CAFA held the 3rd EAST Art x Technology Season in the winter of 2019. As part of the event, the lecture “Editable Future: The Technical, Ethical, Legal and Artistic Perspectives of Gene Editing” featured discussions over the scientific, legal, ethical aspects of gene editing and gene-related artistic creation. Among the six speakers there are scientists, historian, curator and artist.
The first speaker, researcher Wang Yangming introduced the history and application of gene editing. He believes that gene editing is a double-edged sword: It can be used to boost food output to prevent more famines, but it may also be used to make bio-weapon. There are also ethical concerns when it comes to human gene editing.
Researcher Wang Haoyi elaborated on human gene editing. According to him, editing of somatic cell is completely different from editing of embryos cells - the latter is highly ethically controversial as it would pass the edited genes onto the next generations and affect the evolution of human race, whereas the former wouldn’t be inherited, and could benefit people who caught a disease because of genetic variations.
Researcher Peng Yaojin focused on the legal and ethical aspect of gene editing. He raised a question: Where should we draw the line between gene editing used for treatment of disease and gene editing used for the sake of eugenics? Gene editing might be misused by people in power to turn their social advantage into biological advantage, and it might lead to discrimination against people whose genes are not edited. Peng also compared laws and regulations regarding gene editing in the US, Britain, France, Germany, Israel and China. He noted that China has not yet imposed enforceable penalties on human gene editing, and suggested that the legislation department should react to the updates in genetic research more timely.
Historian Gao Lu spoke about the history and status quo of regulation of gene editing. Back in the 1960s, a group of UK scientists initiated the radical science movement, appealing for reflections on science’s role in society. It was under the context of such awakening that three years after Paul Berg created the first man-made recombinant DNA in 1972, 140 biologists, lawyers and physicians drew up voluntary guidelines at the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA to ensure the safety of recombinant DNA technology. The guidelines became earliest reference of regulations in the science field in many countries, but few revolutionary changes were made to the guidelines for years. Then there was the 2018 CRISPR baby scandal, in which a Chinese researcher named He Jiankui made the first genome-edited human babies. It once sound the warning bell: More systematical and detailed precaution measures and more strict public scrutiny should be applied to gene editing technologies, and we might need to redefine the direction of scientific development taking the ontology of human existence into consideration.
Curator Wei Ying has been focusing her research on BioArt. The term BioArt was coined by Brazilian-American artist and professor Eduardo Kac, who’s best known for his controversial work Alba that features a gene-edited, green-fluorescent rabbit. Although Kac defined BioArt as manipulation, modification or creation of life and living processes in his 1997 BioArt Manifesto, Wei believes that the interdisciplinary exploration across art and biology shouldn’t be limited to gene editing in the labs. She proposed a new definition named “pan-bioart”, which expands the bio art practice into three levels: biology as material, biology as data and biology as image. Biology can also be a concept generator, like how the concept of “evolution” was invented as a biological term and later evolved in sociological discipline. In terms of gene as an artistic medium, Wei sorts relevant art practices into two categories: digital and physical. Works like Ben Fry’s Chromosome 21 is categorized as digital, which exist solely in digital world; works like Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s Stranger Visions, in which the artist made 3D-printed portraits from strangers’ DNA gathered from public spaces, transfer gene into physical objects. Wei discovered that many BioArt works in the west respond to religion, but as the BioArt practice gradually shifts to Asia, how would people respond to technologies like gene editing in atheist China? By raising this question Wei hopes to inspire young artists.
The last speaker, Marta de Menezes is a renowned Portuguese bio artist. She shared her bio art practice. Her approach towards a theme is not pure scientific, but to first expand her view with empathy towards other people’s perspectives before narrowing down to more specific thoughts. She doesn’t limit herself to certain laboratories, materials or fields. In fact, her works cover evolutionary biology, microbiology, cytobiology, etc. The artist expressed her passion for art, especially art’s impact in enhancing reflections on knowledge and technology from a philosophical perspective.
Time: 2019/11/12 18:00
Venue: CAFAM Lecture Hall
Presenter: Wang Yuyang, Deputy Director of CAFA School of Experimental Art
Keynote Speakers: Wang Yangming, Wang Haoyi, Peng Yaojin, Gao Lu, Wei Ying, Marta de Menezes
