7/11/2017 Biopunk: Subverting Biopolitics The New Inquiry

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Biopunk: Subverting Biopolitics

A three-way essay on biopunk, futurism, and rejecting genetic
determinism
By SIMONE BROWNE, HEATHER DEWEY-HAGBORG AND JOERG BLUMTRITT JULY 10, 2017

Gut Hack, 2017

DNA is called the code of life, but computational metaphors

underestimate the impact of biopolitics, which reaches far beyond anything
digital. Biopunk is a way to subvert biopoliticsto take the seemingly bio-
determined future into our own hands and shape it according to our rules. The
following text is a summary of a joint talk the three authors gave at SXSW 2017
in Austin, Texas, re ecting on the current situation, critiquing the immanent
immediate future and reaching out to where biopolitical ideology might lead us
when followed to its end.

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Biopunk is a literary genre. The compound of a technology and the word punk,
as in cyberpunk or steampunk, indicates that biotechnology is setting the stage
for the narrative, providing the condition against which the human beings in the
world of the story struggle. However, since there is also punk, the protagonists
will repurpose the technology to outsmart their adversaries. That is the punk-ish
side: Take the tech that is meant to control or oppress you, use it for your own
good, and turn it against the oppressors to liberate yourself and maybe others.

Whereas in cyberpunk, arti cial intelligence raises the question of what the
mind is, biopunk plays with the clockwork of life to question what human
nature would mean if pushed to its edge. Writers like Octavia Butler have o en
used biopunk to criticize the biopolitical reality of contemporary society
namely, how a closer look at gender and race reveal the seemingly biological
determinants to be less scienti c than culturally constructed.

Until recently, however, the cost of genome sequencing was just too high. Other
than hacking so ware or soldering together electronic circuitry, hacking
organisms was reserved for big research institutions or pharmaceutical
companies. This has changed dramatically. Genome analysis has become a
commodity. Commercial services like 23andme make the genome accessible
even to people without any laboratory experience. Interpretation and
classi cation of genomic information has become a consumer product.

So the three of us ordered our genome analytics kits: we spat into the vials,
mailed our body liquids to the lab, and a few weeks later got back the long list of
genetic markers together with their interpretation. Simone learned that she
would not be likely to have dimples; Heather was predicted to have detached
earlobes. Simones smile easily disproves her genetic prediction, just as
Heathers short hair immediately reveals earlobes rmly attached to her head.
The analysis said I should be able to smell asparagus in my own urine: the
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reader will have to trust my word that this is true. Of the three traits chosen, two
did not represent our phenotypic features. And while these were easy properties
to verify, most genomic interpretation is completely inaccessible to the naked
eye.

With genomic research, biological determinism has become fashionable again.

It is striking, however, how few genetic mechanisms are actually understood in a
functional way, i.e. which sequence of bases produces what protein and causes
which e ect in the body. Most research is purely probabilistic: People with a
certain DNA pattern are statistically more likely to show certain characteristics
such as an illness or a speci c physical trait than others. Genomic research
involves mostly counting frequencies in samples of a few hundred people, a few
thousand at best. In its woodcut claims of panhuman generality it is hardly more
sound than physiognomy, phrenology, or chirology. It may seem tempting to
revive the ghosts of race, sex, and other pseudo-scienti c contexts under the
pretext of recent scienti c advancements. But genotyping o en draws its
conclusions from correlations.

orney of Plymouth County, held a press conference. They believed they had a
break in three cold cases. Taking DNA samples found on each victims body,
they sent the samples o to Parabon Nanolabs in Virginia for Snapshot DNA
phenotyping, which they described in the press conference as the process of
predicting physical appearance and ancestry from undisclosed DNA evidence.
From this DNA evidence, Parabon Labs created a snapshot, the DA explained,
that accurately predicts genetic ancestry, eye, hair and skin color and face
shape, but he also noted that these are scienti c approximations and not exact
replicas. This did not stop the prosecutors from disseminating a mugshot-like
phenotype report of the suspect. It included a map of the continent of Africa
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with parts of the west coast shaded in red. According to Parabon Labs report,
the suspect was said to be some 28 percent European, some 57 percent West
African, and some 10 percent Middle Eastern and North African. At the press
conference the mayor asked for help from the public.in particularly our
rather large Cape Verdean community. Brockton is said to be home to the
largest Cape Verdean population in the US.

