ArtMaking Practice: Carolyn Angleton is involved in a strain of artistic production which uses biotechnological tools and processes to launch a vision of speculative reality.

Her work attempts to redefine what is considered an artistic practice, and exist as a hybrid species somewhere between performance, sculptural object and laboratory protocol-based research. The artworks are rooted in a DIY, biohacking approach to cultural knowledge production, community science participation and artistic practicing. Her installations exist as contained live samples from the lab, scientific assays, printed images and projected video documentation of processes and species.

Description: Biological specimens of engineered and sectored bacteria, and a marine-species PAGE gel assay are placed in the context of altered photographs and an animal video, serving to unravel a fictitious narrative of unknown origins. The photographs depict images of portraiture taken with products from a wet-market in Portugal, female bioartists working in a NYC arts wet lab, and dystopic appearing biotech lab equipment used in work force training programs in California. The installation reflects a bizarre and sometimes humorous linking of scientific, sexual, and spiritual desire, all rooted in unspoken linked value systems often used as touchstones in the biotechnological process of “Reworlding” through “Synthetic DNA Pro Creative” practices. Ms. Angleton’s work aims to confound, cross-pollinate and trans-pollute existing, often contradictory genetic banks and fields of knowledge. It fosters a conversation between what might be fact or fantasy within notions of chimeric cell lines, lateral gene transmission, and novel species-dom. It asks what is too close of an interaction with “Novel” or “Old” Nature, be it in the laboratory or out in the “real” world. It looks at who will take or be given the roles of deciding factors/players/specimens, as visions of our future synthetic ecosystems reach enactment stage.

We live in a society where scientific research involving molecular manipulations will soon become common place, and in essence are already “knocking on our doors,” affecting many aspects of our lives. Yet the actual lab procedures are obscured and result in the public’s fear-based response to the microscopic unknown and unseeable. This particular body of work probably does little to calm those fears, rather it engages in speculating and provides an avenue for “future scenario-ing,” a process of asking “what if,” “by whom” and “whom on.” The biological specimens in this exhibit were created by ARC/BAC, a collaborative research group located at the American River College in Sacramento, Ca. They are the result of two years of developing protocols aimed at igniting research in which science and art are weighted equally as starting points and pathways leading to novel paradigms of cultural meaning-making. 

Carolyn Angelton

Carolyn Angleton is a bioartist, researcher and experimental gardener. She has taught art and critical theory at California State University, Fresno and Sierra College in Rocklin, CA. She is a co-founder of ARC-BAC, an art and synthetic biology collaborative at the American River College in Sacramento, California, and founder of SacBioArts. She holds a BFA from Colorado State University, and a MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in Fine Arts. She is on the Biosummit organizing committee and is part of the Biofellows program, both as an initial fellow and pod leader. Her sculptural and biological artwork has been exhibited as part of the Gardens at Ars Electronica 2020; the Japan Media Arts Festival 2018, Tokyo; the Verbenke Foundation, Stenkene, Belgium, the Largo da Academia National de Bellas Artes, Lisbon Portugal; the School of Visual Arts, NYC, and the National Museum for Women & the Arts in Washington, D.C. Her work has been shown throughout California at: The Center for the Arts,Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco; the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento; the Fresno Art Museum; the Oceanside Museum of Art; and the UCDavis Art Galleries. She was awarded a research grant from Biohack the Planet Conference as part of ARC/BAC’s work on “Rendering a Synthetic Carotenoid Pathway.” 

Contact info

carolynangleton.com