Public Amateurism

Practicing and theorizing the notion of public amateurism is a task that a number of artists have undertaken in recent years. Rather than attempting to achieve expert status within the sciences, artists have ventured to find help in the realm of hobbyism and do-it-yourself home recipes for conducting scientific experiments.

The Biotecb Hobbyist attempted to combine a hobbyist approach with artistic projects. Available as an on-line as well as a print publication, it consists of contributions from the artists Natalie Jeremijenko, Heath Bunting, Eugene Thacker, and others. The magazine offers descriptions of DIY artistic-scientific experiments combined with step-by-step instructions and advice on how to obtain the necessary materials. The print edition, Creative Biotechnology: A User’s Manual,  includes theoretical writings by the authors. One of these contributions, "Notes Towards a Sociology of Computer Hobbyism,” examines the analogies between computer hobbyism of the 1970s and the proposed biotech hobbyism in the 1990s.

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) developed its notion of amateurism from its discourse on Tactical Media and the lay-expert relationship it observed taking place within ACT-UP. CAE translated this notion into its scientific projects initially with Cull of the New Eve (with Paul Vanouse and Faith Wilding) while writing their book Digital Resistance.30 However, the project series that fully merged theoretical discourse with practical imple­mentation was probably its work on the politics of transgenic organisms that culminated in three projects. In their accompanying book The Molecular Invasion,31 the collective developed a seven-point plan meant to serve as a guideline for negotiating the relationship between transgenic production and cultural resistance:32

Points 1 through 4 were certainly enacted throughout all three projects, with Gen-Terra ' being the one most closely looking at point 2. Points 5-7, however, the ones of most interest to us in this context, found their biggest manifestation in Molecular Inva­sion34 and Free Range Grains.35 Molecular Invasion, a project by CAE, Claire Pentecost, and myself, examined the possibilities of reverse engineering Monsanto's highest cash crop, the Roundup Ready (RR) plant line.36 We attempted to sensitize Roundup Ready crops to Monsanto's herbicide Round Up, the very poison they were designed to resist. Through the application of the compound pyridoxal 5 phosphate (a compound often found in vitamins, harmless to humans and the environment) onto the leaves of RR crops and exposure to sunlight, we undertook this task. Experiments to test our hypothesis were conducted publicly within museum spaces and with the inclusion of interested students and other groups ready to participate in this particular instance of amateur science in action.

With Free Range Grains (CAE, da Costa, and Shyh-shiun Shyu) we went one step farther, and in addition to conducting scientific experiments publicly, we included a public lab. Specifically designed to test for transgenic reminiscence in processed food products, visitors were invited to bring in recently purchased groceries, and we would test for them. This project was of particular importance in Europe, where foods containing traces of transgenic materials have to be labeled. However, the materials and lab equip­ment used in Free Range Grains were also the ones that contributed to raising initial sus­picions by the police and the FBI at the beginning of the still ongoing federal investigation of the group.37 In this case, enacting amateurism clearly didn't go without punishment.

Claire Pentecost has developed the notion of amateurism in her own right and has been working on theorizing the figure of the public amateur for quite some time. She writes:

SubRosa is another group that has embraced practicing amateurism within the life sciences. Though actual engagement with life materials isn't always the case in its projects, the demystification of science and the critical examination of its political repercussions is certainly at the center of its work.  

Embracing demystification by and for amateurs was thus one of the ways in which artists approached the difficult task of developing science-based projects.

Lay-Expert Relations

It should be clear by now that by political I don't mean local party politics ot involvement in "get out the vote" campaigns. Whereas I wouldn't object to these activities, what I believe to be of interest here is not the active involvement in changing the people at play in taking command of the various institutions through which power is executed, but rather the radical undermining and redefinition of these institutions themselves.

Within the life sciences and for our "political technoscience artist," these would be the institutions that provide the contemporary grounding for the "Right of Death and Power over Life" to be enacted. The sites for action now become the research and businesses involved in the agricultural, environmental, and biomedical domains.

Once again, artists obviously are not the only people found at these sites. Next to aca­demic, political, economic, and artistically motivated individuals, we now also find a very different group of people. Namely, those who have in one way or the other been negatively affected by the institutions mentioned above and who are in search of collective organiza­tion for means of survival.

This group of people, who often develop an expert knowledge in their own right, tends to act from a position of distrust in whatever governing and decision-making forces might be held responsible for a particular situation of concern—be it available medications and funding for disease research or the environmental conditions in one's own neighborhood. Involvement within the institutions of science and their related policy-making becomes a necessity for those whose concerns aren't adequately addressed by the current social and economic system. Gabriella Coleman's analyses of the psychiatric survivor movement and Mark Harrington's survey of activities conducted by the Treatment Action Group, found elsewhere in this anthology, provide excellent examples of the types of forces and challenges at play when a group of "dissenters" merges and organizes to resist, negotiate, and change existing governmentalities responsible for the framing and treatment of disease.

The lay-expert relationship and the interfaces used to stimulate participation at these sites vary among the examples cited above. The Biotech Hobbyist invites interested indi­viduals to open their own biotech kitchen in a home environment. Either by enhancing existing educational science kits commonly used in high and middle schools (which can now be found even at places like Toys’R'Us). or by distributing its own kits, the Biotech Hobbyist is clearly a resource developed by practicing amateurs for inspiring new recruits. No top-down approach is to be found, no "outreach" from an academic environment down to the "ignorant'' public. The emphasis here is on fun and play.