The Cloaca (Image:Wim Delvoye, Cloaca Original 2000/View: MuHKA, Antwerp, 2000, 2001/courtesy Studio Wim Delvoye, Belgium)
IN 1998 artist Natalie Jeremijenko cloned a walnut tree 1000 times to observe how strictly genetics determines destiny. After exhibiting the plantlets at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, she raised them until they were mature enough to grow outdoors, and then transferred 40 to sidewalk plots. It didn’t take long for nurture to overwhelm nature, and for the trees to look less and less alike despite their identical DNA.
Jeremijenko’s has been deemed a classic example of sci-art, an…
