Organized by Dr. Yewande Pearse

Our DNA – the script of our lives – is 99.9% the same across the human species. But differences in the remaining 0.1% hold important clues to who we are as individuals – a reality that begat the “quantified self” movement. The movement, also known as lifelogging, describes the trend towards using technology to acquire data on aspects of a person’s daily life, with the goal of improving physical, mental, and/or emotional performance.

Genetic information acquired by consumer testing companies like 23andMe can illuminate inner resources and limitations, functioning as a kind of oracle into the secrets of our bodies, identities and individualities. Still, many questions remain unanswered in regards to the impact of such inquiry on notions of the self and the socio-political.

Spanning over 5 days, this program demystifies how genomics inform identity with an exhibition, a presentation by Dr. Aaron Panofsky and Dr. Terence Keel from the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, and the release of a NAVEL x Massive Science collaborative zine (more info below) on the impact of genomic studies on three aspects of identity: race, gender and politics.

Participating Artists
ArP
Analisa Teachworth
Em Minyard Oppman
Fred Schmidt-Arenales
Isabel Prade
PHILTH HAUS
Zhiwan Cheung
Charlie Tweed
Cameron Duguid
Dan Lloyd

Presentation by
Dr. Aaron Panofsky
Dr. Terence Keel

Vendor
gene-seam

Image from Em Minyard Oppman’s Products of Nature (2019)
Illustrations in the zine were created with the support from the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics

Schedule

Thursday, November 7
7PM: Doors
7:30-9:30PM: Exhibition Opening Reception, NAVEL x Massive Science 0.1% zine launch, and a presentation by Aaron Panofsky and Terence Keel from the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics.

Friday, November 8 - Monday, November 11
2-6PM: Exhibition Open Hours

Sunday, November 10
2PM: Exhibition tour by curators Yewande Pearse and Amanda Vincelli with artist Em Minyard Oppman and scientist Dr. Dan Lloyd.

0.1% Zine

NAVEL has teamed up with Massive Science to create 0.1%, Genomics x Identity: Race. Gender. Politics., a zine which focuses on how genomics inform identity.

With a specific focus on race, gender, and politics, the zine explores how the growing field of genomics is changing how we form, live, and understand our identities — raising important questions about its impact on individuals and society, as well as the dogma which drives scientific inquiry. Through essays, conversations, and artistic works, this zine discusses race, risks and reparations in the post-genomic era, indigenous sovereignty and post-human futures, why searching for scientific explanations for sex and gender may be a harmful endeavor, the heritability of our political beliefs, genetic privacy, and genetic manipulation.

This 72 page, full color zine, comprising original works that span art, humanities, and science, hopes to uproot old questions of identity and grow new answers under a genomic light.

Preorder your copy for $25 to be picked up at the exhibition (or we’ll ship it to you)!
Click here to order a 0.1% Zine

Massive x NAVEL 01% zine
Yewande Pearse, Curator
Dr. Dan Samorodnitsky, Editor
Jasmine Sarp, Graphic Designer
Amisha Gadani, Illustrator
Rebecca Muir, Content Contributor
Dr. C Brandon Ogbunu, Content Contributor
Dr. Gina Paige, Content Contributor
Jazmina Figueroa, Content Contributor
Elysa Carr, Content Contributor
Dr. August Guang, Content Contributor
Lila Leatherman, Content Contributor
Dr. Prabarna Ganguly, Content Contributor
Dana Nordenstrom, Content Contributor
Isabel Prade, Featured Artist
Günter Seyfried, Featured Artist
Shannon Bono Featured Artist
Allan Lasser, Creative Consulting
Amanda Vincelli, Creative Consulting
Nadja Oertelt, Creative Consulting

0.1% Exhibition

Curated by Yewande Pearse and Amanda Vincelli

With ever more access to our genetic information, the 0.1% exhibition explores what it means to uncover the genetic roots of who we are and who we could be.

Our ancestral differences reflect only a 0.1 percent difference in DNA. Yet, three million non-negligible differences lie in this 0.1%. How does genomics inform identity? How does it influence the ways in which we relate to others?

The exhibition includes works by ArP (Alessia Petrolito), Analisa Teachworth, Em Minyard Oppman, Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Isabel Prade, PHILTH HAUS, Zhiwan Cheung, Charlie Tweed, Cameron Duguid, and Dr. Dan Lloyd.

The works in this exhibition were both curated and selected from an Open Call with a jury. More information about the Open Call and jury can be found here.

Dr. Yewande Pearse is a neuroscientist and science communicator. Her research interests in the lab focus on rare genetic neurological disorders, gene therapy, stem cell research, and CRISPR, but her fascination with the brain is not limited to any one area of the field. She gained her PhD from King’s College London and is a Postdoctioral Fellow at The Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA, in affiliation with UCLA. She has written for Massive Science, TEDMED and Subpac, and hosts a monthly podcast called Sound Science on Dublab radio. She is also a member of the Collective Residency at NAVEL, where she sits on the Programming Committee and co-leads an Assembly about science in the media. Yewande is also a member of the Science Gallery Detroit’s Advisory Council.

Massive is dedicated to helping scientists share stories about their work and lives in pursuit of a more informed, rational, and curious society. Massive’s online publication is the home for their scientist’s stories and they publish new stories daily. They tell stories you can trust about the climate, genetics, and more.

Dr. Aaron Panofsky is Associate Professor in Public Policy and at the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining UCLA in January of 2008, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at UC Berkeley from 2006 through 2007. Panofsky received his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University in 2006. Panofsky’s main research interest is in the sociology of science and knowledge with a special focus on genetics. He recently published his first book, Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics (Chicago, 2014) , is an analysis of the causes and consequences of controversy in the field of behavioral genetics. A second major project is investigating how patient advocate groups are seeking to affect the research process in the medical genetics of rare disorders. These and other projects fit with his abiding science policy interests in the governance of science and technology and the relationship between expertise and democracy.

