Host

Host is a transgenic bioart experiment in which I edit Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast) with a fragment of my mitochondrial DNA using a DIY CRISPR protocol, performed in my kitchen. The yeast is baked into bread, affording an act of symbolic cannibalism and probing the boundaries of bioethics, identity and abjection. Drawing on the symbolism of communion, the project also explores the intersection of scientific procedure, ritual, and cooking, creating a slippage between them.

The work draws on the logic of open science and cooking blogs, merging genetic editing and homemaking into a single act of speculative transformation. It reflects on the porous boundaries between self and other, guest and host, symbiont and parasite. The genetic insert is a hybrid of ancestral and personal DNA: a sequence derived from my 23andMe mitochondrial SNP data, spliced with the reference genome of humanity’s “mitochondrial Eve,” and flanked by homology arms targeting the ADE2 locus in the yeast genome. Following an adapted “CRISPR in the Kitchen” protocol, genetically modified yeast will culminates in a simple loaf of bread presented on a silver platter.

The accompanying video art piece documents the process through a mix of performed procedures, fermentation footage, and microscopy. It evokes the speculative intimacy of molecular rituals and ancestral entanglement, situating biotechnology within the domestic and the sacred.

The work is conceptually grounded in Donna Haraway’s notion of sympoiesis: “Critters interpenetrate one another, loop around and through one another… and thereby establish sympoietic arrangements that are otherwise known as cells, organisms, and ecological assemblages.” Host engages biotechnology not as a tool of control but as a medium of entanglement. Drawing also on Michel Serres, who reminds us that “hôte” in French means both host and guest, the project unsettles clear distinctions: Who is the parasite? Who is the offering? Who’s body is the bread?