The Immortality Gene – 2015 – 2017
Photographic images, Strobe lights, LED floods, Domestic lights, Medical Equipment, Typewriters, Books, Test Tubes, Furniture, Cases and trunks, Antique Maps and Paintings.
Through a series of installations, texts and photographic works, The Immortality Gene explored the belief that we can experience biological immortality through making small adjustments to our genetic code. The work investigated territories between fact and fiction, creating a portrait of a geneticist working at the edge of bio medicine.
The work was first installed in Lewes House and included over 300 personal objects, loaned by people who had been invited to take part. It also included a specially commissioned work by the poet John Agard exploring loss and fictional belief.
Dave Brockenbaker claimed to have discovered the Immortality Gene in the late 1960’s, a dormant signaling gene which if activated could re invigorate systems connected to illnesses such as dementia, cancer and coronary heart disease. Considered a forerunner of gene therapy and a proponent of genetic determinism Brockenbaker believed that genetic research could lead to a science of predestination. Due to funding cuts in health care and the controversial nature of Brockenbaker’s work, his research was left incomplete at the moment of his untimely death in 1971.
The Immortality Gene was supported by:
LewesLight, Lewes House Museum, Lewes Town Council, The Chalk Cliff Trust, Lewes District Council, LYT Productions, StayLewes, The Depot Cinema and Graham Festenstein Lighting Design.
Special thanks to John Agard for his poem and recording, The Immortality Gene.