The Adam Zaretsky conceived and realised Vivo Arts School for Transgenic Aesthetics Ltd. Stills taken during the series of actions made in the V.A.S.T.A.L. Glovebox, at Waag and  Stedelijk museum Bouwkeet on tour 2009

THE GLOVEBOX - BODY ART LAB from giuliana videopirate on Vimeo.

The VASTAL Virginarium is a six person Glove Box artistically designed by Adam Zaretsky and Mason Juday for Bioart Laboratories and public performances, which revolve around cultural interpretive issues of purity, sterility and cleanliness. Much like a sterile hood used in biology for pure culture technique, this glove box has Positive air pressure.

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The VASTAL Virginarium Is a Collaborative Cultural Containment Stage For:
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Sterile Field Inter-Public Body Art Performances

Various performance artists will be ritually cleansed and enter the Glove Box one or two at a time. Various performance artists take turns in the box interacting with the public or other actors reaching into them with the gloves. This is experimental Body Art with a Biological theme that references experiments, lab animals, the pure and the impure as well as the distance (or presumed distance) that objectivity implies. A glove box is a techno-purified place, but as an artistic/creative aseptic arena, the VASTAL Virginarium is purely for cultural production. It represents a return to ourselves as animals, experiments, faulty and in disarray but also as changeable and in process.
There is ultimately no absolute chastity or true cleanliness, passage is from one form to another into another again. But, through emulation of purification and altered versions of artistic isolation we will try to help garnish public acceptance of the imperfectability of living in this uterine world.

Design Credits:
Adam Zaretsky and Mason Juday

The artists brought together by Adam Zaretsky were:

Kira O’Reilly
WARBEAR
Jeanette Groenendaal
Zoot Derks
Boryana Rossa
Oleg Mavromatti
Sarah Hamilton
Jennifer Willet

See:
http://www.vastal.eu
http://waag.org/news/52789
http://vastal.waag.org/?page_id=357
http://waag.org/news/61188

fertilised egg shell shattered and spilt the 3 day old embryo.

opened up egg showing a 5 day embryo in the top left hand corner

 DISSECTIONS:

Last week I made a short visit to Cultivamos Cultura  in the Alentejo region of Portugal. It’s a new initiative that has been  created by Portuguese artist Marta de Menezes and scientist Luis Graca towards fostering and developing shared knowledges in science, technology and contemporary art.

 My brief visit was to get a flavour of the place and it’s possibilities so that I can make a more protracted visit next year.

The main building has several outhouses attached to it which have laid disused for some time, so a glorious collection of spider webs have accumulated. I became fascinated by the webs and took many photos some of which you can see here.

Farm Fountain

US artists Ken Renaldo and Amy Young made the centres an inaugeral residency for two weeks and within that time created this wonderful sculpture and installation Farm Fountain, images of which you can see here.

It’s a circuit of different living systems around the stucture of a fountain. A solar powered pump  circulates water up from the pond and into the grid of plants. The water is used by the plants and also filtered through the terracotta beads in the plant containers desceneding through the plant grid and back into the fish pond.

On their Flickr site they write:

Farm Fountain was started in our studio 2 years ago as an indoor ecosystem and local food production artwork that we hope others will reproduce. Info and instructions for the home version are available online at farmfountain.com

When I visited Marta topped up the plants, as the weather was so terrifically hot the system requited some human help. There were some great red chillis growing and a fragrant and delicious chocolate mint.