Rachel Mayeri

“Stories From the Genome Synopsis” (video)

Part cloning experiment, part documentary, Stories From the Genome follows an unnamed CEO-geneticist whose company sequenced the Human Genome on 2003 - a genome that secretly was his own. Not satisfied with this accomplishment, the entrepreneur produces a colony of clones in an attempt to save himself from a genetic disorder that causes dementia. The video switches between misadventures in cloning, and a history of equally improbably theories of human development.

Biography

Rachel Mayeri is a video and installation artist whose work often deals with the intersection of science, art, and society. Stories From the Genome showed as part of the Berkeley Art Museum exhibition “Gen(sis): Contemporary Artists Exploring Genomics” in a series of screenings at Pacific Film archive, as well as at Cinematexas International Short Film Festival. Her previous video work includes The Anatomical Theater of Peter the Great (1999), and The Electropathic Sanitarium (1992). Mayeri's work has been screened at numerous venues nationally and internationally, including The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, P.S.1/Museum of Modern Art, in New York and at Ars Electronica, in Austria. She is currently Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Harvey Mudd College, and curates art and media events in Los Angeles.

“Powering Up/Powering Down” is sponsored in part by the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA), and the UC San Diego Department of Music in connection with the departments of Visual Arts, Music, and Literature at UCSD along with the UC Riverside and Los Angeles campuses.