I remain troubled by the ways that this press conference based on scienti c
approximations and not exact replicas seemingly criminalized an entire
population and, at the same time, hailed them with the responsibility to catch
this killer.

When we came together to formulate this joint talk at SXSW 2017 on biopunk
and acts of subverting the biotechnical gaze, I was the only one of us who hadnt
undergone genetic ancestry testing. I ordered the kit. I tried to do so as
anonymously as I could. It remained on my kitchen counter, unopened, for a
few months. I was never a fan of the whole process of surrendering data derived
from my body to some for-pro t company for them to trade, rent, or sell to
others. I gured that nding my h cousins wasnt worth the trade-o . But I
became more curious, so I did it. I sent o the sample.

In 2015, I wrote about the use of DNA in the case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud.
Mohamud was a Canadian citizen returning from a vacation in Kenya in May of
2009 when she was stopped from boarding a plane to begin her journey back to
Toronto. She was told that her lips looked di erent than in her passport photo
and that she was not the rightful holder of the Canadian passport that she held.
She was detained overnight in the airport, and then moved to a detention center
to be deported to Somalia. The Canadian High Commission in Kenya agreed
with the Kenyan government that Suaag Hagi Mohamud was impersonating a
Canadian. Back in Canada, the Minister of Foreign A airs, when asked about
Mohamud, said there is no tangible proof that Mohamud is Canadian and that
all Canadians who hold passports generally have a picture that is identical in
their passport to what they claim to be.

Mohamud petitioned the federal court in Canada to test the DNA of her
Canadian-born son to prove her identity. Following the test, charges were

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dropped. Mohamud was released from detention and returned to Toronto in

August 2009. But the case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud raised the important
question of who a state can abandon at the border and by what technological
means.

Im far from a geneticist. But Im interested in the way the cases of Snapshot
DNA phenotyping, Suaad Hagi Mohamud, and my own ancestry testing
experience, point to important questions regarding consent, the regulation of
data generated from biological markers, and the uses of DNA databases for
surveillance and policing.

23andme recently emailed to suggest that I upload a picture, so that my DNA

relatives can get to know me better. Through their services, Ive met some of
my fourth and h cousins. Theyve shared details about their familiesone
even shared their travel plans to visit her fathers place of birth. But I havent
even shared my real name.

Im still troubled by my contribution to 23andme and other similar databases. In

July 2015, an app was posted to GitHub that was said to use genetic data culled
from 23andMe to potentially limit a users access to particular segments of the
Internet. The app, called Genetic Access Control, proposed to make use of the
then open nature of 23andMes application programming interface (API) to
generate a third-party authentication application. The app would use genetic
veri cation to restrict access to certain websites based on traits including sex,
ancestry, disease susceptibility [sic]. Or, as the app developer put it in a list of
possible uses, the app could work to create safe spaces online where frequently
attacked and trolled victim groups can congregate, such as a female-only
community and groups de ned by ethnic background, e.g. Black Panthers or
NAACP members.

Im still not sure whether or not Genetic Access Control is stunt coding as a form
of creative critique. Although Genetic Access Controls anonymous developer
noted on GitHub that traits such as ancestry composition are speculative and
statistical in nature, not precise, this applicationas a form of bio-hacking
reveals fault lines that become apparent when genetic technologies make use of

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DNA to reveal certain truths about the human body and the limits of making
such sensitive data available to any interested parties.

I rst met Joerg at a conference in the Hague called Border Sessions, where he
was giving a master class, along with artist Addie Wagenknecht, on cyberpunk.
Over drinks the rst night we got to talking about what on earth cyberpunk
could possibly mean today, and how it might be relevant. What is it about
punk that is still useful? As an artist and biohacker I started thinking about how
this related to biopunk, which in my world meant the borrowing of the DIY and
anti-authoritarian aspects of the punk attitude and importing these into the
practice of biology, through hands on engagement with biotechnology outside
of institutional settings. Biopunk is doing biology in your kitchen and making
your own equipment from scratch, much like the early garage days of personal
computer development.

