LONDONFIELDWORKS

Photo: Kristian Buus

SpaceBaby was performed at SPACE SOON, an event organised and curated by The Arts Catalyst that took place at Camden Roundhouse in London, September 8-13, 2006, in collaboration with the Dept. of Genetics, University of Leicester with funding from Arts Council England and supported by AHRC, University of Leicester, Affymetrix and Ambion.

SpaceBaby was the first in a trilogy of works by London Fieldworks exploring the theme of hibernation and suspended animation in the form of a performance installation and lab-in action. The project referenced the vested interest of space agencies into the possibility of human hibernation and acknowledged fictional representations of human hibernation within science fiction writing and film. The artists inverted their sleeping patterns and slept within the installation during exhibition opening hours. In the context of SpaceBaby, a parallel was drawn between shiftworkers and astronauts on long haul space missions. The lab-in-action was manned by a team of geneticists who examinined the effects of disrupted sleep upon whole genome, gene expression, with a particular interest in individuals undertaking shiftwork. Blood samples were periodically extracted from the sleep inverted artists and processed within the installation using Affymetrix gene chip Technology. The processing of the samples resulted in a series of images depicting the gene expression of disrupted sleep and were incorporated into a video work, SPACEBABY: Guinea Pigs Don’t Dream, developed between London Fieldworks and the writer Ken Hollings.
Link to SpaceBaby entry in Ken Hollings' blog
The SpaceBaby video work was Funded by Arts & Business (New Partners Award), AHRC and Arts Council England and sponsored by Affymextrix, Ambion, with collaborative support from Department of Genetics at University of Leicester.