In recent years the scientific community has been subject to continued vilification
and suspicion. Whether it’s Gm crops or cloning, trust appears to have
dissipated, as each successive revelation of scientific folly hits the front
pages.
Partly this is just a further articulation of the widespread sense that
science and planning have failed to deliver on their promises of engineering
a brighter future. If you accepted that modern life was locked onto an
ever upwards escalator of emancipation from poverty and inequality, the
grubby reality of poor housing, dangerously contaminated food and a growing
gap between the richest and poorest hits hard. Fears over the consequences
of meddling with the natural order is also of course a by-product of a
drastically increased level of popular consciousness regarding the interconnectivity
of global life.
One of the problems coursing through the maelstrom of distrust and skepticism
that swirls around science is the availability of knowledge, or as Steve
Duval sees it the distinct lack of information. While its common to frame
discussion of current scientific practice along polarised fault lines,
for Duval the real issue isn’t necessarily making a black or white
decision on, say the ethics of gm crops. The real issue is that there
simply isn’t enough adequate information available to make such decision.
A central aspect of this is the self-imposed secrecy the scientific community
frequently works under. Here the whiff of sly corporate collusion taints
the public faith. Meanwhile within the mainstream media more concerned
with entertainment than explanation, forming an opinion on the ethics
of GM farming has become increasingly fraught. The media scaremongerng,
and predominately under researched presentation of issues, has lead to
a lumpen demonisation of the scientific community.
Attempting to unravel the distinct strands at work in issues such as genetically
modified research, Steve Duval has set up his own research company, Romantech.
As someone who shares popular concerns over the ethics and direction of
current scientific research, Duval is a non-specialist in science who
is aiming to act as an unofficial referee in the current standoff between
science and the broader community. The Romantech project is consequently
designed to act as a facilitator for the gallery going public, offering
them a range of information, which may have previously been off limits
to them. As Romantech’s opening statement remarks "the art gallery
is a forum for discussion and a place where a much wider debate can happen
than in a strictly scientific context. "
If Duval’s project was only conceived of as mere a library of information
it would perhaps have limited appeal as art. However Duval’s project
is also designed to simultaneously act as space for considering the relationship
between art and science. Cultural representations of science, have after
all, played a significant role in shaping our collective consciousness
with regards to the position of science in the natural order of things.
Perhaps the most famous instance is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,
which occupies a powerful position in our culture as a mythic embodiment
of what happens when science meddles in ‘gods’ divine realm.
While we’ve now lost much sense of the specific, historical fears
that gave birth to such a monster, the continued popular power of Frankenstein,
is shorthand for antagonism to the men in white suits. Duval’s use
of a Casper David Friedrich painting (man and nature in apparent harmonious
unity) and his invocation of the romantic movement in the companies name
"Romantech", is instructive. How the historical images and ideas
of Romanticism, idealised as they so frequently are, underpin contemporary
notions of mans relationship to nature may be as much of a ‘problem’
as the inadequate coverage of the issues in the mass media.
In many respects Duval’s project is itself a mutant hybrid. The offspring
of the cross-pollination of science and art. Possessed with the ability
to stare simultaneously at art and science, Romantech is cpable of offering
fresh insight into the interplay of the two spheres.
Perhaps not all mutation is bad.
John Beagles
|