A D N

0,5 x 218 x 175 cm (Dimensions variable)

Hand painted ceramic and porcelain tiles, photograph

2015

While living in Berlin I was analysing the foreignness of the Soviet architecture, and how these rundown brutalist mega-structures were talking of an imposed delocalized body/culture/politics. The work indexes the birth of Eugenics, Natural History Museums, and Zoos. And the way these exotic mineral-plant-human-animal bodies’ collections began to be part of a power demonstration, monetary exchange, and exploitation of living-material during the colonial enterprise.

These decadent “follies” around the world imitating faraway colonised lands, and impossible fake ecosystems are by now high-tech biology research labs, “sophisticated breeding centres” (National Geographic), and DNA data mines. Molecular extractivism epicentres with an instagrammable vintage façade.

The installation consists of a mutable-sculpture and a photograph. The floor piece is made from interchangeable hand painted porcelain tiles opening the possibility of “making”, tweaking, and de-taxonomizing any living species when given a DNA strand code/sound. The image shows a human inside a birds’ vitrine working, a feline (being fed by another zoo worker) eating on the other cage.

Both species are being part of the museum’s economy-system/display/discourse and are being analysed/invigilated by each other in a security camera-loop (feline and human-animal-worker/viewer). The composition exposes an accidental de-hierarchisation of our current taxonomic system: felines and humans are confined (as equals/publicly). At the same time, the image evidences the economy-power-hierarchy as the labour-value-extraction of their living bodies is being performed/executed.