Vanecek Jana by helmhaus

J a n a Va n e c e k www.janavanecek.art

Curiculum Vitae Jana Vanecek *1975 lives and works in Switzerland Education: 2015-2019 2011-2015 2001-2004

Master of Arts in Transdiciplinarity in the Arts (with distinction) | Zurich University of Arts Bachelor of Arts in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies | Zurich University of Arts Advanced Federal Diploma of Higher Education in Fine Arts | F+F School of Art & Design

Scholarships / Grants / Residencies/Awards 2022 City of Zurich COVID Work Scholarship 2022 Residency: ProHelvetia Shanghai 2021 Swiss Art Award (nomination) 2021 City of Zurich COVID Work Scholarship 2020 City of Zurich Art Grant 2019-2020 Excellence Scholarship for Outstanding Academic Records | Transdiciplinary Studies | Zurich University of Arts 2019-2020 Studio Grant: What‘s next_Studio | City of Zurich & Migros Culture Percentage & Zurich University of Arts 2019 Project Funding: Club La Fafa | Fachstelle Kultur Kanton Zürich 2017 Hong Kong Research Residency | Department of Cultural Analysis | Zurich University of Arts Art Collections: Art Collection City of Zurich | Acquired 2020: ID9606/2a-c [Welcome to the Biocentury] | Jana Vanecek | 2020 Art Collection City of Zurich | Acquired 2019: 0,008% (So können wir nicht arbeiten!) | Hospiz der Faulheit | 2019 Exhibitions and other Projects (Selection): 2022 2022 2022 2021 2021 2021 2021 2021 2021 2021 2021 2021 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020

