ArtSG Platform Project presented by ShanghART
18 - 21 Jan 2024
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Playfully illustrating the intricate connections between art and science, Immortal Words presents bioart backed by NFT certificates and dispensed through gachapon machines. Ultraconserved words believed to have survived for 15,000 years since the last Ice Age are translated as DNA molecules. The project continues Boedi’s decade-long research into body, memory, language and encoding, and explores through the ancient words our deep ancestral past and the memories that we hold within.
Ashes, Black, Fire, to Flow, to Give, Hand, to Hear, Mother, Old, to Pull, to Spit,Worm. Can these words be truly immortal? Can we be immortal?
The question is redundant – we cannot be immortal – but perhaps our shared experiences, cultural legacy and biological matter can. This is Boedi Widjaja’s proposition through his work and practice. And this is the proposition, also, of this essay: to explore the poetics of immortality as a concept and as an object.
Immortality is a recurring theme in human history. In religious contexts, immortality is often related to the soul or spirit transcending the physical body, with beliefs in an afterlife, reincarnation, or eternal salvation. From a scientific standpoint, immortality can be examined through the continuity of matter and the evolution of life. Advances in technology allow us to trace the human lineage back through time, revealing our interconnectedness with past generations and the natural world. Moreover, the digital realm introduces complexities to the notion of immortality, as our digital footprints endure beyond our physical lives, raising questions about the persistence of identity in virtual spaces. Culturally, the transmission of knowledge, traditions, rituals, and customs serves as a means of achieving a form of immortality through the preservation and propagation of collective heritage.
Thus, the question arises, can memory be immortal?Immortal Words, Widjaja’s new body of works, adopts science as a method to discover the untraceable past of a person – and of a community – a past that is not based on tangible knowledge or recorded history, but on memories and experiences, and on our own origins. Let me explain. Widjaja’s personal background deeply influences his artistic exploration, in particular, his investigation into identity and cultural roots. Of Indonesian origin and Chinese descent, Widjaja and his sister endured forced migration at a young age toSingapore from Indonesia due to anti-Chinese violence. This trauma of transitioning between cultures and identities, and the quest for reconciling his Indonesian roots and Chinese heritage, has fostered a quality of liminality in his practice, where he constantly negotiates notions of rooting and uprooting with the concept of home and homeland, encoding new findings on the body or on the mind as a form of mapping.Widjaja’s detailed rubbings of stones or other surfaces, among his broader practice, which includes drawings, performance, mixed-media installation, video and sound, can be considered a method of encoding, through which the language of nature speaks of its own hybridity. Viewed in this context, his experiences as a diasporic individual serve as both a research path and a source of inspiration for his works, seeking to uncover the stories and memories embedded within his genetic and cultural heritage. To do so, Widjaja takes a scientific approach to art making. Trained as an architect, a discipline that by its very nature combines scientific precision and creative process, Widjaja’s venture in art making has progressively encompassed genetic science and bio art. Naturally, this has led him to embrace DNA encoding in 1his artistic practices, stemming from his fascination with experiential memories that could be “incorporated” into the genome over a long span of time. Widjaja takes special interest in DNA as medium and material, because DNA materialises something that he has always felt to be so real but intangible: our memories. The notion that our genetic code translates more than just physical heritage marks a pivoting point for Widjaja, where science and the deeply personal aspects of human existence intersect.
His journey into bio art, and particularly integrating DNA in his works, started in 2019 to effectively impinge, recover or evoke intangible memories. In the trilogy A Tree+++, the work Path. 10, A Tree Talks, A Tree Walks 梧桐语・菩提径 is specifically conceived in relation to his paternal grandfather, who migrated from China to the city. Bio art is an art practice where artists work with living organisms, bacteria and live tissues, often to1 explore existential notions. Contemporary definitions of bio art were proposed at the end of the lastcentury by artists such as Eduardo Kac (b. 1961, Brazil). However, bio art has always existed.Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519, Italy) was arguably a precursor of bio art as he conducted extensive studies of the anatomy, light and the natural environment, in the effort to create his masterpieces. of Solo, Indonesia, thus tracing a link to his own migratory past. For this work, Widjaja collaborated with Dr Eric Yap, a medical doctor and geneticist at Lee KongChian School of Medicine in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, to create a hybrid DNA of three elements: chlorophyll from the Chinese Parasol tree, his own Y chromosome, and his grandfather’s diary. The resulting DNA was dissolved in ink and poetically sprayed on site-specific soil. In A tree rings, a tree sings (2021), the second instalment of the trilogy, Widjaja uses hybrid DNA as a music score for his generative video. Concurrently he also developed Path. 12, River Origin 浪淘沙(2021) and Path. 13, Quaver Cipher (2023). Although not directly related to the use of hybrid DNA, through these video performances Widjaja explores the liminal space of a cosmic dimension by entering into conversation with muons – cosmic ray particles that travel across outer space to reach Earth.2
For Immortal Words, Widjaja returns to language and DNA – both recognised as bearers of memories. DNA is said to transmit emotional or experiential memories.3 On the other hand, language serves as a unique vessel for cultural memory and knowledge. Languages, spoken and written, are a crucial aspect of human history.They convey our thoughts, beliefs, and experiences across generations. The parallels between linguistic and biological evolution underscore the significance of culture in the history of humanity. By encoding the essence of our language as a cultural DNA, Widjaja provides a tangible reference point for understanding our individual and collective pasts.
