“Common Flowers / City Gardening” transfers the basic biotechnology knowledge and plant-tissue cultures skills required to prepare growth media, clone genetically modified blue carnation and release the resulting plants in the city of Yokohama. The processes and technologies involved are based on a DIY bio-bending approach, using tools, items and ingredients readily available in any well stocked kitchen or easily purchased at a nearby drug store. The basis for this workshop/performance/cooking show is Suntory Flowers’ blue “Moondust” carnation, the first commercially available and purely aesthetic GM product. The goal is to communicate the necessary steps, to take ownership of the biotechnology, and to discover the joy of gardening with genetically modified plants. The workshops teaches how to make very Common Flowers from the very special flowers that are the blue carnations. Visitors are invited to participate and encouraged to propagate.
Shiho Fukuhara received a BA(Hons) in Fine Art from Central St Martins and continued her studies with an MA in Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art. Shiho was invited to participate at the Le Pavillion at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2004 and was selected as Artist-in-Residence at IAMAS (Japan), ISEA 2008 in Singapore and most recently at Ambient TV in London. In her art projects she is investigating the relationships between art and science with a special interest in the social implications of emergent biotechnologies.
Georg Tremmel (Austria)
Georg Tremmel studied Visual Media Arts on the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art in London, where he started his ongoing collaboration with Shiho Fukuhara. Their works were shown internationally and awarded serveral distinctions and honours. Most recently, they formed the artistic collaborative research framework BCL with the mission to explore the relations, congruences and differences of biological and cultural codes through artistic interventions and social research.
