Lucy McRae's captivating and provocative images are the result of ongoing experimentation and research carried out in collaboration with other artists, designers or scientists.
Examining how science is transforming the body , McRae's prophetic aesthetic poses, through art, a future yet to come, pushing ethical and ideological questions about who we are and where we are going to the limit. Science fiction artist and pioneer in blurring the boundaries of art, architecture, technology, design and now, fashion, McRae has deftly managed to imagine other ways of being and, above all, other possibilities for human biology to be augmented by a mix of physical design and the modification of genes and emotions, in collaboration with some of the most prestigious organizations in the world such as Philips, MIT, Ars Electronica or NASA.
Top image: Future Survival Kit. Photo: Ariel Fisher.
Through the Body Architect label, McRae tries to communicate his hybrid nature and thus be able to approach everything that arouses his curiosity. His latest work, Heavy Duty Love, a laboratory-created speculative home device that compensates for lack of human touch in early life, has been extended at a fashion label, Future Sensitive Human, to posit the complex identities that will emerge around CRISPR technology. We chat with Lucy.
Heavy Duty Love. Venice Biennale. Photos: Brian Overend.
NEO2 Your latest work, Heavy Duty Love, is on display at the Venice Biennale until November 21. Could you explain to us what it consists of and how you came up with the idea?
LUCY MCRAE My work always investigates the way in which science and technology provoke the body, the mind, oneself, humanity. So Heavy Duty Love is a machine, a working prototype, imagined in a post-CRISPR world, where engineering, genetics, technology and all the tools are readily available and where we can grow life. human in a laboratory without the need for the woman to be the vehicle for the pregnancy.
We know that touch is the first sense generated in the womb, so how would it be affected? Would it come sooner or later? Or would it be directly removed? Science seems to be on a mission towards perfection and some aspects like vulnerability, weaknesses, accidents, serendipity are not considered humanity's strengths. However, for me they are. This machine is a provocation that suggests that creating life in a laboratory can generate atypical neurobiological tendencies or hypersensitivities. The relationship with the parents is strongly questioned due to the lack of the mother's first hug, understood as something ancestral. So this machine is a place for a being that is growing up in a laboratory and needs new forms of intimacy.
NEO2 What has been the public response?
LUCY MCRAE The installation is having a very positive response. I think the concept may be a bit difficult for many to understand. The idea of coming into this world in a radically different way may seem absurd, but I think that this kind of absurdity is relevant when science and technology are advancing so rapidly. CRISPR is becoming commonplace, mainstream.
As a creative I put a lot of emphasis on details and these details are exposed to the public for them to investigate for themselves. In my other works there is often an interactive component as well as a voyeuristic element, as there are usually visitors inside the machine who try it out on their own bodies. In this case, the body is not present but the machine hints where it should be. So I have the feeling that this time the focus is more on the work and less on the body interacting with the work.
NEO2 The Project has been extended to a fashion label called Future Sensitive Human. What makes it special? Do you have plans for her?
LUCY MCRAE Yes! The film will show one of the five or six scenes of the machine and what makes me most excited is that we are creating merchandising. These are some wearable and collectible pieces of art from the movie for you to own. This is a novelty. I've wanted to have my own firm since I was a little girl, it was my childhood dream, and now it's also an opportunity to use the high-tech of fashion and bring up the complex ideas around CRISPR technology. You can read about CRISPR in a book, but you can't read about CRISPR in fashion. That is why I consider that it is a great opportunity since this topic is going to radically change the life of the whole world.
Lucyandb art. Grow On You. Photographic collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess.
NEO2 Some time ago, around 2008, you collaborated with textile artist Bart Hess on an impressive series of works, Lucyandbart, about how the human silhouette might evolve. Has your hypothesis changed since then?
LUCY MCRAE I think this question leads me to think that the way I produce is very primitive and instinctive. I identify my role as that of an interpreter, sensing the weak signals on the fringes of culture and turning them into physical, tangible things to tinker with so that they can be better understood. The Lucyandbart collaboration consisted of a quick exploration of the use of certain materials on the body and that way of creating, a little blindly and without really knowing what the result will be, is the way I continue to work in the studio. I am also a professor of architecture at SCI-Arc and my way of teaching is based precisely on ignorance as a way to clarity. The new aesthetics and innovation are pioneers in this.