But, how does he do that?
Immortal Words, like all his DNA-based works, is conceived through a cultural-text sonic encoding key devised by the artist which is very specific to his cultural heritage, that is, through Hanacaraka, one of the oldest Indonesian scripts he learnt as a child. Specifically, for Immortal Words Widjaja takes the English transcript of 12 Most of these works were created during the pandemic, on one hand reflecting on our liminal state, 2and on the other responding to heightened scientific consciousness. “DNA can carry memories of traumatic stress down the generations,” CORDIS, accessed February 311, 2024, of the 23 ultra-conserved words highlighted by linguist Prof. Mark Pagel, Head of Evolutionary Biology Group, University of Reading, in United Kingdom.4 These words, which have persisted across different cultures supposedly unchanged for the last 15,000 years (or since the most recent ice age), symbolise the enduring essence of human communication. Part of the encoding process, the ultra-conserved words are phonetically pronounced, filtered through the sound of Hanacaraka by matching the 20 consonants of the Hanacaraka alphabet to the 20 amino acids that are encoded by DNA. Their sounding approximation is then ‘translated’ into codons to encode new hybrid DNA of words thus associating cultural identity and legacy tomemory and immortality.
On a scientific level, Widjaja collaborated with Dr Yap and the Institute for DigitalMolecular Analytics and Science to synthesise the artificial DNA of the ultraconserved words, which is then contained in vials to be dispensed by gashapon machines to the audience at the exhibition site. The actual exhibition area at 42 Waterloo Street, Singapore, where the work is presented, recalls the atmosphere ofa laboratory. Racks display micro vials of invisible DNA, together with the laboratory reports of the synthetic DNA, and the unique molecular structures (DNA) of thewords. Experiencing the work in dim light, we have the sense that some unrecorded breakthrough is about to happen. At the technology level, the scientific and cultural immortality of the work is matched by the immortality of digital data – through a nonfungible token (NFT). To do so, Widjaja collaborated with Startbahn in Japan. Every vial is provided with a serial number to certify the ‘immortality’ of each permutation of the NFT work. Furthermore, the project website, built using blockchain technology, functions as a permanent and enriching archive.
As a project, Immortal Words shifts on multiple planes of translation, actual and conceptual. Semiotics plays an important role in defining those planes: signal and signifiers, words and sounds, science and technology, provide different levels of interpretation spanning linguistic and temporal spaces. After all, who are we if not the result of past experiences and memories? By encoding cultural heritage into the very4 Prof. Pagel and his researchers theorised, through quantitative methods, the possibility of linguistic relationships beyond the time barrier. See Mark Pagel, Quentin D. Atkinson, Andreea S. Calude, and Andrew Meade, “Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia,” PNAS, accessed February 11, 2024, fabric of DNA, Immortal Words creates a tangible representation of the intangible aspects of human existence. Here, the immortality of DNA, a material that can endure for millions of years, is analogous to the endlessness of our own memories, cultural identity, and legacy. In this process, Widjaja not only explores his personal journey but also invites viewers to envision their own connections to place and ancestry. “The meaning is in the process of art making, and the process is informed by some recurring artistic concerns such as notions of body, memory, language, encoding, house, home, homeland, these concerns serve as catalyst and animate the process, without the intention of wanting to communicate answers but with the interest to question possibilities.” Widjaja explains to me, as he embarks on his ‘archaeological’ quest for the poetics of words, memory and immortality.
- Feb 2024
