“exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement”

Mention the term medical or technological advancements and there are two distinct reactions that seen to arise: excitement or fear.  The extremes of reactions can be considered understandable, as the mass media have a habit of scaremongering the public by making wild statements about the future of mankind, when breakthrough discoveries are made.

My own art practice looks at the way life evolves, due to advancements in the medical and the technological.  My research informs my practice by drawing from references of reality and fiction.  Often by playing on familiar fears that people can connect with, the everyday can become something more sinister.

During the 1990’s, a clone of a sheep was made and there was huge speculation about the impact on humanity.  Main concerns appeared to be how cloning technology would be used and the biggest fear if it were to be used to clone people.  In its simplest sense, cloning merely showed what could be achieved in the replication of a living creature.  More importantly, this experiment showed the pitfalls of the project, mostly in terms of the on-going health of the sheep.

Although it can be said that the media fuels the hysteria which surrounds these advancements in medical science, it is literature and film that make them into something that the public can truly be afraid of.  When Mary Shelley published the novel Frankenstein in 1818, its readership were introduced to the idea a human being could be made rather than born.  

Fast forward to the 21st century and the subject of cloning is presented in the movie Never Let Me Go, where human beings has a clone of themselves, so they can take organs and parts from the clone as needed.  In this movie, the clones live their own separate lives so are not merely spare parts, but people in their own rights who have to live each day wondering if they will be called in for the removal of an organ, which may ultimately lead to the clone’s death.  It is the human side of this story that interests me the most, and it is this element I am trying to make integral to my own art practice.  When human beings are treated as spare parts and/or not considered to matter, then this can become a dangerous road to go down leading to the basis of this fictional story: some people matter and others don’t. 

While progress in the fields of medical science through technological advancement can be a rich ground for fiction to run wild and promote the image of a world that is far removed from what can be considered natural, there is often a grounded reality which people will always be fearful of. It is often thought that experimentation for advancement is subject to secrecy and ethical problems, and again these are often highlighted in the genres of literature and and film, where the balance of benefit to mankind is outweighed by the vision of a dystopian future.

It is still only 75 years ago that the discovery of forced experimentation on prisoners in the concentration camps of Auschwitz was discovered; representing everything that is inhumane, cruel and unjustified, mostly at the hands of Dr Josepth Mengele.  A Nazi vision of a human race which would be engineered to their own narrow specifications was manifested in these death camps, to the detriment of millions.

It is interesting to see how hysteria can be escalated through fear even our modern day. In the middle of controversy surrounding Coronoviris. As the media reports more cases, the public react in differing ways. There are fears there will be no vaccine or cure, and there remains an uncertain situation where people become suspicious of others around them, for fear of catching the virus from them. This real situation almost mimics fictional horror film that highlight outbreaks of disease/viruses and of course, has been referenced back to one of the oldest and most infamous disease outbreaks, The Great Plague of London in 1665.  During the 1980s, the government and the media created a panic on a huge scale with their coverage of the HIV and AIDS crisis.