2020 2019 2019 2018 2018 2018 2017 2017 2017 2017

Artistic-Research-Creation , Workshops and Seminars: 2021 Club La Fafa Diaspora Talk #3: This big black hole called Global East | Open Futures | Shedhalle Zürich | with Rada Leu 2018 Text Recycling VII: Forever Now – Feminist Utopias | Les Complices | Zürich | with Nina Tshomba 2018 Materialistische Mixtapes für Madame Psychosis | Material | Zürich 2018 Theory vs. Existential Randomness | Rhizome Festival | Zürich | with Nina Tshomba 2017 Select, Copy, Paste | VOLUMES-Independent Publishing Fair | Helmhaus | Zürich | with Nina Tshomba 2017 Theory + existential randomness | Tart Gallery | Zürich | with Nina Tshomba 2017 Lazy Action oder die Ökologie der müssigen Zeit | Nachhaltigkeitswoche | Zürich 2016 Theory + existential randomness | raum*station | Zürich | with Nina Tshomba 2016 48h-Kongress der gemeinsamen Unsicherheiten | raum*station | Zürich | as Hospiz der Faulheit / with raum*station and Madame Psychosis 2016 Ästhetik der Existenz - Zeit(ökonomien) und Schuld(en)| Master Transdisciplinary (Seminar) | Zurich University of Arts | with Dr.Christoph Brunner Contributions to Books, Journals or Publications (Selection from 2017): 2022 Vanecek Jana | Neurodiversität In: Diversität | Psychiatrische Pflege | Hoegrefe Verlag (forthcoming) 2021 Vanecek, Jana | A Mobile Lab and the Guardians of the Magic Circle | In: Texturing Space: Torwards an Exponential Cartography | Adocs Verlag Hamburg 2021 Vanecek, Jana | ID9606/2a-c [WELCOME TO THE BIOCENTURY] | in: MULTIPLE numéro deux | Ed. Antoine Chessex 2021 Jana Vanecek | Molekulare Körper In: Figuren Dazwischen | Ed. Master of Arts in Transdisziplinarität & ZHdK | Zürich 2018 Jana Vanecek | Hypomnemata In: Wissensorte: Eine Publikation als Ausstellung (Seite 82-87) | Ed. Master of Arts in Transdisziplinarität & ZHdK | Zürich 2018 Jana Vanecek | Ein Wal der in der Badewanne aufgewachsen ist, muss denken das Meer habe Wände | Verlag 6 1/2 | Zürich 2018 Jana Vanecek | Bloss nicht wie ein Schwan sein In: Zine – to March Clandestine Life of the BoycottGiiirls! | Corner College Press | Zürich | 2018 2017 Jana Vanecek | Der Wutbürger ist ein Angstbürger: Eine Analyse zur Figur des Wutbürgers In: Wut | Saiten Ostschweizer Kultur Magazin | St. Gallen | 2017 2017 Hospiz der Faulheit | Mixtape1 In: Hospiz der Faulheit. Ökologien der Faulheit | Master of Arts in Transdisziplinarität & ZHdK | Zürich 2017 Hospiz der Faulheit | Undurchlässige Schnittstellen In: Hospiz der Faulheit. Ökologien der Faulheit | Master of Arts in Transdisziplinarität & ZHdK | Zürich Oral Contributions to Conferences, Artist-Talks, Round Tables or Panel Discussions 2021 ID9606/ 2a-c. Dispositive eines Virus | Contemporary Womxn’s Writing and the Medical Humanities Conference | University of London & Institute of Modern Languages Research 2021 Kollektive Arbeit trotz sozialer Distanz, VISARTE Zürich | Zürich 2020 «Rausch» | Zentrum Karl der Grosse | Zürich | with neuropsychologist Boris Quednow. Moderation: Daria Wild 2019 Budgets, Leistungsvereinbarungen, Mission: Teilhabe | Shedhalle | Zürich | organised by Illona Stutz | invited as Kunst braucht Kohle / with Chantal Romani 2018 Budgets, Leistungsvereinbarungen, Mission: Statements | Shedhalle | Zürich | organized by Illona Stutz | invited as Kunst braucht Kohle / with Chantal Romani 2016 On the Division of Labour, Work, Knowledge, [...] | Academy of Fine Arts Vienna | Austria | invited as Hospiz der Faulheit / with Raum*station and Madame Psychosis 2015 Facs of‌Life and Deleuze‘s Pedagogy of the Virtual | Kino Xenix | Zürich | organized by Corner College and Christoph Brunner / invited as Hospiz der Faulheit

Reality is promiscous, at the very least (2022) Installation: C-Stands with prints on alu-dibond 40cmX50cm, dimensions variable Publication: 68 pages, first edition of 100

Reality is promiscuous, at the very least is an installation with publication and consists of a series of images and a series of text fragments. The work shows an excerpt from Vanecek‘s artistic research project on neurodiversity and co-authorship with artificial intelligence. The artist developed the image series together with machine learning algorithms. The text layer consists of quotations and word fragments from Donna Haraway‘s «Cyborg Manifesto», Gloria Anzaldua‘s «La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness», Wahneema Lubiano‘s «But Compared to What?», Maurice Merleau-Ponty‘s «Le primat de la perception et ses conséquences philosophiques», Sami Schalk‘s «Bodyminds reimagined : (dis)ability, race, and gender in black women’s speculative fiction» and memes circulating in the neurodivergent community which Vanecek has edited, supplemented and rewoven. The image and text levels are independent narrative structures that influence and complement each other. Together they convey a science fiction fabulation that takes up the evolutionary biology theory that human consciousness arose thanks to co-evolution with a retrovirus. In the images, one recognizes viruses, brains, faces, octopuses, cyborgs that connect with each other in a variety of ways. The accompanying texts represent a kind of scattered writing, as practiced by the artist with her ADHD - but also formally tie in with representational forms of digital and postmodern literature. This work builds on three earlier works of Vanecek: Humanoids: A Journey to the End of the Anthroposcene and Theory vs. Existential Randomness and the collaboration with an artificial inteligence, the text generator GPT-2 in www.furor-poeticus.ch (only section May 2020).

