Transgenic flies: when the genetics laboratory becomes an artistic creation studio

Abstract

This article is about the period of artistic residency in the Genetics laboratory of the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU) when we made the first transgenic artwork in Brazil. We believe that advances in genetics research have increasingly reached possibilities for collective transformations, which has given scope for artists to start from science to tension the relationships it creates, something necessary for contemporary art. We brought here fragments of how we extracted percepts and affections from scientific protocols to make the transgenic flies we produce become art, and we discussed this process of deterritorialization of the research laboratory. With that, we wrote this cartography to which this text proposes. We take Deleuze and Guattari as theoretical references to talk about how we create blocks of sensations with what was experienced and produced in the laboratory. How do flies become art?