Adam Zaretsky is one of the pioneers of the BioArt movement, with a prolific career spanning over two decades. Zaretsky’s work takes on multiple formats that he categorizes within a wet-lab artistic approach that takes interest in themes and materials from gastronomy, ecology, non-human relations, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and body performance. Out of these interests and explorations, Zaretsky stages hands-on BioArt lab productions.

Acquiring both a professional background in the arts and science, Zaretsky has been able to move between the different domains fluidly. After obtaining an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 1999, Zaretsky undertook a two-year research position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Arnold Demain Laboratory for Microbiology and Industrial Fermentation where he explored the interactions between music, vibrations, and the growth, development, and behaviour of E. Coli.

After his time at MIT, Zaretsky has gone on to work with a number of other institutions in promoting and teaching DIY wet-lab practices, including New York University. In 2009, Zaretsky formed The VivoArts School for Transgenic Aesthetics, Ltd. (VASTAL) as a way to make hands-on biotechnology labs more accessible to public engagement during his residency with the Waag, which the video archives of this project are still accessible online.

In 2021, Zaretsky, in collaboration with Marc Dusseiller and Hackteria ZET (Open Science Lab in Zürich), founded the ongoing Transgenic Human Genome Alternatives Project and the Mind project theGAP programme to explore the future and ethics of human genome modification. Early skill-share biohackers include Paula Pin, Mary Maggic, Cristian Delgado, Zohar Messeca-Fara, and Urs Gaudenz, with representatives psyFert and BEAK, the Bioart Ethical Advisory Commission. Currently, Zaretsky is a postdoctoral fellow at the Ionian University researching biomedia as living data-art and exploring the multiplicities of ways to engage with and interpret data.

Critically engaging with the permutability of life at the hands of technology, Zaretsky’s practice is deeply embedded in humorous and performative explorations of the ethical boundaries and codes of conduct that are carried out in scientific procedures.

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