My Body Is An Alphabet (2022) Online Fanzine in the context of thingsnonthings.space Video 00:00:17

A project based on Vilém Flusser‘s The Unding 1 and The Unding 2.

A THROW OF THE DICE

In Das Unding 1 and Das Unding 2, two texts written by media theorist Vilém Flusser (1920 -1991) in the 1980s, he observes the things in his environment and has to realize that they are increasingly displaced by „Undinge“ - he calls them „information“. Flusser describes information as „incomprehensible“ and only decodable: „Since this situation is incomprehensible, nothing can be grasped there and nothing can be dealt with. The hand, the conceptual and generating action, has become superfluous there.“ Instead, the most important organ is the fingertips, whose only task is to operate keys.

Choose your own story – a series of texts by Bérénice Serra, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Jana Vanecek, Shelby Stuart, curated by Delphine Chapuis Schmitz

In the sense of a fanzine - the word „fanzine“ as a combination of the English terms „fan“ and „magazine“ - the website thingsnonthings.space was created. This website can be read as a place for the common further thinking of Flusser‘s ideas as well as explanations of his texts. (1) My Body Is An Alphabet by Jana Vanecek is published as part of the series A Throw of the Dice, curated by Delphine Chapuis Schmitz for the project There is something wrong with my hands. Oh yes, they’re not holding you. My Body Is An Alphabet results from multiple collaborations: The images have been developed together with VQGAN + Clip, two separate machine learning algorithms that can be used to generate images based on a text prompt. The textual layer consists of interwoven fragments from texts by Johanna Hedva, Starhawk, Serhij Zhadan, Jenny Odell, memes circulating in the neurodivergent community, and Vanecek herself.

‍There was a time when a world of things came to be permeated by data, when what appeared at first glance as immaterial bits and waves came to “flood our environment from all directions, displacing things”1. But this time of transition is long gone and the binary distinction between things and non-things, carved by Flusser in an attempt at grasping both the phenomenological and existential consequences of such displacements, seems to increasingly lose relevance in everyday life. ‍The texts presented here all start from concrete situations where things and non-things are mingled and intertwined to the point that they cannot be singled out anymore. They explore ways to navigate hybrid realities unfolding beyond dualist oppositions such as materiality vs. immateriality, presence vs. absence, meaning production vs. meaning consumption. And yet, existential and phenomenological concerns of the kind Flusser was paying attention to remain as urgent as ever: how do we choose and position ourselves when evidences long taken for granted start to crumble and our daily routine is disrupted? How do incessant flows of informationdatastimulation affect our psychic life? How does artificial intelligence shape human intelligence and the reverse? How do we experience intimacy, closeness and distance in variously mediated interactions? How to orientate in porous environments where attending is detached from bodily presence? Which forms of meaning production can we chose to engage with? And which forms of textuality can be developed as an attempt to tackle these questions? (Text: Delphine Chapuise Schmitz)

(1) Exhibition Text

Club La Fafa: Where To Belong (2021) Print on flag fabric 110 g/m | 9 pieces a 100cm x 300 cm | Installation Dimensions variable | A selection of questions from personal conversations with refugees, compiled by Club La Fafa

