The title of a sculptural installation piece by a team of conceptual artist brother, Jake and Dinos Chapman, dated 1995 directly asks the viewer to review and perhaps reconsider man’s relationship with machine, it reads: DNA Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic Desublimated Libidinal Model. The title is a collection of biotechnical terms. The words ‘DNA Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic and Model,’ explain a laboratory clinical experiment of gene manipulation or manufactured fertilization processes to which a living embryo is produced; this has a technological ‘mechanical’ base (the early reasearch for this is what modern day paternity tests are based on). Yet the adjoining words, ‘Desublimated Libidinal’, define an ‘emotional’ energy associated with instinctual biological drives within sexual passion and implies a human/animal base for this act of conception. The ‘emotional’ is generally referenced within human nature and considered beyond what is just organic. An example is a plant is organic but not considered emotional and machines are further akin. Hence presented here are two opposing characterizations for the ‘creation’ of human life that are rich with connotations whilst coupled. How can ‘mechanical’ and ‘emotional’ be in a potential relationship? Is it possible for them to transcend into symbiosis when they’re essentially different in nature? Does the ambiguous title potentially show the way to an emergence of new beings with a different sense of self, identity, and personal boundaries or reflect public fears and policy on future reproduction issues?
The sculptural piece by the Chapmans is made up of a dozen or more mutated pubescent department store mannequins. The faces of some are angelic, others distorted with adult genitalia in place of mouths and noses, much similar to sex inflated dolls. Their smooth glossy bodies are naked except all are sporting black Fila sneakers. They are genital-less and fused or siamesed together creating a circle of hermaphrodic torsos. Not only do they bring to mind a grotesque experiment gone awry with gene slicing embryo stem cell tampering and cloning or maybe by products of environmental contamination; they also reference interpretations of underlying corruption within advertising and mass marketing. These are post-modern statements with shocking subversive commentary.
