Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Five ordinary clone brains of James Lovelock, 2023

2023

Medium

5 stainless steal kidney bowl, 10 silicon mini brains, tubes, LED and motor, water and soap

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-156083

In the installation “Five ordinary clone brains of James Lovelock” (2023), technoid sculptures meet biological imagination. Five stainless steel kidney dishes with each two miniature silicone brains inside—connected by tubes, LED lights, and motorized circuits of water and soap—form the center of a speculative experimental setup. What initially resembles a medical lab or a biotech scenario unfolds into a poetic system of sensation, intelligence, and memory. The work is part of the larger installation “So long and thank you for the fish” (since 2023) and the ongoing series “Artificial Stupidity” (since 2016), bringing together a variety of robotic organisms: a wandering eye, oscillating crab arms, a minimalist barnacle penis, a garden of tentacles, five replicated brains, and a master brain inspired by environmental visionary James Lovelock. With a mischievously ironic yet serious tone, the piece explores the boundary between organic thinking and artificial agency. The title points to a form of intellectual curiosity and appropriation—and becomes a metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge and empathy in a complex world. “Five ordinary clone brains of James Lovelock” is simultaneously a laboratory, ritual space, and time machine. Spanning deep past and speculative future, it proposes new ways of thinking about oceanic life, over-cloned intelligences, and post-human ecologies—playful, visionary, and radically open.