TY - JOUR
T1 - This being you must create
T2 - Transgenic art and witnessing the invisible
AU - Blocker, Jane
PY - 2003/3
Y1 - 2003/3
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Christine Borland
KW - Contemporary art
KW - Eduardo Kac
KW - Frankenstein
KW - Genetics
KW - Witness
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=5044252547&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1080/0950238032000071695
DO - 10.1080/0950238032000071695
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:5044252547
SN - 0950-2386
VL - 17
SP - 193
EP - 210
JO - Cultural Studies
JF - Cultural Studies
IS - 2
ER -