Over the course of two years (2019-2020), “Club La Fafa” has collected questions in many personal interviews in refugee and transit centres. These questions provide information on the challenges - both personal and structural - faced by refugees in Switzerland. Most of these questions depend on an ever-changing migration policy and will probably never find a definitive answer. For the ability to project oneself into a future is always dependent on a social, as well as symbolic, recognition. These questions will basically shape the biographies of those affected for a lifetime. The questions served as an invitation for a discursive knowledge production that took place together with interested visitors. (diaspora talks) A central aspect of this exchange was the mutual involvement in the life of the other person. Referring to Marilyn Strathern, an ethnographer of thinking practices, we pursued the study of relationships through relationships. In order for this to succeed, however, we did not rely on lowest denominator homogenisation. Identity-relevant affiliations continued to be important, but they were to remain negotiable for all participants between individual origins and common futures. The Diaspora Talks that followed on from the questions served, on the one hand, to get to know each other and to discuss together, and, on the other hand, these process-oriented, dialogue-based and investigative settings constituted a safe space laboratory. This safe space offered the participants the opportunity to create a common lifeworld out of the assemblage of cultural, disciplinary and social influences and to locate themselves in it in a self-determined way. Even if this shared living world in the Shedhalle was only temporary, new self-understandings and styles of thinking could emerge from this experience, which in turn enable sustainable relationships that can be lived out in everyday life. Club La Fafa are Nadja Baldini, Hicham El Khemisi, Rahimullah Mohammadi, Ali Omar, Raphael Perret, Jawed Stanikzai & Jana Vanecek Open Futures is initiated by Isabelle Vuong. The exhibition in Shedhalle was curated by Isabelle Vuong and Camille Jamet.

exhibition view: Shedhalle Zürich | photographer: Nic Bruni

Club La Fafa: Diaspora Talk #3: This big black hole called Global East: (2021) Artistic-Research-Creation with audience

When we think about global differences today, we categorise the world into a rich, powerful Global North and a poor, less powerful Global South. But this binary distinction between North and South leads to a black hole on the map of power representation: all those societies that lie somewhere in between. It includes a large part of those societies that participated in perhaps the most consequential global experiment of the 20th century: the creation of communism. The “global East,” formerly called the Second World, is too rich to be a proper part of the South, but it is also, at the same time, too poor to be part of the club of the North. It is too powerful to be considered the periphery, but too weak to be the center. The balance of power in the “global East” runs in all directions. There are both colonisers and colonies there, aggressors and victims; some countries were both at the same time. (1) With the help of short text excerpts and visual material, we tried to explore this “global East” together with the audience. This was accompanied by a hangover brunch with tea, homemade slivovice and Eastern European delicacies. Diaspora Talk #3 was held by Rada Leu and Jana Vanecek The Diaspora Talk Series are organised by Club La Fafa

(1) Vgl. Martin Müller (2020) In Search of the Global East: Thinking between North and South, Geopolitics, 25:3, 734-755, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2018.1477757

exhibition view: Shedhalle Zürich | photographer: Nic Bruni

Kunst braucht Kohle (2021)

Apart from domestic and care work, art and cultural production is the field with the most unpaid [women’s*] labour. The art business can only be sustained through rampant [self-]exploitation of various actors at every level and in almost every function. An irregular income and/or employment in the low-wage sector, fixed-term contracts as well as alternating and often barely separable phases of paid and free work and the associated incomplete or non-existent social security determine the working realities of [independent] cultural and art producers. Even in the institutional sector, unpaid overtime in the field of art education is not a rarity, but rather a norm. The acceptance of various forms of self-exploitation often begins in education. In addition to the increasingly scarce study time, numerous projects developed outside the compulsory curriculum have to be accommodated. Against this background, the availability and willingness to invest time in one’s studies and artistic work is a necessity. However, the social conditions under which these requirements can be met also make it clear who remains excluded from the performance requirements of the art academy or finds access only with difficulty: First and foremost, it is students with work and care obligations, or those with health problems, who cannot or can only partially redeem this availability and flexibility. KUNST BRAUCHT KOHLE is a format for exchanging experiences. A format for the formation of a future network/platform for the exchange of knowledge among art producers, art mediators and theorists. It will also explore the question of how existing similar formats can be connected to enable longerterm advocacy work. KUNST BRAUCHT KOHLE are Chantal Romani and Jana Vanecek

exhibition view: Visarte | photographer: Nic Bruni

Life is Surplus Value [patented, traded and accumulated] (2021) Installation: UV ink on polyester, LED modules, lacquered ABS, 300 x 250 x 15 cm and 100 x 100 x 40 cm | performance: 18-20 minutes | actor: Johannes Hoffmann | booklet 16 pages with research text

