very difficult for any nation to exercise any kind of autonomy, particularly in the developing world. 10.00 So for us the war is on, it´s a kind of neo-colonisation, and this far, activist and protesters have totally forfeit the molecular level. They haven´t tried to fight back on that level – they´ve tried normal democratic levels, action, demonstration, protests, petitions, electronic campaigns. But as for confronting these corporations in molecular space or in biochemical space, 10.42 they´ve let that go. And we´re trying to create that level and say “hey, wer have to confront them there as well”. The electronic realm, the street, the institutional level, these are not enough. We need more. The warfare supposedly could escalate, but this is one of the defensive postures to save particular ecologies around the world. It´s not an offensive posture, the war is already coming the other way, were simply responding 11.00

So I am asking myself – how does this translate into a work of art?

11.15 That´s difficult to say (griner) We prefer the term “tactical media” and the reason is (…) interdisciplinarity. The projects we do have an aesthetic value, in the way it´s designed, in the way we set up installations, the way we perform it which at times is quite dramatic and theatrical, that it does have that kind of sensibility. But that´s not all. There´s politics, there´s activism to it, and obviously a very serious science commitment. so it´s all those things mixed together. 12.00 So it´s doesn´t produce a visiso that makes people say “oh yeah, that´s art” because there is no tradiotion in it – it´s an experimental realm, it´s a interdisciplinary realm, and when one looks at a hybrid, it requires a different way of thinking in order to visualise them as artistic expressions. The creative element is there, but it makes our audience see these things in a way that they have never seen before. 12.29 We create a new experience, a new situation, and invite them to participate. 12.35 For us that is the aesthetic experience we look for, rather than some search for formal purity, or the sublime or anything along that kind of traditional experience of art. (..) much more duchampian tradition of art, creating concepts, new ways of thinking, and we will use whatever we need, whether it´s from art, science or the social sciences.