The Eduardo Kac Suite

I: The Eighth Day

On the eighth day, the lab technicians created

a new domain of phosphorescent creatures

crafted for display. Zebra fish and mice that shimmer

when illuminated under ultra-violet light;

An ecology of bioluminescence, of hybrid beings

that glow. DNA spliced with jellyfish genes

containing green fluorescent protein, allowing Kac

to assemble them under Plexiglas, and declare

a new day added to the period of creation.

A babel of an ark, where microorganisms are framed

in transparent cases to grow and mutate

and form patterns resembling earthscapes

or scapes of distant planets. Self-composing, like home-made

crystal trees of cardboard and table salts, producing rifts

and tectonic shifts that with a single fall will wipe out billions.

Here the viewer can admire patches of green and mauve

and metallic vermilions, and wonder what else might be produced

if milk or blood or flesh or shell were added to the equation.

II: A Book of Smells

Inside the gallery is an artist’s book of smells

What the artist calls a book of poetry,

each poem trapped inside a porous glass shell.

The faces of visitors reflected in pages of glass,

no images to read but the fluids caught in tiny wells.

Through interspersing scents the artist orders a kind of symmetry,

each poem composed of molecules instead of lines or sound,

each a synthesised aroma, mimicking nature’s compounds.

Mixing Isobutanol and formic acid to catalyse a reaction,

the artist turns things that reek into a hint of raspberry.

This might be art if it weren’t produced by coated lab technicians,

binding layers of glass to trap odours, using nanotechnology.

Soon every airport fragrance counter might be classified a museum,

where visitors come to whiff esters of orange and oil of wintergreen,

in a world where poetry and art have both been turned into farce—

a world where poetry and art exist under semi-porous glass.

III: Natural History of the Enigma

Where can an artist go after creating his own flower?

Not one from watercolours or daub or fashioned from clay,

but from hybridising his cells with those of a common petunia.

Where can an artist go after creating his own flower?

Merging plant and self to create a new life form: an Edunia,

his works exhibited as though they were Chagalls or Monets.

Where can an artist go after creating his own flower?

Assembling objects of vanity to grow and display.

Proclaiming his DNA is expressed in each flower’s red veins—

as if veins don’t exist in Pink Star or Knickerbocker Glory—

he created limited edition seed packs, wing-shaped to disperse his genes.

Proclaiming his DNA is expressed in each flower’s red veins,

like a family planning technician storing his semen under liquid nitrogen,

sperm straws in cryogenic wait, anticipating the moment of fertility.

Proclaiming his DNA is expressed in each flower’s red veins,

perhaps it comforts him from the plaguing sense of futility.