All people need health care. Or at least they will need it at some point in their lives. Worldwide, more than $7.8 trillion is spent on healthcare. With the healthcare sector growing much faster than the overall global economy - and not just since Corona - these figures are almost certain to rise by quite a bit by the end of the decade [1]. At the heart of the new post-industrial economy, in genetic capitalism, is the transformation of biological life into economic surplus value [2]. Through the interplay of diverse information and biotechnologies, as well as global trade and intellectual property rights, life, understood as matter, can be dissected, stabilised, frozen, digitised, standardised, stored in genetic databases, and traded and accumulated independently of time and space, across organs and species, across contexts and companies, in the service of health and capital [3]. These trends are particularly (but not exclusively) evident in the example of cancer therapies. Thanks to technological innovations, more and more new cancer drugs have come onto the market in recent years. On the one hand, these drugs are a great achievement, since according to statistics, one in three people could potentially develop cancer at some point in their lives. On the other hand, however, the prices of cancer drugs have increased 35-fold between 2005 and 2013. In some cases, manufacturers charge up to 500,000 Swiss francs per patient [4], not including physician and laboratory costs. In addition, an international study (2020) by the University of Zurich and Harvard Medical School concluded that there is no correlation between the clinical benefit of cancer drugs and their prices in Switzerland, Germany, England and the USA [5]. Experts are increasingly warning that these high prices will make it almost impossible for health insurers to finance treatment in the long term. Because of this development in pricing, the responsible Federal Office of Public Health is increasingly forced to restrict the use of and access to the drugs with a limitatio. Under these circumstances, treatment depends on a cost approval from the health insurance company. However, a 2014 study indicated that decisions can vary widely by health insurer. This means that the choice of health insurer or, in some circumstances, even the day-to-day form of the medical examiner in charge can make the difference between life and death in Switzerland [6].

Regardless of age, gender, socioeco-nomic or ethnic background, we consider our health to be our most basic and important asset. Health is a basic prerequisite for social and economic participation in society. After all, an illness can prevent us from going to school or work, meeting our family obligations, or fully participating in our community‘s activities. At the same time, health seems to be increasingly becoming a luxury good that is not accessible or only accessible with difficulty. In order to democratize personal stories, I often use quotations, which I modify slightly or supplement with additional content. For the installation LIFE IS SURPLUS VALUE I worked mainly with texts by Melinda Cooper, Rosi Braidotti and Kaushik Sunder Rajan. The script for the performance consists of a montage of advertising slogans, package inserts (patient information) and quotes from pharma & biotech CEO’s, politicians, health economists and venture capitalists and stockbrokers. The figure that speaks represents the entanglement of pharma, financial market and politics. Her monologue consists of a montage of advertising slogans and quotes from pharma & biotech CEO’s, politicians, health economists, venture capitalists and stockbrokers. I have taken these fragments from interviews, TV shows or professional publications. I consider montage as a very suitable method, as it allows a much more comprehensive picture of the subject matter through the polyphony that is united in the figure. (1) Vgl. OECD. «Health at a Glance 2019», 2019. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/publication/4dd50c09-en. (2) Vgl. Cooper, Melinda. Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era. In Vivo. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. (3) Vgl. Braidotti, Rosi. «Zur Transposition des Lebens im Zeitalter des genetischen Biokapitalismus». In Bios und Zoë: Die menschliche Natur im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, herausgegeben von Martin G. Weiß, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2009. (4) Vgl. https://nzzas.nzz.ch/notizen/geheilt-dank-einer-spritze-die-470-000-dollar-kostet-ld.1315330 | Eingesehen am 21.06.2021 (5) Vgl. Vokinger, Kerstin N, Thomas J Hwang, Thomas Grischott, Sophie Reichert, Ariadna Tibau, Thomas Rosemann, und Aaron S Kesselheim. «Prices and Clinical Benefit of Cancer Drugs in the USA and Europe: A Cost–Benefit Analysis». The Lancet Oncology 21, Nr. 5 (Mai 2020): 664–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(20)30139-X. (6) Vgl. https://www.handelszeitung.ch/politik/bei-krebspatienten-ist-kassenwahl-entscheidend-575160 | Eingesehen am 21.06.2021

exhibition view & performance | Swiss Art Awards | photographer: Nic Bruni

Virale Kriegsmetaphorik (2020/2021) Installation consisting of five pictures | Size: Variable | Size of single picture: 50cm x 50cm | Edition: 3 + 2AP | Material: plot on 5mm forex with handcoloured typecut

