*Call to All*
Seritypes: A Genetic Screening Project
Send an email, an attached image, a little DNA:

We deny race, gender, borders and the construct of "other," a key mechanism in the dehumanization of the Oppressed and the Oppressor. We affirm the fundamental parity of all individuals.

 http://www.art.wisc.edu/sgc2006/Pages/demos-seritypes.html explains (and please see below) the 24-hour "procedure" that our team will be conducting in Madison WI, April 8-9 (tentative), 2006, and we'd like you to act as a remote hub (or participant in Madison if you're in the area). If you visit the No Hate Page ( http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/nohate.html) and scroll to the bottom, "Re-Present" is a past project that uses a similar strategy and methodology.

Along with sending imagery and text via email during the project (10 minutes of your time or as much as 24 hours of participation), we may ask for a cheek swab, cigarette butt, chewed gum, or a licked and sealed envelope, a fingerprint or face image, and for you to collect a similar sample from friends, colleagues, family, and strangers, or encourage their direct participation. Your genetic material will be rendered and mixed with printing inks and we'll go from there in the 24-hour coded and sequenced production of silkscreen prints. Other imagery may be up- and downloaded from a central site by all members of the network throughout the duration of the project.

Please contact us at  wwfisher@charter.net by March 1, 2006 if this is something you'd like to work on. It would be great to have your participation in this affirmation of shared, borderless identity. You will then be contacted with further details of the project.

2006 Southern Graphics Council Conference Proposal
April 5-9, 2006

Project Title
Seritypes: A Genetic Screening Project

Project Authors
Jeff Drye, Bill Fisher, Richard Lou, Danielle Wyckoff, the Arts faculty of Georgia College & State University and International Participants

Project Proposal
"A chromosome's structure may change on rare occasions. A segment may be deleted, inverted, moved to a new location, or duplicated. . .Crossing over and changes in chromosome number or in a chromosome's structure may influence the course of evolution. The changes in genotype (genetic make-up) lead to variations in phenotype (observable traits) among members of a population, so that evolution is possible."
Cecie Starr and Ralph Taggart, 1995.

"Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival."
Stephen Jay Gould

A team of printmakers will transform the serigraphy studio at the University of Wisconsin into a genetic research laboratory/operating theatre, complete with lab coats, face masks, rubber gloves, research stations, etc. Conference attendees as well as national and international participants will be solicited to submit DNA samples (through cell scrapings e.g.) which will then be combined with acrylic screen inks for creating works on paper during a 24-hour "procedure." A database of imagery will also be uploaded/downloaded during this period by all participants. In Madison, this imagery and the subsequent screens will be coded (as chemical proteins), treated as raw genetic material and parceled out in discrete, Mendelian units. Combining and printing these different genotypes will lead to variations in phenotypes (the final observable expression of independent inheritance), and through deleting, inverting, moving, and duplicating, change will be affected in this "genetic" expression, allowing for the evolution of the printed image to occur. Others in the participant network will be accessing the shared online genetic (imagery) database to create work at their own hub-location. The work which evolves over this 24-hour period will be a population without borders, authorless and of shared ownership. We hope to illustrate a process in which we define our own identity through the expression of our physically shared, inextricable commonality rather than through acceptance of dominant constructed (and divisive) geopolitical, social, religious, racial, and gender-based ideologies.

Our Madison research team will also raffle off Genographic Project kits
( https://www5.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html), another worldwide project with potentially beneficial implications.

To act as a remote participant (with or without DNA), please contact  wwfisher@charter.net by March 1, 2006 to express interest. Details will follow.