But it also includes critical biotechnical practicepolitical engagement with the

materials of biology in such a way that it questions dominant discourses and
oppressive frameworks. This is an artistic practice that draws on the important
research of scholars like Simone. It is self-re exive biology, where art and design
have the potential to reveal alternate perspectives and enable subversive
potentials. It is also a place of autonomy and self-determination. It brings these
ideas to the messy wetness of biology to enact experiments from challenging
authoritarian structures.

When I think about a kind of biopunk approach to life as a platform for

experimentation, the practice of the artist Josiah Zayner comes to mind. He
acquired notoriety for hacking his microbiome, replacing his own gut bacteria
with that of a friend. A er checking into a hotel and taking a full course of
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antibiotics, Josiah consumed gelatin capsules lled with the donors fecal matter
and inoculated his skin, nose and mouth with their swabs. At the end of the
week, quantitative analysis seemed to show the experiment was successful.

The project was highly controversial and potentially dangerous to Josiahs

health. Scientists and the media called him irresponsible. Josiah says he is
interested in personal autonomy and opening science; he thinks that institutions
are slow and clunky and democratizing biology is a path to progress. From my
perspective, the project shows just how limited regulation in the eld of biotech
is, or ever can be, when the materials and tools are so readily available through
DIY techniques.

By KATE McLEAN and MARIO FURLONI 12:34

Gut Hack

Watch in Times Video

Mary Maggic is another artist who whose work I nd inspiring for its fusion of
biopunk and biopolitics. Mary has spent the past two years working on a
collaborative1 project she calls Open Source Estrogen. The work consists of a
collection of experiments that aim, in her words, to emancipate the estrogen
biomolecule. Practically speaking, her protocols describe a way to harness
estrogen from urine for purposes of DIY hormone therapy or birth control,
along with methods for testing for xenoestrogens from pollution in local water
supplies.

The work seems to promise a method of increasing bodily autonomy, but it

raises more questions than it answers. If we are already consuming unintended

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hormones through sources of pollution, is increasing our consumption such a

good idea? If estrogen is tied up with biopolitical control of sex and norms of
gender identity, is it even more powerful to challenge these stereotypes by
refusing hormones? And, of course, there is the DIY issue: is it unethical to
promote an unregulated protocol which is potentially dangerous to populations
who presumably are cut o from regulated supplies of hormones? Or, as Mary
says, is it an act of biotechnical civil disobedience to subvert institutional
biopower and biomedical control of our bodies while simultaneously
questioning our assumptions about how hormones in uence us?

My own work has also taken a political and critical approach to working with
biotechnology. With Stranger Visions, in 2012, I created portraits of strangers
from their abandoned DNA. I began by collecting genetic artifacts I found in
public: hair, cigarette butts, chewed-up gum. I learned how to extract DNA, how
to sequence it, and how to analyze it to generate a portrait of what someone
might look like based on an interpretation of their DNA, utilizing scienti c
research ranging from the established to the speculative. I 3-D printed the
portraits life size, in full color, and exhibited these alongside documentation of
the artifact, where and when it was collected, and what I analyzed.

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Stranger Visions (installation view)

The work was meant to call attention to the vulnerability of the body to new
forms of surveillance and to predict the future direction of forensic DNA
phenotypingthe pro ling of a persons outward characteristics from their
DNA. At the time there were clear signals this research was happening, but it
hadnt been publicly discussed.

Two years later the prediction came true with the launch of Parabon Nanolabs
DNA Snapshot, o ering genomic mugshots to police around the country. The
danger of o ering stereotypes based primarily on sex and ancestry predictions
is that a black box algorithm in the hands of the police can become a new form
of racial pro ling which appears to have the authority of real genetic evidence.

Most recently, I worked with Chelsea Manning. Subject to a strict policy of

visitation and representation, Chelseas image had been suppressed since her
sentencing and gender transition in 2013. She realized that DNA could give her a
kind of visibility or presence that she had been stripped of for years. Chelsea
didnt want to appear too masculine in the portraits. I realized it was a perfect
opportunity to highlight the reductionism of DNA phenotyping. Instead of
producing one portrait to represent her, I generated two: one that was
algorithmically gender neutral and one parameterized female. I presented
the two portraits side by side to focus attention on the limitations of this
technique even in regards to a genetic trait considered legible.

