Repo! The Genetic Opera

A screening and discussion on dystopian biofictions with writers Dan Grushkin and Wythe Marschall
Date/time: Sunday, November 18, 8 PM
Suggested donation: $7
Specialty drink: DNA cocktails (pineapple juice, strawberries, vodka)
Presented by the Hollow Earth Society and Genspace

Gattaca it ain’t… Paris Hilton co-stars in this near-future, unblinkingly musical, arch-campy gorefest about GeneCo, an evil corporation that creates synthetic organs and repossesses them when clients can’t pay, inevitably killing the clients.

As real biotechnology grows increasingly sophisticated and offers advancements such as the the growth of synthetic tissues and organs, what do lowest-common-denominator fictions such as Repo! tell us about our culture’s hopes and anxieties?

Join biology-obsessed writers Dan Grushkin and Wythe Marschall for a screening of our biotech era’s first “cult classic,” followed by a short discussion.

This screening is the culmination of the second series of classes at Genspace on Genetically Modified Storytelling.

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Daniel Grushkin writes about the intersection of science, business and culture for a number of science and business magazines, including Scientific American, Discover, Popular Science, Businessweek. He’s a co-founder of Genspace.

Wythe Marschall is the co-author of Suspicious Anatomy, an illustrated book of fake neuroscience, and the co-founder of the Hollow Earth Society. He is a member of Observatory, an art-and-science gallery in Brooklyn. His stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and elsewhere.

Check out Dan and Wythe’s recent critique of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus for Scientific American.

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