IN VIVO - IN VITRO

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) | Eduardo Kac | Stelarc | Joe Davis | Karl Sims | Eva Sutton | Daniel Lee | Susan Alexjander | Polona Tratnik | IN VIVO - IN VITRO

Unique
By Polona Tratnik

The work continues to discuss the interweavence of the individual in the common microbiological flesh of the world or to question the boundaries of the individual's intimacy and privacy. It enables an insight into the micro world of the human body, it visualizes the fauna and flora of it.
This time samples of micro organisms of the observers are examined. The observer's intimacy is examined with an intrusively piercing eye, which sees more than usually. The observer himself is also invited to meet another aspect of his body in a dissection way. But the observer is also confronted with special conditions, he is posed in a kind of artificial environment for cultivating life, in a way he enters an inside of an organism, but this organism is above all scientific, it is a kind of laboratorial organism. It is that much cold as it is warm. It contains life, namely numerous living species. Thus a human being becomes merely one of them.
The confrontation is safe and sterile although the threat of the enormous quantity of the unknown species that might endanger the observer is perceptible. But the atmosphere is also exciting with its motley crowd of species in all colours and forms. The project is shown in progress, in such a manner the situation changes and enriches. The graveyard of the human remains becomes a fertile storehouse that enables living. The micro organisms gain much better conditions to grow as they have at the donor’s body and thus their afterlife is enabled. The organic elements contributed by the human crowd are gathered as in a DNA bank and artificially kept alive in substitutional living environment.

POLONA TRATNIK
www.ars-tratnik.si
polona.tratnik@guest.arnes.si

Polona Tratnik is doing her doctor's degree on philosophy and theory of visual culture at the Faculty for humanistic studies in Koper, Slovenia. In the last years, she has presented many projects as an artist working in the field of biotechnological art, incorporating living elements as human skin cells, micro-organisms, hair and similar in her complex installations, mainly concerning human body. She has participated on some major exhibition events: Biennale of Electronic Art (2004 Perth, Australia), L’Art Biotech (2003 Nantes, France), Breakthrough (2004 Den Haag, the Netherlands), and The seven sins; Ljubljana – Moscow (2004 Ljubljana, Slovenia). She has received some reputable awards for her work (Prešernova award in 2000, Rotary Club award in 2001, Moje Pero – award for short prose).