The series of images «VIRALE KRIEGSMETAPHORIK» focuses on the conspicuous dissemination of «combat images» in media reporting during the time of the first lockdown in Switzerland. While “the image” of the corona virus, with its aesthetically perfect structures, advanced to a global icon within a few weeks, the language pattern of the news reports was reminiscent of the genre of war reporting. In addition to nationalist front positions and the heroisation of individual male protagonists, combat scenarios with militaristic terms defined the interaction between the images of the virus and journalistic texts. The use of linguistic metaphors can hardly be avoided in favor of accelerated communication and the immediate accessibility of scientific concepts. However, it would be wrong to claim that these popular scientific representations are merely simple illustrations for laypeople. Rather, there is an interaction between scientific and political discourses, which in turn can shape the perception of an entire generation and determine how this generation will think and act. In this series of images, the most commonly used militaristic terms in the media form a parasitic message that first activates the idea or concept of what should be recognizable in this image. Although the terms could be the only meaningful element of the picture, they are a bit disparate in the picture space. This effect is reinforced by the bright colors on the black and white background in the coarse halftone grid. The original images that were used for the series «VIRAL WAR METAPHORICS» are alienated cryo-scanning electron microscope images of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles from the NIAID-RML (National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases-Rocky Mountain Laboratories) (CC). This work is one of 39 selected works out of 683 entries from the Visarte Switzerland Corona Call Competition. exhibition view: M54 Basel | photographer: Daniel Drognitz

Buy Your Baby‘s Life Back Today [The Pharma Lottery] (2020) Technique / Material: Plot on 5 mm Forex | Size: 110cm x 110cm | Edition: 3 + 2AP text, lecture performance with Johannes Hoffmann | 100 lottery tickets | QR code with are.na channel with research material

In recent years, the high drug prices in the countries of the global north have by far exceeded the investments in research and development made by the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. This new type of price policy has lead to a significant burden on the tax and premium-financed Health insurance system. For this reason, drug therapies are being increasingly “rationed” in Switzerland. In 2017, more than 600 drugs were given a so-called “limitatio”, including some life saving cancer drugs. The limitatio stipulates that only patients with advanced disease or for whom no other treatment is suitable are paid for the drug. Nevertheless, it has already happened that health insurance companies refused to cover the costs despite the clear legal situation. As a result, more and more people are resorting to medical crowdfunding in order to be able to afford the medicine that is vital for them. This is no longer an American phenomenon. But Big Pharma has also reacted to its own exorbitant prices: with a lottery. Both the lottery procedure and the persistent invocation of self-responsibility by means of crowdfunding are extremely cynical in the situation of a fatal illness. In addition, these methods obscure the true facts: The high drug prices that arise from a capitalist mode of production. To be self-sufficient and to conform to the liberal ideal of the independent individual is simply impossible in such a case. In the age of diverse technological possibilities, health shouldn‘t be a matter of luck either. Health is a matter that cannot be negotiated by individuals, but only in a social context. If the economisation of life itself and the simultaneous devaluation of social responsibility are to some extent entangled, this can lead to serious consequences that make self-determination of life impossible. The work on this topic was specially designed for the exhibition platform “Bonus Track of the Kunsthaus Aussersihl”. The showroom was a shop window near Helvetiaplatz. In the private sector, shop windows are of great importance for the presentation of sales objects. Shop windows are one of the most effective advertising media.

