Sharing The Process

Pure academics occasionally arrive at a proof of concept but struggle to establish the value of their discovery in a broader context. In 2021, for example, a group of Chinese scientists used cellular biology to re-engineer a very rare ancient color through E. coli. This discovery was warranted by the traditional university structure — the scientists really couldn't, nor tried to, say what the worth of this work was, what it actually meant, or what relevance it had and what its scope was.

While their model demonstrated a proof of concept, the re-invention of cellular color appears to have had no connection to the extraordinary value this color once had — let alone the more-than-human agency of the snail at the heart of this invention, which has long since disappeared from view. Focusing on what is possible is often disjointed from the cultural and historical contexts that establish what is necessary, or what, of what's possible, will come to replace it.

Embedded with a scientific lab over the past couple of years, I've noticed similar challenges and, within them, opportunities for art and science collaboration — namely, the difficulty of connecting state-of-the-art scientific developments with cultural and ethical frameworks in a way that addresses not only consumer attitudes or commercial potential for further research, but many other frameworks and forms of knowledge production that jointly constitute a vision for the future of said knowledge.

The methodology and framework of collaboration I tend to advocate for engages scientists and artists in cross-learning from each other directly, but also works as a gateway into more complex conversations about what is understood by the hashtag words we so often see emerge in parallel with research: sustainability, ecology, justice.

So we enter into the same research with very different questions. Where science would be concerned with a proof of concept, my question would be: what kind of problems emerge when a scientific framework is shaped by artistic inquiry? How is it defended as simultaneously artistic and scientific research through the development of a shared process?

What is a shared process, precisely? Let's return to the snail as an example. When I think about working with a specific kind of marine snail, I think about how I would enter south Lebanon — where such a snail is uniquely situated — and return with live animals, while myself alive. I also think about the broader political and socio-economic questions this little errand would touch on, and the historical contexts that would allow me to pursue such work at this time. When scientists think about procuring the same snail, they refer to it as "media" and wonder whether a lab in Italy or Greece might have a bucket of them we could borrow.

The same dynamic applies when it comes to negotiating what is and isn't good work, and when the work is considered finished. While this process and conversation are central to the work, I do not actually need a proof of concept , only the concept itself, to investigate where and how it would find its life in the world, and what world it would allow the visitor of the exhibition to enter. For me, the work is good and finished when it has this clear-cut possibility: to be a window into something, one specific prism through which things considered given can be revisited. Of course, for the scientific collaborators this isn't sufficient. So what we are also negotiating is knowledge in duration.

The playful way of addressing these cultural divides emerges through practice and participation in a shared project. In parallel, the process highlights how language, literature, and sumptuary law are deployed to infuse concepts with discipline-appropriate symbolisms. This creates a framework for adding a cultural "why" to the debate over what is and isn't warranted. The broader significance of this process lies in how it leads to unexpected questions, discoveries, and problems…and how this in turn benefits each discipline.

—Mari 👯‍♀️