Lifeboat
LifeBoat is a fully functional Biological Laboratory and psychological processing facility encapsulated within a ship's lifeboat that had its debut in the Oslo Fjord and subsequently on-board the Baltic cruise ship Opera for the ISEA 2004 event, August 2004.
LifeBoat is conceived as a self-reflexive critique that encourages an ambiguous view of both political culture and the culture of biology. Functioning either as a positive and optimistic 'survival mechanism' or as a broken mirror that reflects contemporary colonialist endeavours, the vessel carries the threat of physical and spiritual contamination implicit in the Imperialist collision of Cook’s vessel with the South Pacific. In this respect “LifeBoat” may not be the panacea that it at first might appear ~ it could as easily represent yet another ill-conceived Utopian scheme.
LifeBoat can be read as a symbolic attempt to create an anti authoritarian version of the ‘mobile labs’ that so terrify the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. In Powell's address to the UN on the 6th of February (plagiarised from a US student thesis) he quotes: -
“One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.”
What kind of ideological danger will our lab present? Whilst possibly not a cue to initiate punitive military action it will certainly provide a pointed critique of the forces of reductionism and unilateralism that are constantly calculating destruction on a massive scale and which threaten both political and biological diversity.
Let’s face it – in the final analysis, Lifeboats are only necessary when the real-ship is sinking!
