Genomics - Patricia Piccinini

When Amanda asked me to do this talk I actually tried to get out of it. I've spoken a lot about my work but I have never spoken about it in terms of science. I felt quite uneasy because I don't have a lot to do with science. I don't know any scientists. I don't work in a lab. I work in my studio and I feel quite isolated from other people, which is a self imposed isolation. And it comes a lot from my day dreams and my fantasies which is a very traditional (and in this context) boring way to make art. But that's the way I make it. But I thought I might as well talk about how I do things because maybe you want to know how different people make work.

So can I have a slide please?

From my point of view, I understand that humans have always been able to interfere and alter nature. We've cultivated the land and we've bred animals and now we can do work at a fundamental level, from disease resistant plants to a new bacteria that will stop tooth decay. I didn't really make any value judgements about those things and in some ways I actually welcome these innovations, especially medical technologies and if I'm really honest I think that my interest started in science when I was a lay person.

It started when I was fourteen and my Mother got sick with cancer and I had no idea what cancer was at the time. She was sick for twelve years and throughout that time medicine and medical innovation represented the only hope to save my family. That was the only way that I saw that we could survive. In the end however she died and in fact medicine made my Mother's life very difficult and probably diminished her quality of life. So I know what it's like to really wait for medical innovation and in some ways I feel like I'm still waiting.

I imagine that it's stories like these that make scientists want to find cures for these diseases. However I am also an artist and the thrill in my life is to make something new or to bring something from my imagination to life, where nothing before existed. I imagine that is what drives a lot of scientists to do what they do. I guess the ramifications of what scientists do have more impact on our culture or society than any art work and I find a lot of things that happen in the science world exciting but also really frightening.

I'd hate the thought of living in a world where Rupert Murdock wouldn't die or we could eliminate aging and we'd all have to be 25 year olds and I guess while my work does walk a fine line, I don't think you could see in it the answers to genetic engineering.

I'd like to show the video now please.

I made a work called The Breathing Room which is about anxiety - The Breathing Room panics on its own accord. I showed it last year at the Gallery of New South Wales for the turn of the millennium.

So you go inside this room and it's a very enveloping space. You see these large projections (of alien-like images) and on the floor there's a transducer that changes the sound to vibrations which come up through your feet. In some ways it's quite nice to be inside something bigger than yourself that reminds you of what it would be like to be a small thing inside a big thing. It's as fundamental as that. And then after that, this room starts to hyperventilate and panic for no reason which is a really intimate thing. Panic attacks are really quite intense and there is a lot to panic about in this world. Whether it be a dirty glass or ears being grown on mice.

So the room panics and it's an intense feeling. Basically this work is about fear but also a wonder at what could be.

I wanted to discuss my current exhibition - the Siren Mole, an animal that I made up inspired by the idea that we are about to produce the first synthetic organism. I asked the question why would you create a synthetic organism when we have so many organisms that are about to be extinct, why do we need a new one.

The answer of course is because we can?nd so I did. I made my own animal without consultation?ntil later when they pointed out all the defects, which was a lot. It's naked so it gets sunburnt, it's got small legs so it can't run away and will never survive on it's own. At the beginning I was really upset about that because I felt I'd failed it - I'd made something that could not survive on it's own.

Then I thought, that's alright, it's very symbolic. This animal has to be looked after by people. It has to be nurtured and I think that was what inspired the next series of photographs with the scientists, the need to look after new life forms.

The book of Frankenstein made a huge impact on me because in the novel the monster is never named. I made sure that my animal, my new creation was named by a zoologist at the Taronga Zoo. The siren that was washed up on the shores of Naples was a wondrous creature. No one knew where she came from but she was beautiful, but also dead. That was how I got the common name for my creation the Siren Mole.

So at least my animal has a name, a context and a family, as the scientists are it's parents and I guess that's one of the things that runs through my work, that there is a sense of care and nurturing for these life forms.

© Patricia Piccinini 2002