NEO2 Do you see yourself collaborating again with Bart Hess or similar artists?
LUCY MCRAE I am very interested in collaborations with fashion. I'm not a designer, but I love the magic and alchemy that comes from working with people from different backgrounds and disciplines. I know that if I collaborate with a fashion brand, the vision that I can incorporate is going to be very different and the result would be very different from what we would get if we worked separately. I am very curious and would love to do it. Recently I have been thinking that the role of the artist is to be in a process of continuous reinvention. I keep doing things I've never done before because I think there's a certain magic in being someone else, so I think this foray into fashion would be a reinvention. I'm very interested in seeing how my point of view can be transferred to the clothes people wear.
NEO2 You created the term Body Architecture to define what you do. Could you explain what it means?
LUCY MCRAE The Body Architect label was created to get a job for which I had no experience. I was invited to apply for a position at an electronics company to lead a future design research team, working with engineers, fashion designers, futurists… I had never done anything like this. When I went to the interview they asked me what I was, if I was a graphic designer, a communication designer, a product designer... but I wasn't anything like that! I had trained to be a classical dancer, I began to study interior design, I have training in architecture, I do graphic design for films and fashion, I am interested in fashion... I am a hybrid! They didn't give me the job because they needed to know what exactly it was. It was my director who suggested that I create a new label that would summarize all my hybrid experience in order to communicate, according to the most traditional business standards, what I was. The Body Architect label helped me get a job and has become a platform for me to work on everything I love.
In 2006, being a hybrid wasn't an advantage at all, it wasn't even something you could understand. However, today I believe that everything is coming together in the field of education allowing the disciplines to intertwine through art, coding, history and the FUTURE.
Solitary Survival Raft. Photos: Ariel Fisher.
NEO2 In a past interview you said you wanted to explore how “the future, from a female perspective, can be messy, visceral and human”. Is Heavy Duty Love the beginning of a more feminine Body Architecture?
LUCY MCRAE The messy and the visceral not only alludes to the result but also to the process of creation, to my way of creating. I think if you want to have a visceral result you can't go through a rigorous testing and analysis process. You need to be open to error. Someone told me that knitters sometimes thread wrong on purpose to attract the spirit of error. I love that idea! Films, works of art, everyone has their own idea of what they want to become and it is necessary to leave space for the error to appear and develop their own personality or at least the base of the work.
NEO2 How long does it take to produce one of your works like Heavy Duty Love?
LUCY MCRAE Due to COVID, the opening date for the Venice Biennale was postponed twice. So the work took fourteen months from conception to delivery, although during that time I also created Biometric Mirror and Solitary Survival Raft.
NEO2 and how many people are usually involved in the process?
LUCY MCRAE The number of collaborators may vary according to the phase of the work process. We can count on a team of about twenty people for a film, or a studio of five to seven professionals for the production of a play. I get so involved in the creative process that when the time comes to extend the team it is very difficult for me to make the decision and open up to others, although I recognize that collaborating with product designers, manufacturers, technical directors and architects, among others, is essential for the success of the work.
NEO2 Almost two years ago there was a retrospective on your work at NGV, Melbourne. Did you appreciate a great evolution when you saw all your works exposed? How did you feel seeing all your work together?
LUCY MCRAE I've never seen the work of thirteen years on display under one roof. Melbourne is the place where I grew up and where my parents, my family, witnessed all my work. It really was an important moment for me and I remembered my beginnings as an artist when I was dedicated to my favorite hobbies. The exhibition at NGV was like putting a flag on the ground, it was the demonstration that I had achieved it and that my work had been taken seriously. Seeing the evolution of my work was interesting because sometimes, in the past, my way of working, from one project to another, seemed very chaotic. However, when I saw all my work under one roof, curated by Simone LeAmon, I saw the connection and coherence between all the works and the intuitive aesthetic they had in common.
NEO2 You have also collaborated with music groups such as Architecture in Helsinki, Reptile Youth or Roby, in the creation of some of their music videos. Do you consider this an interesting medium to show your work?
