What connects us? How do we relate to the world around us? Is kinship more than family?
In KINSHIP week, we explore the connections that form between us and the world around us, finding forms of kinship within the body, through family and beyond.
Inside the Shared Life, 2017
Erin Espelie
Inside the Shared Life is part of filmmaker Erin Espelie's RGB (Red Green Blue) film trilogy. Each of the three films focuses on red, blue, or in this case, green, from a medical standpoint. With the voice of (r)evolutionary biologist, Lyn Margulis - who challenged contemporary scientific practice to develop her theory of symbiogenesis - Inside the Shared Life presents for us a world within worlds, where we understand our evolutionary origin as part of a complex co-existence of species that have over time, come to live and thrive alongside one another in communities, partially bound by bodily forms.
Battle of Blister, 2016
Genetic Moo w. Dr Neil Dufton
Each sequence in Battle of Blister has been generated by human performers in an interactive film set. The animations capture the complex dynamics of microbial and cellular relations during inflammation, charting the escalation from fly bite to full scale engagement. The language of the battleground is common when referring to infection however during KINSHIP week, we question the idea of body as battlefield and instead ask what other forms of relation we might try to find in the body.
Tame is to Tame, 2016
Pei-Ying Lin
Artist Pei-Ying Lin's project Tame is to Tame was a forerunner to Virophilia, screened in our FUTURES WEEK. Lin asks us to reconsider our relationship to the virus. Throughout history viruses have integrated themselves into our genome and became a part of the ‘human’. They evolve, and we evolve with them. Despite this deeply intertwined relationship, humanity treats viruses as enemies. Through this project, Lin and scientist, Miranda de Graaf try to find out if we can treat viruses as wild animals and build a controllable bond with them. In other words - to tame them. Is it possible to befriend/observe viruses that remain dangerous from a safe distance, like the virologists have been doing for decades? Can this relationship be extended to the general public?
Boundary, 2019
Paul Goodfellow
The visuals in Paul Goodfellow’s meditative work allow for reflection and contemplation of what it means to connect, to grow and to form boundaries. Paul Goodfellow is an artist and animator. He is Programme Leader of the MA in Animation in the Department of Arts, at Northumbria University. With a background in Environmental Science, Visualisation and Art, Paul is interested in the intersection of these disciplines, and how aesthetic and affective experiences emerge within complex systems. Boundary forms part of Goodfellow's on-going enquiry into the nature of objects, and whether objects are merely vessels which channel energy and forces, and are solely defined by their relationships or whether their true nature is withdrawn from access and specifically the human gaze.
LIMULUS, 2013
Karen Kramer
This speculative work makes kinship connections through space and across time. In LIMULUS the narrator is a supernatural piece of marine debris. The protagonist alludes to kinship connections that span geological time and species boundaries, combining the human medical history of the horseshoe crab with the potential for marine pollution caused by a discarded helium balloon and the demise of American jukebox company Seeburg. This complex but beautifully woven tale draws our attention to the almost incomprehensible span of humanity's presence and impact on earth.
The Lab I: Invasion, 2015
Anne Milne
What is our relationship to the organisms that we host within our bodies? Invasion is a fantastical, other worldly journey of an imaginary, mysterious thing which has come to Earth looking for a host. Macro, micro, natural, artificial, inside, outside. Invasion is an investigation into the lives of pathogens, bacteria, parasites and other creatures, from the air to the lab. We are brought into a world that is claustrophobic and at times frightening. Who is the host and who is the guest?
Zone of Inhibition, 2019 (work in progress)
Louise Mackenzie
Zone of Inhibition is the working title for a short film under development as a result of performative genetic modification workshops created in collaboration with Dr Ana Topf and Dr Stephanie Carr of the Institute of Genetic Medicine, Newcastle and ASCUS Art and Science, Edinburgh. The title refers to the space (generally on a petri dish) in which microbial growth is inhibited as a result of antibiotics. The space is a threshold in which microbes encounter humanity’s resistance to them. Mackenzie has developed a fictional, human-scale zone of inhibition, a space of encounter that is both intensely personal yet also restrictive. In this space of encounter, the artist facilitates dialogue between cells and those who have genetically modified them.
Future Families, 2014
Wellcome Trust
Professor Susan Golombok, Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, talks about Future Families, a five-year research project investigating the social and psychological outcomes of emerging assisted reproductive technologies for individuals, families and society.
Tomorrow Belongs to Me, 2006 (excerpt)
Jacqueline Donachie
This work is the result of a five-year collaboration with Darren G. Monckton, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Glasgow, that looked at anticipation, the phenomenon of certain genetic conditions worsening as they are passed on from generation to generation. The film Tomorrow Belongs to Me is based on interviews with eleven scientists who were involved in the key research that proved pivotal in establishing the idea of anticipation as a true biological effect.
Binky, 2015
Claudia Sacher
In this short film, we experience art as therapy, a means to heal broken bonds of kinship and form new ones. Claudia Sacher is volunteer lead artist for Art for the Brain, a brain injury and dementia friendly art workshop for anyone with a diagnosis of dementia/alzheimers, stroke, acquired or traumatic brain injury, and friends, family and carers. Claudia is a visual artist working in the areas of drawing, sculpture, video and installation.
The Lion's Mouth Opens, 2014
Lucy Walker
This multi-award-winning documentary short by Lucy Walker explores the impact of genetic bonds and genetic testing on the people we love and on how we face our destiny. Courageous young filmmaker-actress Marianna Palka gathers her friends around her as she finds out whether she has inherited Huntington’s Disease, an incurable degenerative disorder which took her father and now has a 50% chance of taking her body and her mind. This original 15-minute version of the film (the full film is 28 minutes long), omits Palka’s recital of The Lion’s Mouth Opens, the Bob Dylan poem about Woody Guthrie who died from Huntington’s Disease.
Hazel, 2015
Jacqueline Donachie
In this poignant award-winning film, we are introduced to the siblings of individuals with Mytonic Dystrophy, a rare genetic condition. Donachie asks, when do you stop looking like your family and start looking like the symptoms described in a textbook? When is familial resemblance overtaken by another layer of inheritance that, like long legs or short tempers, also comes from your parents? In Hazel we see a kinship that causes of assumptions about health, ability and competence to be made both by ‘the outside world’ and within family dynamics. The interviews for the artwork Hazel recognise the importance of considering the private, domestic experience of an inherited genetic condition by asking women to speak frankly about their own lives.