Jennifer Willet

Jennifer Willet is a multidisciplinary artist working out of Montreal who maintains an international practice of exhibition, research, publishing and lecturing.

She completed a BFA at The University of Calgary in 1997 and an MFA the
University of Guelph in 1999. She teaches in Studio Arts at Concordia
University and is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities
Program at Concordia University. Her work explores notions of the self
and subjectivity in relation to biomedical, bioinformatic, and digital
technologies with an emphasis on social and political criticism.

Jennifer Willet with her collaborator Shawn Bailey have been developing
a work called BIOTEKNICA.

BIOTEKNICA is a fictitious corporation, an interactive installation and
website that networks biological (Tissue Culture Prototypes), new media
(Virtual Laboratory Software), video, print, and installation concerns
into a critical artwork engaging with notions of 'the natural body'
in the biotechnological age. Rooted in recent scientific findings,
BIOTEKNICA projects its viewers into the future, where within our virtual
laboratory designer organisms are generated on demand. However, the
organisms produced by BIOTEKNICA do not adhere to the structures normally
manifest in nature. Similar to mutations depicted in The Fly,
Rosemary's Baby, and Alien Resurrection, our specimens are irrational and
grotesque. They are modeled on the Teratoma, an unusual cancerous growth
containing multiple tissues like hair, skin, teeth, and vascular systems.
Monstrous as this may seem, scientists today see the teratoma as an
instance of spontaneous cloning in nature, and are conducting research on
the Teratoma with the goal of developing future technologies.
BIOTEKNICA both embraces and critiques contemporary biotechnologies, asking the viewer to consider the contradictions and complexities that
biotechnology offers the future of humanity.

In the past, BIOTEKNICA has manifest as a purely multimedia
production/installation. However, we now seek to bring our theoretical specimens out of their virtual environment and into the laboratory. We have just completed working as Research Fellows at SymbioticA the art and science
collaborative research laboratory in The School of Anatomy and Human
Biology at The University of Western Australia, where we began growing
organic prototypes that serve as new representations of our product line.
Here we are working with tissue culture protocols in the production of
artwork as pioneered by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, of the
internationally recognized Tissue Culture and Art Project, and SymbioticA founders.