Double Helix Project, 1997

The Louisiana Exhibition, Louisiana, Humlebæk, Denmark, 1997

Video, plastic, posters, Novo Nordisk products

Photo: Mads Gamdrup

Note: This project was made in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk for The Louisiana Exhibition. This was a follow-up to the piece Diary of Plasma, which was something in the order of a Frankenstein-version of biotechnology. In order to let the industry speak through my practice, I asked the biotech company Novo Nordisk to assume responsibility for my contribution to the exhibition. I asked them to explain their activities in the area of gene manipulation, and gave them carte blanche to do what ever they wanted. Novo Nordisk constructed a kind of fair situation at the museum, with monitors, product displays and printed screens. My contribution was to name and sign the project. I had a very good working relationship with the company; however, they were a bit disappointed, since they thought that the end result was too exclusive and not polemical enough - but they also forgot to explain about their heavy involvement in the development of Dolly the sheep. As far as I was concerned, the project was reasonably successful in illustrating a mutually parasitic situation. Double Helix Project was later realised in a scaled-down version in collaboration with the Berlin-based biotech company Codon, a smaller company whose area of research was tissue engineering. This was presented at the exhibition Formule 2 at the Bethanienhaus in Berlin,1999.