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 Technoscience Introduction
issue 9 |
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| The Biotech industry "now rivals the oil industry for weight and influence" says Rob Cummins, the director of the Pure Food campaign. This quote, taken from a four day special report in The Guardian newspaper, is typical of the recent swelter of
media-speculation on the industry's growing power. The Labour government's moratorium on the introduction of genetically modified foods has brought to the boil a debate which has long simmered in the public psyche. After ploughing hundreds of billions of pounds into research, the American dominated 'agri-business' is too close to payback time to be put off by a handful of 'resistant Europeans'. After all, Europe is potentially the world's second largest market for their product range. It is becoming an all too common revelation to hear of 'independent' government advisors, even critics, also holding down jobs on the boards of biotech corporations. This ambidextrous career strategy can only deepen the existing discrepancy between the industry's hi-finance PR and lobbying campaign and the absence of a powerful, independent critical foRSe. The corporate takeover of agriculture, the collapse of biodiversity, and the unpredictable results of letting engineered life forms 'into the wild' are just a handful of the doubts surrounding the biological revolution. But to be cautious does not imply a lemming like return to the illusory mbosom of Big Mamma Nature. This summer, Mute spent ten days at Kassel's Documenta-X exhibition, participating in the Hybrid WorkSpace (see Mute 8, Short/Cuts). During this time, we explored the theme of Technoscience with invited guests (Kate Rich/BIT, Armin Medosch and Manu Luksch, Kathleen Rogers and Rob La Frenais, John Hutnyk, Krystian Woznicki and Josephine Bosma). Technoscience is the intersection point of the information and life sciences, where the technological marries the living in a bid to conquer death and disease, endow life with the utility of technology and technology with the kiss of life. The fact that Technoscience spans more than its trademarked products (OncoMouse, Dolly, bovine growth hormone, the Flavr Savr tomato, IVF) was one of the project's leitmotifs ? its economic dimension becomes the real Surgeon General presiding over the birth of this technoscientific progeny.
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