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3d printed portraits of Chelsea Manning

Just as the libertarian fraction of the cyberpunks fantasizes about the singularity
putting the mind into so ware, biopunk-driven positivism fantasizes about DNA
code being the instructions for life itself. We have discovered the secret of life.
This was how Watson and Crick bragged about their discovery of the DNA
double helix a er poaching the work of their colleague Rosalind Franklin. Code
is the ultimate dream.

So lets imagine what happens as this runs its course. What will evolve from
biohacking, taking into consideration what we have said so far?

This biopunk future will come in three ages:

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1) Quanti ed bio
23andme-like diagnostics become available at grocery rates for everybody. Just
as the iPhone tracks every step I take, people will have their genomes
continuously monitored, including their microbiome and all microorganisms
around their house, gardens, pets and cattle. This no longer requires sequencing;
the functional analysis is done with biochemical and microbiological agents
directly, without much interference with the specimens. Tinder nds proper
matches genomicallyat least this is what it would advertise. Gated
communities might require applicants to have their genomic pro le within
certain boundaries of ancestry or other presumed properties. A er genome-
targeted drone killings have become a standard weapon of the U.S. military,
racist terrorists also start to use targeted bio-weapons against people carrying
certain genomic markers.

2) Evolution as will and representation

Genetic modi cations are commoditized. Sanitation, hygiene, and most of
medicine has moved from chemistry to biology, substituting hydrochloric acid
or isopropyl alcohol with enzymes and phages. Nano-tech and biotech merge
into material science on atomic levels, creating all kinds of hybrid molecules
that further blur the boundary between organic and inorganic chemistry.
Manufacturing and processing becomes more a process of self-assembling
things instead of printing them. The climate crisis is resolved by means of
airborne microbes turning CO2 into chalk and getting raw materials in
abundance by organisms agglomerating rare elements. Mars terraforming has
made great progress, and the Martian atmosphere has already doubled in
density, with most of the additional gas composed of oxygen and nitrogen. A er
some time most organisms on earth are synthetica, nally rendering the tree-
like models of Linnaean genetic ancestry obsolete. In widespread genomic
punishment and corrections, deviant behavior is dealt with by infusing gene-
alterations into peoples bodies that might change them, but that also might
immobilize them physically or mentally or just cause pain.

3) Siphonophora humanity
Our modi ed bodies are enhanced with all kinds of additional bio-receptors.
These work similarly to taste buds in their method of gathering information
about our environment and people within smelling distance while we pass by,

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without any need of cognitive processing, will feed directly into our metabolism.
Communication shi s from electronic signals to pheromones rst through
organizing local communities to cooperate like ants in their hill or bees in their
hivenot mindlessly, just synchronized and similar-minded.

Humanity thus grows into a single organism, until the Leviathan nally rises.

JOERG BLUMTRITT (*1970) is data scientist and blogger, who co-founded the
companies Datarella based in Munich, Germany, and Baltic Data Science in
Gdansk, Poland.

SIMONE BROWNE is the author of Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of

Blackness. She teaches Black Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

HEATHER DEWEY-HAGBORG is a transdisciplinary artist and educator who is

interested in art as research and critical
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Editors Note, Fuck you!
Vol. 61: A Heaven of Swarovski Fuck you!
Conspiracy Hell Kristallnacht Fuck you!
By THE NEW By HELENA By HALEY MLOTEK By THE APPENDIX
INQUIRY FITZGERALD
Fashion as an The '80s hardcore
Just because Punk was making industry suffers band Discharge
theyre after you, up life for from the same played fast, but
doesnt mean you yourself, punk authenticity and they couldn't
have to be was inventing credibility crises keep up with
paranoid. yourself, and as punk, and history
punk was both have sought
inventing the remedies in the
people around same fascistic
you, too, in ating tropes
them to the size
of Gods or
perhaps just
cartoons. Punk
was a scene and
scenes are a
form of myth-
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