Kira O'Reilly & Jennifer Willet
Occupy Science
In 2008 artists Jennifer Willet (CAN) and Kira O'Reilly (UK) climbed into a sterile hood in a closed research laboratory and performed a set of tissue culture protocols feeding (CHOE) Chinese Hamster Ovary Cells. This work was supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, and The Art and Genomics Centre at The University of Leiden in The Netherlands.
Kira O'Reilly is a UK based artist; her practice, both wilfully interdisciplinary and entirely undisciplined, stems from a visual art background; it employs performance, biotechnical practices and writing with which to consider speculative reconfigurations around The Body. In autumn 2010 she began an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. She is currently in rehearsals for the forthcoming The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, featuring Marina Abramovic and directed by Robert Wilson, premiering in Manchester International Festival 9- 16th July 2011 and touring in 2012. http://www.kiraoreilly.com/
Jennifer Willet is an internationally successful artist in the emerging field of bioart. She taught in the Studio Arts Department at Concordia University from 2000-2007, and completed her PhD in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at the same institution. She now works as an Assistant Professor in the School of Visual Arts at The University of Windsor in Canada. http://www.jenniferwillet.com/
Image Credits
Kira O'Reilly & Jennifer Willet (2008)
Untitled I (collaborative lab shoot series)
Tissue Culture: CHOE Chinese Hamster Ovary Cells
Location: The Art and Genomics Centre, The University of Leiden, Holland
Photographer: Rune Peitersen
