Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Phillip Andrew Lewis. Spirit Molecule II. 2019. Genetically modified moss.

A site-specific commission at Michigan State University’s Broad Museum with assistance from University scientist Dr. Bjoern Hamberger, Spirit Molecule II combines bio-hacking and experimental botany to produce psychoactive plants containing the DNA of lost loved ones. This iteration consisted of a large mound of moss with four embedded cylinders containing living memorials in which human DNA and a gene for the scent of patchouli were embedded into a Physcomitrella patens moss. At the conclusion of the exhibition, the containers were gifted to their respective donor families, while wild moss from the installation was offered to the public. As a transfigurative gesture of material remembrance, the plants are meant to be consumed in what Dewey-Hagborg and Lewis describe as a “final journey of intimacy with the other.” This project experiments with extending human DNA, the most elemental of human hard coding, beyond corporeal enclosure into something wild.