{"id":1728,"date":"2012-10-16T13:47:28","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T12:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1353"},"modified":"2016-02-05T19:48:46","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T18:48:46","slug":"biopunk-reviewed-by-beckie-stewart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1728","title":{"rendered":"Biopunk, reviewed by Beckie Stewart"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Review of Bio Punk <\/strong>with Jane Feaver, Gregory Norminton and geneticist Neil Roberts, MadLab, 13th<\/sup> October 2012<\/span><\/p>\n

By Beckie Stewart<\/span><\/p>\n

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MadLab, on the edge of Manchester\u2019s Northern Quarter, is a modest venue resembling a rundown exhibition space, made haphazard with mismatched chairs, crates and sofas. If it weren\u2019t for the clinical whiteness, the lack of background music and the looming PowerPoint displaying the words \u201cSTEM CELLS\u201d, I\u2019d feel perfectly at home and a little more in my depth. This feels like Science territory, and I am an Arts intruder. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The room is already busy when I arrive, the audience composed of older patrons of science and science fiction, decimated by a handful of kooky looking twenty-something\u2019s, myself included.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Founder and editorial manager of Comma Press, Ra Page, opens the discussion by explaining exactly why and how this collection of short stories became Bio-Punk<\/strong>. Comma, he says, is interested in smuggling information across different disciplines, and here it manifests itself in the exploration of the relationship between medical progress and ethics within the medium of fiction. Thus the seeds for <\/span>Bio-Punk<\/strong> <\/span><\/span><\/a>were planted, (or rather, its stem cells were taken and cloned in a laboratory somewhere,) and the end product is one that repeatedly churns out the question: Where exactly is science taking us, and how fast? (And at what cost\u2026)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ra explains that each of the writers teamed up with a scientist to explore the ethical dilemmas that arise from medical research. Jane Feaver, an elegant and captivating writer, is the first of the two fiction writers to take the mic, admitting she gave up on science at school and was something of a \u201cblank page\u201d when it came to biology. Listening to her story excerpt, however, only shows that a fresh eye approach can result in a simplistic but brilliantly humanist perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n

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We get moved on towards the \u2018actual science,\u2019 with scientists Neil Roberts and Melissa Baxster discussing stem cell research and its uses \u2013 curing deaf gerbils and arthritis in dogs, rare brain disorders and spinal injuries in humans. It\u2019s a basic science lesson and nothing too taxing for those in the audience who are here for the fiction reading rather than the science lecture, but it\u2019s presented in such a way that holds the attention of even the least scientifically minded. If I\u2019ve learned anything from the past 90 minutes, the margin between theoretical science and reality is closing, fast, and I\u2019m a little overwhelmed.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The star of the evening, however, is Gregory Norminton; a man who wakes up at three in the morning worrying about the end of the biosphere.\u00a0 <\/span>His short story is concerned with body modification and how we could potentially warp our bodies with technology as new science encroaches. He cites the recent trend of saline forehead injections in Japanese hipster culture as an example of this extreme modification, and uses it as a platform to ask \u2013 Where exactly will technology like this take us? Where exactly do we draw the line? And, quite frighteningly \u2013 Are we, as a human race, moving towards cyborg? <\/span><\/p>\n

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He reads his extract in an American accent (he envisioned the characters this way and it would seem wrong not to,) talking of under-the-skin gels, the cult of body mods and how the playfulness of the human spirit is manifesting itself in the human body. His writing style is fluid and he is a charismatic reader, I am pulled along from one image to the next, roused by his unique take on the unfamiliar made familiar. \u00a0<\/span>Neil Roberts markedly points out here that repugnant ideas which are currently rejected by society (things that possess what he calls the \u2018yuk\u2019 factor) will gradually become absorbed and no longer appear controversial. At this I am imagining lab-grown chicken meat, genetically modified plants in Tesco, Japanese teens with saline donut faces, and much worse.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Gregory goes on to describe the experience of working alongside scientist Dr Nihal Engin Vrana, who joined us through the wonder of technology that is Skype. When trying to find inspiration for his story\u2019s topic he says it was like a theoretical sweet shop \u2013 he would ask Dr Vrana \u201cIs it possible to do that?\u201d to which the scientist would reply, in that casually flippant way, \u201cYeah, probably.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

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Of course, with fiction writing you are without the confines of the rigours of science, a world in which everything you dream up is possible, but it seems to me that the gap between that world and this is closing faster than I had ever imagined. The discussion was perhaps too heavily weighted in the science department, but maybe that\u2019s just the literature student in me. Either way, I have been to dozens of MLF events, but none quite like this. I left with an unsettled feeling of the rapidity of our progression and an undying curiosity to Google \u2018Japanese bagel headed teens.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

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A Review of Bio Punk with Jane Feaver, Gregory Norminton and geneticist Neil Roberts, MadLab, 13th October 2012 By Beckie Stewart \u00a0 \u00a0 MadLab, on the edge of Manchester\u2019s Northern Quarter, is a modest venue resembling a rundown exhibition space, made haphazard with mismatched chairs, crates and sofas. If it weren\u2019t for the clinical whiteness, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[171],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nBiopunk, reviewed by Beckie Stewart - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1728\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Biopunk, reviewed by Beckie Stewart - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Review of Bio Punk with Jane Feaver, Gregory Norminton and geneticist Neil Roberts, MadLab, 13th October 2012 By Beckie Stewart \u00a0 \u00a0 MadLab, on the edge of Manchester\u2019s Northern Quarter, is a modest venue resembling a rundown exhibition space, made haphazard with mismatched chairs, crates and sofas. 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