CAE_Biotech Projects

GenTerra by Critical Art Ensemble used a harmless form of gut E. coli to educate the public about genetically modified organisms.

GenTerra is a fictional biotech company dealing with "transgenics" and driven by profit, but also by a sense of social responsibility. Products created through this process—-for example, transgenically modified foods—-have often caused controversy. GenTerra claims to produce organisms that help solve ecological or social problems

GenTerra is essentially a participatory "theater" comprising a lab, computer stations displaying the company’s informational CD-Rom, and a bacteria release machine. Scientists and artists are talking the public through the process and implications (whether they are purely profit-driven or feature some utopian qualities) of transgenics. Materials are then provided to allow people to get a hands-on experience by creating their own transgenic organism, using human DNA derived from blood samples.




"Marching Plague" mocks the notion that biological terror presents any serious practical threat, arguing instead that extravagant spending of tax dollars to defend against bioterror is no more than a means of "maximizing profit and consolidating power through the matrix of biocatastrophe."

It advances on several fronts at once (with an installation, a performance piece, a film, and a book) and is not explicitly identified with any individual artist. This time out, they've taken on an unwelcome but highly effective artistic collaborator: the US Department of Justice, which continues its pursuit of a two-year-old case against one of the key artists behind the project, Steven Kurtz.

The prosecution of Kurtz is a work of political theater that starkly illuminates one of the chief arguments of "Marching Plague": that microorganisms are practically useless as weapons but are a highly effective tool for scaring a citizenry into accepting tighter government and corporate control.




"Free Range Grains" included a mobile DNA extraction laboratory for testing food products for possible transgenic contamination. It was this equipment which triggered the Kafkaesque chain of events. It allowed participants to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms and like GenTerra it had also been performed internationally.

Public was invited to bring their own food – especially that labeled as GM-free (free from genetically-modified organisms) or organic – and use a simple test lab to detect the presence of contaminant genetically-modified ingredients.

Critical Art Ensemble obtained ‘Roundup Ready’ canola, soy and corn and reverse-engineered the seeds to yield regular oil’ plants for the exhibition Molecular Invasion. They did this using a nontoxic chemical disrupter, calling the process Contestational Biology. In the installation’s accompanying position paper, the artists describe the use of ‘genetic un-design’ as ‘Fuzzy Biological Sabotage’.




Contestational Biology consisted of an ‘amateur’ scientific experiment that ‘reverse engineered’ samples of the Monsanto Corporation’s Round-Up Ready corn, canola and soy products, three of the many genetically modified organisms rapidly being integrated into modern agriculture industry. The ultimate goal of the installation, however, was to raise public awareness about the sweeping privatization of the human food supply by directly contesting Monsanto’s right to create and patent customized life forms for corporate profit.




Cult of the New Eve reacts to modern biotechnology as manifested in its promises of salvation by practising a »new eve« cult aimed to unmask the utopias. In this performance, an intermeshing of electronic information systems with performative theatre practice, CAE explores and provokes the discourse of life science.
In addition to art productions, the artist group CAE organises performances and theory lectures in which they adopt a critical stance towards models of representation geared to a capitalist, political, economic ideology.
CAE ‘perform’ dressed as a cross between the Heaven’s Gate Suicide Cult and the Unabomber. Cult of the New Eve addressed the rhetoric that was being used (particularly by scientists) to calm public fears.




The “Society for Reproductive Anachronisms” was the opposite of the BioCom Corporation of "Flesh Machine." The SRA position was that there should never be medical intervention of any kind in reproductive process. They worked on the street setting up tables, as activists do, and provided information and services on the current state of reproductive process. Because they were so militantly embodied and sexuality positive, they were quite a popular stop, particularly on university campuses. “Extreme medical intervention in reproduction and the attack on sexuality” It engaged the audience in dialogue about the problems of medical intervention in reproduction.





FLESH MACHINE: A Genexploitation Project

THEORY / PERFORMANCE: In a multimedia lecture the American artist collective Critical Art Ensemble explains the context of the event.

THE CLONING PROJECT - CAE allowed those who were interested to take actual screening tests for donor DNA, cytoplasm, and/or surrogacy. In doing so, the users could find out if they were considered "fit" or "unfit" for reproduction in a pan capitalist society. If they were "fit," users were asked to donate DNA to be stored in cryo-tanks, and received a certificate of fitness.
It looked at eugenics as central to a capitalist enterprise dedicated to "the total rationalization of culture." The project created settings for participants to explore issues firsthand, in this case by answering questionnaires designed by the industry of reproductive medicine to assess the quality of their own genetic material.