Adam Zaretsky, PhD is a Wet-Lab Art Practitioner mixing Ecology, Biotechnology, Non-human Relations, Body Performance and Gastronomy. Zaretsky focuses on legal, ethical, social and libidinal implications of biotechnological materials and methods. He has taught experimental Art and Biology classes fo Conceptual/Information Arts (CIA), Steve Wilson’s Department at San Francisco State University and also co-taught SymbioticA’s first hands-on Art and Biology lab class with Oron Catts at the University of Western Australia (Perth, Australia).
While researching Zaretsky works out various forms of living art focusing on installations which intermingle such elements as environment, cookery (radical nutrition), on performative animalism and laboratory experiments in the sphere of body manipulation. Author of several scientific and literary publications and projects in the sphere of molecular biology (including the social artistic research "Workhorse Zoo" realized in collaboration with Julia Reodica within the show "Unmediated Vision" at the Salina Art Center, Kansas, 2002).
Since 2002, A.Zaretsky has been teaching the experimental bioart class VivoArts for the Integrated Electronic Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, New York, USA), The Arts and Genomic Centre (TAGC), University of Leiden and Experimental Time Based Arts (ETB), Carnegie Mellon University. He also runs a public life arts school: VASTAL (The Vivoarts School for Transgenic Aesthetics Ltd.)
Currently he is producing Mutate or Die, a biolistic cut-up in collaboration with Tony Allard, while participating in the Waag Society’s StudioLab Solar Zebrafish project producing genetically modified, photosynthetic plant-animal hybrids and subjecting them to embryonic personality studies. Zaretsky is a recent graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Electronic Arts doctoral program.
http://www.youtube.com/user/VASTALschool