This object- and site-specific element was taken up and used in the picture element of the work. Although it is an artistic research work, it plays with the attention economy of passers-by and is initially perceived as advertising. But when passersby use the QR code they will be connected to an are.na channel. This channel contains newspaper clippings and crowdfunding videos as well as a text that formed the basis of a five-minute lecture performance at the opening. The lecture performance was a collaboration with the actor Johannes Hoffmann.

Link and QR-Code to the are.na Channel:

https://www.are.na/jana-vanecek/the-pharma-lottery

exhibition view & performance | Kunsthaus Aussersihl Zürich | photographer: Nic Bruni

ID9606/2a-c [Welcome to the Biocentury] (2020) Installation with typecut text on wall | Dimensions and size variable | Edition 3 + 2 AP

Edition 1/3 was aquired by the Art Collection of the City of Zurich in 2020

In the course of history, every technological revolution has led to massive changes in political, economic and social structures, but also to new power relations between the institutions involved (states, organisations, corporations, etc.) and social classes. Due to the rapid developments in the field of medical biotechnology, the transactions that are connected with the body seem to develop into the most important areas of the market economy in the last few decades. Under these social and historical conditions, as well as in response to the shift in economic investment, knowledge production and insights within genetics represent a reorientation of scientific knowledge and the history of science. These factors are closely intertwined with the forces that manifest themselves as the acceleration of the politicisation of science. A new biopolitical system called biocapitalism is taking shape before our eyes and influencing the economic, political and cultural life of contemporary capitalism. In short, this new materialising structure of power and subjectivity redefines the way we live. Through the interplay of various information and biotechnologies as well as global trade and intellectual property rights, life, understood as matter, can be decomposed, stabilised, frozen, digitised, standardised, stored in genetic databases and independent of time and space, via organs and species traded and accumulated across different contexts and companies in the service of health and capital. These profound transformations open up a new pattern of the modern distribution of power and lifestyle and also change and reconstruct Foucault‘s concept of biopolitics from different dimensions. This new form of capitalism - genetic biocapitalism - fuels at least two perspectives at the same time: utopian hopes and dystopian despair. Sources: Braidotti, Rosi. Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2006. Braidotti, Rosi. «Zur Transposition des Lebens im Zeitalter des genetischen Biokapitalismus». In Bios und Zoë: Die menschliche Natur im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, herausgegeben von Martin G. Weiß, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2009. Rose, Nikolas. «Molecular Biopolitics, Somatic Ethics and the Spirit of Biocapital». Social Theory & Health 5, Nr. 1 (Februar 2007): 3–29. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.sth.8700084. Yu, Jiangxia, und Jingwei, Liu. «The New Biopolitics». Journal of Academic Ethics 7, Nr. 4 (Dezember 2009): 287–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-009-9098-8.

For the artistic implementation of the described subject, I have selected seven public companies that are active in the field of medical biotechnology and have developed so-called “breakthrough therapies” in recent years. However, due to the horrendous prices, these therapies are very difficult to access for many affected people. In addition, the therapies often have to be rationed by the respective health authorities. All of these listed companies are owned by their shareholders, and if the theses of the economist and pioneer of the “neoliberal project” Milton Friedman are to be believed, the only social responsibility of a listed company is to ensure to enlarge the profit and payment of those who do it own. To achieve this, the company has to establish identities and affiliations, be a place of innovation and the capitalisation of knowledge, among other things. This procedure is also visible in the language of Corporate Communication. For my work, I have selected quotes, text fragments or claims that these companies use to advertise themselves and their products and, among other things, address their investors / shareholders. They come from the areas of R&D (Research & Development), Governance, Ethics or Responsibility. It was important to me that these statements offer both a utopian and a dystopian reading. The text fragments / quotes are supplemented by numbers that indicate the respective share value, sales and market capitalisation (as of end of 2018).

exhibition view: Helmhaus Zürich | photographer: Zoe Tempest