William S. Burroughs' Preserved Poop Inspires 'Bio-Art' Piece

Feb 11, 2011 – 3:16 PM
David Moye

Controversial 20th-century novelist William S. Burroughs was best known for his novel "Naked Lunch," and now two "bio-artists" are hoping to turn the remains of his last lunches into art.

Adam Zaretsky and Tony Allard are the creators of "Mutate or Die: A W.S. Burroughs Biotechnical Bestiary," an ongoing project that basically turns a piece of Burroughs' poop into a piece of art.

Burroughs died in 1997 at the age of 83 in Lawrence, Kan., and the poop being used belongs to a family friend and is covered in epoxy, presumably until it could be used for a higher purpose such as this.

Courtesy Adam Zaretsky

Artists Adam Zaretsky and Tony Allard are creating an art piece using a piece of poop that was once in the colon of controversial writer William S. Burroughs.

Zaretsky, who has a background in biotech, and Allard, a college professor in San Diego, say their plan is to "take a glob" of the preserved poop, isolate the DNA and make lots of copies of it.

After that, they will soak the DNA dust in gold dust and load it into a "gene gun," a modified air pistol used to insert DNA into plants, worms, rats and humans for experiments.

The DNA dust collected from the poop will be loaded into the pistol, which will then be shot into a mix of blood, poop and semen and then, according to the artists, be declared either a "living bio-art," a "new media print," a "living cut-up literary device" or a mutant sculpture.

Allard admits the concept is, for many people, like poop itself: not easy to grasp even if you're fully aware of its purpose.

"The main response we get from people is, 'Are you serious?' " he told AOL News. "But this is not your typical art project. We see this as a paradigm shift from representational art, since, in this case, the art is in the living organism."

The idea for turning Burroughs' poop into art dates back to October 1996, when Allard was living in Kansas City, Mo., and tried to get the author's DNA sequenced at the scanning electron microscope at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

That didn't happen, but Allard was able to make things happen after he met Zaretsky at a symposium.

"He asked me what I could do with [Burroughs'] s--t," Zaretsky said. "I told him we could isolate and amplify the DNA from the turd and make a bucket of DNA, and I could throw it in his face.

"But, I also mentioned that if we could raise some money for a gene gun, I could shoot the genes into his balls. After some fundraising, I think we have ourselves a potential to go on a gonad bender."

Allard believes this attempt to make what he calls a "transgenic mutation" fits in better with the spirit of Burroughs' work than the original plan. It also has the complete approval of Burroughs' estate.

"One of Burroughs' most famous quotes is 'Mutate or die!' and mutants run through his work," Allard said.

So do bodily fluids. The mixing of Burroughs' poop and DNA with blood and semen belonging to others is meant to be sort of a shout-out to the author's pioneering "cut-up" technique of writing, in which he cut random book pages in half and mismatched them with other pages.

And the fact that the DNA is being shot with a gun is also an allusion to the 1951 incident when Burroughs shot and killed his wife while playing a drunken game of "William Tell."

But Allard says just the fact they are doing this with DNA is what is truly Burroughsian about the project.

"In the scientific community, transgenic mutations are common," he said. "A piece of corn might have the gene of a flounder to keep it drought-resistant. However, there are controls. It's normalized.

Allard says the randomness of this project flushes that notion down the toilet.

"The exact sciences are obsessed with tight controls over random factors," he said. "They don't do things like this just to see what will happen, but this is what we're interested in. Burroughs was opposed to any kind of control system. He believed in diversity through mutation, which is what this is."

Although Allard and Zaretsky have joked that the combination of blood, sperm and poop could somehow create a race of Burroughs-bred turd monsters, Allard is quick to point out that the amount of the writer's DNA in the poop is actually small.

"The amount of DNA in the s--t is fairly minuscule; it's more like the DNA of what was in his gut at the time," he said.

But the reaction to the project has been robust in just the few days since they announced it -- and that reaction is the first part of what they expect to be a two- to three-year project.

"The first part is announcing the project and having the public comment on it, but we probably won't extract the DNA sample until the fall," he said. "We're creating a context for a dialog.

"In most cases, s--t is an ending point. Here, it's a starting point."

http://www.aolnews.com/discuss/2011/02/11/william-s-burroughs-preserved-poop-inspires-bio-art-piece