LUCY MCRAE What used to be in the past is that these videos were experiments, opportunities to try something you were curious about. In the case of my collaboration with Roby, I was able to experiment with a garment made from a liquid textile that I had previously created with my team. What my clients don't know is that I'm experimenting…Music is a very powerful discipline and being able to combine music and art is the best thing for me to be able to move and have an impact on people.
Swallowable Parfum Live Lab.
NEO2 I am particularly interested in your work Swallowable Parfum, on which you collaborated with the synthetic biologist Shared Mansy. The idea of changing our personal smell from the inside out amazes me. How did the laboratory work? Was there any cosmetic brand interested in the project?
LUCY MCRAE Yes, that play was done in 2010, when the beauty market in the United States was valued at $465 billion. For me it is a pleasure to shake and provoke business and markets and that of beauty had never been disturbed until then.
Suddenly, they started talking about me on the news channels, saying that I was a researcher who turned the body into an aromatizer, a perfume that worked from the inside out. What happened next was unexpected. I was contacted by major pharmaceutical companies saying they wanted to be the first to produce and distribute this innovative product. As an artist I felt like an impostor since it was not real: it was not a technology, but a provocation. That moment became a personal epiphany, but I understood that it was possible to incite technology by telling stories that people believe. Now, one of the most important beauty firms has started an ingestible laboratory.
I imagine that for whatever reason the way my work spurs culture is prophetic, ahead of technology, and capable of generating provocation. So far there is no way to produce an ingestible perfume, but I don't think it will take long to create something similar. The effect of edible beauty products is obvious to me, either by ingesting them or through sunscreens.
Future Survival Kit. Photo: Ariel Fisher.
NEO2 Some of the projects you have carried out, such as Solitary Survival Raft or Future Survival Kit, question the future relationship between technology and the body to improve some areas of human life. However, in your work or experiments, senses such as touch or smell play an important role. What place will the emotional aspect occupy in the future of technology? Do you think it will be considered?
LUCY MCRAE You need to be considerate! I feel like science is rubbing against human intuition and we are being asked more than ever to act like we are our own gods, to have the instinct of our gods to interconnect through emotional intelligence, to connect with virtual environments through through our senses, through the most primitive intuition. It's very important and I definitely think it's the way we have to move forward. Unfortunately, due to social media and the way businesses are organized, we are not using our intuition as a way to run our lives, although I think post-pandemic intuition is experiencing a renaissance. Those who have thought deeply during the pandemic have an advantage when it comes to acting from intuition.
Future Day Spa.
NEO2 Your Future Day Spa Project consists of a personalized experience that reproduces the sensation of being hugged. Compression Cradle is also based on squeezing the body to prepare it for human touch. Doesn't this experience seem even more relevant now that we live in a period in which physical contact must be limited?
LUCY MCRAE Yes. Some friends contacted me at the start of the pandemic saying that I had predicted the future and that now we would all need these types of machines. However, like everyone else, I too was shocked. I had an identity crisis because suddenly the works that I was imagining for the near future, my investigations, became reality. One of the areas we're exploring as a studio is the future of wellness, the future of health and spas, and we're looking into how they can evolve by introducing primitive forms of intuition. Using well-being as a way of cultivating the comfort of being with uncertainty through physical contact, as Future Day Spa does.
Compression Cradle: Photos: Scottie Cameron.
NEO2 Has the pandemic changed the general perspective of your work?
LUCY MCRAE I would never say something like “I already told you so” but I have always believed in the importance of our body and the way we feel through it. It needs to be optimized to be able to sense the weakest signals and not being able to do so during the pandemic I experienced overwhelming uncertainty. So now I work hard, almost like an athlete, because I feel that my body and my way of being are essential for my creativity and for the reception of those signals emitted by the culture. I hadn't thought about it before, but I think the long-range identities I had have been reconnected to my own body somehow.
Compression Cradle: Photos: Daria Scagliola.
NEO2 Any idea what your next job will be?
LUCY MCRAE I'm working on a new short showcasing the Heavy Duty Love artwork and I'm very excited that this short will hit the world with a series of wearable collectibles. I'm thinking about the best way to distribute them, but for now I think I'll do it through Instagram, as a pre-order limited edition. I am also working on a new film about performance, ritual and dance. This is the new path in which I am going to venture.
