Esther looks at the ethical dilemmas around genetic screening by using arts practice as a way of exploring these difficult topics. With medical science subsuming all other views within its orbit, it is ill equipped to predict the wider sociological impacts, which may well occur with the reduction or abolition of genetic “abnormality”.
Esther led workshops with disabled people to explore these ethical issues. These workshops resulted in the creation of a virtual reality artwork, Evolution, set in the imagined study of Francis Galton. Esther was keen to highlight eugenic theory was constructed by an eminent British Victorian, and that it is not only a Nazi invention. By spotlighting this British heritage, Esther hoped to show eugenics is a worldwide problem, and that it’s historic roots still permeate contemporary society.
There follows a debate between the artists involved in the project manifesting as a group response.