Dr. Terence Keel is an Associate Professor with a split appointment in the Department of African American Studies, and the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics. He has written widely about American biomedical science, religion, law, and modern thought. His first book, Divine Variations (Stanford University Press, January 2018) explained how Christian thought made possible the development of the race concept in Euro-American science while also shaping the moral and epistemic commitments embedded in the study of human biology. Keel is currently writing a second book that examines shifting conceptions of society and human identity in the minds of American biologists, New Left critics, and Neoconservatives during the “Culture Wars.” Keel previously taught at UC Santa Barbara where he served as Vice Chair to the Department of History and was the first Black Studies Professor to receive the Harold J. Plous Award. He is an affiliate of the newly formed Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health under the directorship of Dr. Chandra Ford of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Zhiwan Cheung received his BFA from Cornell University and his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Zhiwan first got a taste of performing in front of a camera as a book reviewer for Reading Rainbow, the 1990’s television show advocating reading for children. Since then, Zhiwan has continued to probe the intersection of national identity and the personal psyche, focusing on how and where they join and diverge. As an odyssey toward a home that does not exist, a rite of passage with no destination, Zhiwan uses his work to search for a critical understanding of an impossible homecoming. https://www.zhiwan.is/

Em Minyard Oppman is a visual artist and scientist currently pursuing a BFA in Art & Technology and Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Shaped by their upbringing in New Orleans, they learned how to discuss ideas as serious as gender taxonomies with playful materials from the simultaneous jubiliance and crushing political commentary present in a Mardi Gras float. Oppman creates sculptures with ant farms, Play Doh, and other unconventional materials that parody the legitimacy and assumed objectivity of science. https://joanmitchellcenter.today/em-minyard-oppman

Fred Schmidt-Arenales (BA University of Chicago 2013, MFA University of Pennsylvania 2019) is an artist and filmmaker currently based in Philadelphia. He has presented performances and experimental video and audio works internationally, at venues including Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz; Links Hall, Chicago; The Darling Foundry, Montreal; Triumph, Chicago; Pieter Performance Space, Los Angeles; LightBox, Philadelphia; and Kunsthalle, Vienna. http://fredschmidt-arenales.net/

PHILTH HAUS is an art collective of 6 members, or entities: ANDRA, SYLLA, LYLEX, COLY, ROCO, and PHILIP. This community was founded by ANDRA and now interacts as an ever-evolving system of trans entities searching for a form. The collective is based and has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and Honolulu and will soon be transplanting to Amsterdam to complete the 2019-2021 De Ateliers Artist Residency. ANDRA is a graduate of Harvard University with a B.A. in Molecular & Cellular Biology, Minor Studio Art cum laude. https://philthaus.com/

Analisa Teachworth (b.1985 Detroit, Michigan) is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist. Teachworth holds a BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as The Shed, MoMA PS1, Hamburger Bahnhof Staatliche Museen Berlin, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, and The New Museum. Her art practice includes the production of digital media such as video, and sound while holding core roots in a performative practice; often combining genres. Formally trained in printmaking, she is also working in the traditions of sculpture and installation. http://analisateachworth.net/

Isabel Prade is a cross disciplinary designer currently based in Vienna. Using design as an exploratory tool allows her to engage within different fields and combine multiple mediums to express her concepts. Through her work she seeks to raise questions about how we presently engage within the world around us and open up alternative perspectives in an age of rapid cultural changes caused by evolving technologies and environmental shifts. Her installations, objects and films have been exhibited around the globe, including the Vienna Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, London Design Biennale, Dutch Design Week, and Medellin Design Week. https://isabelprade.com/

Born in Atlanta GA (U.S.A) adopted and raised in Northern Italy, Alessia Petrolito (ArP) gained her BFA at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, Italy. She moved to Chicago in 2013 where she obtained a Master of Art in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She presented at the 5th ICAR - International Conference on Adoption Research in New Zealand. She currently lives in Italy and finds in the disciplinary intersection of Literature, Adoption Research, Sociology, Anthropology, Autoethnographic, Linguistic, Visual Studies, Perception and Art Theories a place for her experimental findings. www.arpadoptic.com

Stop-motion animator, camera clicker, paper cutter, scalpel wielder… Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2001, Cameron Duguid has directed various films, mostly with scientific themes. These include The Atomists about the roots of atomic theory in ancient philosophy and Annotate, about the way we relate to electricity. I’ve also moved into animating for feature length documentaries, mostly science based. Including- Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, an award winning BBC4 documentary about quantum theory and Oliver Sacks: Tales of Music and the Brain, from the Imagine series. http://www.cameronduguid.co.uk

Charlie Tweed’s video, text and performance based works interrogate the affective qualities of digital technologies and their use in the control and management of populations and environments. He employ strategies of re-appropriation and speculative fiction, often taking on personas of anonymous collectives and hybrid machines, to outline subversive plans for enhancing and escaping control mechanisms and renegotiating relations between human and non human. http://www.charlietweed.com

Dr. Dan Lloyd is Thomas C. Brownell Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College and the author of Simple Minds and Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness, both published by the MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/dan-lloyd

gene-seam is a concept-project focused on exploring intersections and parallels between nature, the body, and the intertwined spaces of ecology and garment-fabrication. Primarily working with recycled and second-hand materials, this project hopes to develop creative works that prioritize restorative-based processes, material research, and future-oriented narratives. https://www.gene-seam.com/

Image courtesy of Em Minyard Oppman