Culturing the Pleebland: The Idea of the "Public" In Genetic Art

This essay explores the relationship between genetic art — art incorporating material from genetic research — and the construction of a public sphere of debate about genetic research. First considering an exhibit titled Paradise Now that toured in 2000, the author then turns to Eduardo Kac's GFP Bunny project and finally to the work of Steve Kurtz, an artist who has been trying since 2004 to untangle himself from an FBI investigation associated with his work on transgenic organisms and biotoxins. While the Paradise Now exhibit and Katz's work show the fault lines between the didactic aspirations of much genetic artwork and the reality of its reception; Kurtz's case has revealed a perhaps more troubling disjunction — between the artist's notion of the "public" as participant and spectator and the US government's notion of the "public" as a group of citizens that need to be protected from the hazards of experimental art.