WSBTURDmutate1

Here’s something that you don’t read about every day… Dangerous Minds pal RU Sirius informed us of this unusual bioart cum performance art piece called “Mutate or Die: a W.S. Burroughs Biotechnological Bestiary,” a wild new project by Tony Allard and Adam Zaretsky.

As Allard wrote in H+ magazine: “I know a guy in Lawrence, Kansas who has some of William Burroughs’ shit, literally, and could you, Adam, combine this gut flora/genetic info of WSB with another organism to produce an avant, transgenic mutation?” Adam says yes, and in his yes emerges a potent riff on mutagenesis and transgenic beings created by mutation.”

Okay, sure… but exactly how would this work? What they’re doing, in a nutshell, is

1: Take a glob of William S. Burroughs’ preserved shit
2: Isolate the DNA with a kit
3: Make, many, many copies of the DNA we extract
4: Soak the DNA in gold dust
5: Load the DNA dust into a genegun (a modified air pistol)
6: Fire the DNA dust into a mix of fresh sperm, blood and shit
7: Call the genetically modified mix of blood, shit, and sperm a living bioart, a new media paint, a living cut-up literary device and/or a mutant sculpture.

Or a homunculus!

The Burroughs Estate has given the artists its thumbs up to the project. You can even participate yourself here.