2017
Wood, cement, steel, fabrics
DNA in plastics is part of a corpus of several works committed to thwarting the often erroneous or distorted representations that we have of the DNA molecule.
As part of Dominique Peysson's artistic residency at Espace Jean-Roger Caussimon in Tremblay-en-France, in partnership with Lieu Multiple, the DNA school and the Ebi-Carbios laboratory in Poitiers and supported by the Seine-Saint-Denis Department and the Ile-de-France Region.
DNA in plastics was exhibited from January 5 to March 10, 2017 for the Première Impression exhibition, consisting of 5 of my works on DNA.
The DNA extractor is a crafting tool I developed for my setup DNA in plastics. I designed it to manufacture DNA in quantity, no system having been developed to date to do this, since DNA is only manipulated in laboratories in very small proportions. The extractor differs from the laboratory equipment used for DNA, but I was inspired by systems developed a long time ago for the extraction of plant materials in large quantities, such as the extraction of grape and apple juice. The extractor as presented here is still incomplete, since it only allows part of the extraction to be carried out. Work is underway to complete it. I will then be in possession of a machine which will allow me to extract DNA in even larger quantities.
DNA in plastics shows us the result of a long development work. Starting from the principle that DNA is an immensely long molecule, therefore belonging to what is usually called "plastic material", I decided to desacralize the DNA molecule for the consider to be what it is according to this last definition: plastic. The axis allowing this molecule to be considered then changes completely: is it possible to manipulate DNA on our size scale? What is its consistency? What is the proportion by weight of DNA in our body? In short, if we leave the sphere of the symbolic, what remains of this helix molecule?
Keeping a shared laboratory notebook allowed everyone to follow the progress of my research live. http://adn.mjccaussimon.fr
The catalog of the exhibition also retraces the research processes in progress, and offers an "activatable" notebook, ie one can animate by moistening the paper thanks to the principle of bimetallic strips.