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REPRODUCTION JOE MAGEE
Watershed Media Centre, Bristol, England. 22 August - 6 October 1998
Using the computer to produce images and text - repeatedly inserting random mutations - the work sets out to mimic genetic manipulation and obliquely to question some features of this branch of science. The digital prints are assembled from preexisting pictures and objects, reproducing animals, humans and plants to create flocks, groups, patterns interspersed with random scribblings, signs and other codes. Dolly the cloned sheep took 277 attempts. We do not question the reason for her existence, merely the ethics of the process. The images draw parallels between the geneticist and the artist - both are compulsively reconstructing in pursuit of the intangible.
Reproduction is a sequel and extension to the work presented in Damage, Joe Magee's first exhibition. But whilst Damage essentially investigated ideas of genetic manipulation, Reproduction begins to look at more cerebral forms of replication. The essense of the exhibition were white rabbits - endlessly reproducing on the Watersheds monitors in the form of a simple animation. The rabbits represent the crossroads of fecundity and experimentation. The rabbits' heads are derived from laboratory photographs and designed to be memetically fecund - for people remember to remember as the ultimate logotype.
As I produced the images I became more and more interested in the idea of 'memetic engineering' - the possibilities of mind control, or lack of individual control. The ultimate image, Nazi Function, directly comparing biological replication (the rabbits) with virulent cerebral replication (naziism).
Rabbit Function
Nazi Function
Private View
Rabbit Show