Generic Interference: Genetic Engineering
(Two-minute performance excerpt)
1993
Videocassette
The Baltimore Museum of Art; Theater Project, Baltimore, Maryland;
Walker’s Point Art Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Diverse Works,
Houston, Texas

“The performance art can’t be as contemplative or detached as the visual art. Theater is a great way to get rid of issues you can’t do in visual art,” Scott notes. In the 1980s, Scott partnered with Kay Lawal to present the “Thunder Thigh Review.” Their performances about obsessive behaviors—from overeating to drugs—exposed society’s prejudices and problems.

Generic Interference, Genetic Engineering was Scott’s first one-person performance. The clips here are edited from that 140-minute piece, which she wrote, directed, and performed between 1992 and 1995. The characters she portrayed used humor alongside brutality to unleash devastating statements about morality. For example, as Rodney Dangerous-in-the-Field, the first stand-up slave comic, she appeared before a “captive” audience, painfully reminding them of the tragic past when slavery was condoned by many.

Transcript of two-minute performance excerpt:

“Hey, hey, hey, hey. I’m Gene. Gene 3000. A lean, mean, genetic machine on the inside—totally flip side. I’m your M.C. for the night. Get it? Master of Chromosomes. A funny thing happened on the way to the studio today. Absolutely nothing! Because I’m Mr. Natural. My claim to fame is that I’m the last genetically unaltered baby. That’s right, none of those frozen spermsicles for me. We’re talking about the old boom-ditty-boom. Juices that stank. Petri dishes anybody? You remember the Petrie family? There’s Dick, get it? Dick, and his wife, Mary, and their son. He was of average intelligence, a sense of humor, pimples. Ah, for the good old days.

They say back then that sperm were like pirates after booty. Get it? The bootay! A few of them ate at the Suez Canal of Love, but a few hearty souls made it to the queen, vanquished on her velvet throne—the tails just a-wiggling, the charge of the not-so-light brigade. Now a guy in a white jacket routs through the frozen foods then plops a baby cube into the microwave. Rock and roll.

What’s this artificial intelligence? Man as computer. Molecular biology gave us control over our evolutionary future. Real designer genes. Hey, that’s right, around a million or so were K.O.’d, but we finally targeted chemically based riddles like schizophrenia (‘Leave me alone, O.K.? No, leave me alone.’), depression (‘I’m so alone.’). Some became smarter, stronger, less unusual, less resistant to abuse. That’s progress!”