Olga Ast is a conceptual artist originally from Russia, currently residing in New York. For kloone4000 she presented her art project Reconstruction of Adam (since 1994). She showed this work on DVD (preview at her website) and made a public presentation.
Long
before the cloning of Dolly in the last years of the 20th century, we have
witnessed an even greater scientific and cultural breakthrough, the birth
of relativity. Today we observe how not only physics, but our very personalities
and sexual identities are losing their incontestable, absolute qualities.
Artificial conception, sex-change operations, hormone therapy and cloning
are transforming existing cultural realities from unconditional to relative,
and are becoming newly conceptualized before our very eyes.
We currently face the possibility of losing ourselves in the age of scientific
advancement. Many questions have been raised regarding the discoveries of
genetic science and technology. Biotechnology combined with information technology
leads as to a new world of creation that can recombine human and animal DNA
with artificial components. Scientists, though not successful in creating
a Homunculus in the Middle Ages, have now figured out a way of replicating
humans. Millions of ghosts of our clones already live in our imagination,
and tomorrow they will live in our reality.
Such a mode of scientific research and analysis can be well punctuated by
the study of gender, and the conceptualization of the new individual in terms
of cultural and sexual analysis. An established theory in Biblical studies
states that a vague allusion in the first few lines of the Old Testament suggests
that the first human, Adam, was created as both man and woman, a two-sexed
being. Only when Adam petitioned God to create Eve was his nature split into
two parts determined as sexes. In facing new personal and social realities
raised by genetic and biochemical manipulation that could eventually take
lead us back to that state, we should allow this allegory futher consideration.
As an artist, I concern myself with the image. What did the original omni-sexed
Adam look like? I propose to take this idea further, using the project as
a basis of a deeper argument about the nature of current social realities.
I propose to create the shape of original Adam.
I propose the Reconstruction Of The Original Adam, an art project aimed at
discovering the shape, or providing a vessel for a omni-sexual human. It is
an attempt to understand and illustrate the mechanism of the Original Man
who lived in proverbial Paradise, and to conceptualize the ramifications of
this concept in our current reality. This will include not only a new visual
conception of the human form, but a series of interactive films, projects
and lectures that will aim to raise the dialogue about recent scientific developments
and their sociocultural ramifications.
The scope of this project will involve not only myself, but other artists,
scientists and IT professionals in trying to shape a new being. Perhaps this
will be one of the most difficult endeavors contemporary artists and scientists
will have to face, perhaps the answer will lie in something painfully obvious.
In either case, a resolution to this problem can only be found in-between
previously divergent disciplines – art, science, religion, technology.
In bridging the gap between the arts and the sciences, we can hope to attain
a clearer vision of the future.
website: www.partast.com
