Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats is giving everyone the chance to become the Christian messiah — and a number of other historical personages and celebrities as well — through his Epigenetic Cloning Agency, which opens a new branch at a Berlin gallery today (May 31).
To be clear: The Epigenetic Cloning Agency is an art project whose concoctions are meant to inspire thought and conversation about the nature of identity and the march of scientific progress, not actually turn you into someone else. In fact, the potions aren't even meant for human consumption.
Keats is dedicating the Berlin office tonight with a reception that will serve a cocktail specially designed to create clones of himself. This drink is much cruder than his fine-tuned tinctures, Keats said, but he thinks it will serve his purposes well.
Epigenetic cloning basics
Scientists have cloned organisms before, generally by injecting the nucleus of a donor cell into an egg whose own DNA has been removed. Dolly the sheepwas famously cloned using this method in 1996.
But epigenetic cloning takes a different tack, seeking to alter how a customer's genes are expressed rather than swapping out his or her entire genome. The technique draws its inspiration from the big and burgeoning field of epigenetics, which is revealing the importance of environmental factors in shaping who we turn out to be.
