Spirit Molecule
June 8-Sept. 29, 2019
Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University
Field Station: Spirit Molecule, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2019. Photo: Steven Bridges
In Spirit Molecule, a Field Station exhibition at Michigan State University’s Broad Art Museum, Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Phillip Andrew Lewis explore new possibilities in gene editing toward the creation of a genetic memorial. Combining Dewey-Hagborg’s practice of genetic hacking with Lewis’s experience with psychoactive botany, they aspire to engineer human DNA into a plant, which could be consumed as part of a final journey of intimacy with a lost loved one. The project has the potential to shift the dialogue around how we confront death and develop new cultural forms of mourning and communion.
This highly experimental biological intervention is undertaken in collaboration with MSU assistant professor Bjoern Hamberger and his team in the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Part of a larger, ongoing effort by the artists, Spirit Molecule represents a major step forward in successfully inserting human DNA into the cells of a type of moss, Physcomitrella patens. While Physcomitrella patens itself does not have psychoactive properties, the earthen landscape in the gallery includes a species of liverwort (Radula perrottetii) that produces the psychoactive compound perrottetinene, which is similar to THC. The presence of the liverwort as part of the setting for the transgenic moss points to the artists’ vision to one day insert recombinant human DNA directly into a plant with psychoactive properties.
Field Station: Spirit Molecule is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and curated by Steven L. Bridges, Associate Curator. Support for this exhibition is provided by the MSU Federal Credit Union.
DOCUMENTATION
Photo: Steven Bridges