User:Marie EBEL: Difference between revisions

Having the chance to study abroad in Boston for a semester, I met the Harvard University microbiologist and geneticist Jon Beckwith, who kindly agree on supporting me and collaborating with me through this project.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Beckwith

I got invited multiple times to various meetings with other scientists, all fascinated with the subject of ethnicity. It is indeed a quite controversial topic, as the scientific community still disagree on certain points, but all recognize that humans cannot be divided into biologically distinct subcategories, which challenges the traditional concept of biologically separate and distinct races. Nevertheless, it seems that analyzing diverse genome markers is likely to define a population group, to a certain extent.

Based on this new pattern, I decided to change my angle. I attacked the problem the other way around. I found a scientific paper that refers to a primer that defines subhaplogroups. This paper completes the DNA sequencing that covers virtually all (sub)haplogroups discernible to date in East Asia. It can serve as a solid basis for phylogeographic (also deduced from the complete human genome) to define whether this primer would run samples of my own DNA. If that is the case, it could mean that I do carry some makers usually associate to East Asian genome, but it could also lead to a quite unusual conclusion: Genetics is manipulable.

And so is anthropology. Trying to finding any relevant explications to the percentage of British/Scandinavian/Balkan heritage, I found out various names of tribes (such as the Sámi) coming from Asia and who immigrated to Scandinavia and then England islands or other tribes (such as the Jász) who settled in the Balkans but are people from the Genghis Khan empire.  

That conclusion brought me to reflect upon another issue. I decided to admit that subjective truth is prior to and more fundamental (more authentic) than object objective truth. I should trust my feelings since emotions are perceived as a prism, which alters the shape and colors of past and present life memory of objective facts is colored by present feelings and motivation. I decided to go back to my very first statement and rely on the artifact that initiated this project. I focused on this photograph (first presented in https://www.uni-weimar.de/kunst-und-gestaltung/wiki/GMU:Artists_Lab:Marie_Ebel). Seeking out my own identity brought me to conclude that only me can decide who I am. I hold the truth in my soul, nor in my DNA either in my family history. I grew up with this fantasy that I might come from a different land, that I belong to somewhere else than where I was born. A sort of duality that differs my soul from my physical heritage.

As a conclusion to this long process, I decided to propose a performance that will talk about this transcultural identity. Inspired by Asian philosophy, I decided to admit that my existence is shaped by this non-self. I decided to admit that there is anything that I personally own in what is a permanent essence of myself. I decided to let it go and let it go back to the soil of Mother Earth.