How can we come together again after a virus has ripped us apart?
I’m alone on a desert island. Below me, a pile of white sand contains seashells from a time when the ground was at the floor of the Persian Gulf. The patch of sand beneath me appeared, not due to a changing climate, but due to massive earthworks that transformed a salt marsh into grounds for development. I have been spending a lot of time in and staring out at the desert lately. I live on a dot of sand just northeast of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Like so many, I have been nowhere but home for the past two months because a virus, an entity whose very life status is debatable, has infected global consciousness. Rulers and markets are sick as globalization grinds to a halt, all caused by a single stranded RNA virus with a genome of only ~30,000 bases. It is truly a biopolitical moment.
That a global pandemic causes anxiety would be an understatement—fear, paranoia and dismissal all might better describe our current experience. But the moment that comes after—the social impact of the virus after the epidemics have calmed—is the time when anxiety will rule with a new biological character.
It is easy to imagine borders remaining closed with the viral spread providing a pretext for ongoing ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and racism. The practice of social distancing could have lasting impact. The varying European traditions of one, two, or three kisses replaced by an elbow bump. The American-style bear hug substituted with a bow of the head.
Coupled with what some studies have already shown to be a generational decline in intimacy, alongside a growth in virtual mediated experiences, it is not far-fetched to envision a near future where people no longer find the benefits of physical touch worth the risks: The mediation and digital disconnection that started before coronavirus amplifies to a point where a new standard of biologically ordained distance becomes status quo. And then, in this moment of climactic technologically mediated detachment, finally comes a revolution of intimacy and affection brought on by a genetically engineered love virus.
What if Love could spread like a virus?
Lovesick is the outcome of an art residency I completed in the spring of 2019 with Science Center, a biotechnology incubator, and Integral Molecular, a vaccine and drug discovery company based in Philadelphia.
When I first entered the virology lab, I felt immediately at home surrounded by the familiar instruments of molecular biology, peering in at a room humming with incubators full of human cells. This was exactly the place to think about intimacy in the biotechnological future.
Together with the scientists at Integral Molecular, I invented a custom retrovirus which infects human cells with a gene that increases the production of oxytocin. The hormone oxytocin is implicated in feelings of love and bonding, monogamy and devotion, and the promotion of empathy and connection. I envisioned the work as an activist intervention to spread affection and attachment and to combat alienation, disconnection, and hate. Lovesick is a device for engaging utopia, a framing mechanism for envisioning a post-digital and post-coronavirus future. It is an effort to inspire optimism and enthusiasm for dreaming up a plurality of paths radically different from the one that passively confronts us.
The installation, which I first showed at the STRP festival in Eindhoven last spring, consists of the vials of glowing virus, video of the microscopic cells expressing their infection, and a piece of music based on a 14th century ballad by Francesco Landini that tells the story of a woman struggling with a love that is in vain. I have re-written the song to list instead the letters representing the proteins contained in the oxytocin molecule.
I imagine a lovesick future in which individuals, couples, and groups consume this virus by smashing open the glass vials and pouring the fluid into their mouths, while chanting the letters together or humming to themselves, the amino acids of oxytocin, “CYIQNCPL.”
That future might look something like this.
What if Love became a ritual?
I felt alone before coronavirus hit. About a year and a half ago, I felt close to giving up. Some days I couldn’t even leave the apartment. I was trapped in a state of indecision, at times hiding my phone and staring out the window, hoping to lose myself in vacant daydreams, then digging it back out and indulging the irresistible urge to scroll.
And then came coronavirus. The little human connection I had dissipated. And even after the virus receded and people came back out, the social distance lingered. I began to hide more and more. I gradually withdrew into my fantasies. I began to imagine a cure—not for Covid-19, but for the growing alienation the coronavirus had amplified.
Oxytocin is secreted during childbirth, and breastfeeding. It’s released in the brain while cuddling, or petting a furry animal. We secrete oxytocin when we are intimate with others. And it is such a small peptide, CYIQNCPLG, 9 amino acids, so simple to synthesize. So I began to make a virus, one that would cure my alienation.
It was surprisingly easy. I ordered the construct containing the oxytocin gene along with the RFP reporter. I spliced it into a plasmid and mixed it together with a retrovirus plasmid and Vesicular Stomatitis. I pipetted the mix of DNA onto human cells and incubated them for 48 hours until they glowed red with transfection. These were my producer cells. Then I extracted the virus, which still glowed faintly red. I poured 2 ML in my mouth, held it there for 2 minutes, and swallowed.
Within two days I could feel the effect. I lost interest in my phone. I felt suddenly brave enough to go outside and face the city around me. I made plans with friends. I began to feel a sense of optimism. I was affectionate. I found myself holding hands with strangers. The pressure I had felt to distance myself melted away.
My friends, of course, noticed this dramatic change in my behavior—and they wanted in.
We went into business together then, a small cottage industry of virus making, the luv bug we called it.
The virus was not to be taken lightly—after all, it changes your DNA forever. So we developed rituals of infection. We designed small glass vials shaped like the oxytocin protein that would be cracked open and consumed. The form expressed the uniqueness of what the person was about to do, and in referencing the style of a cyanide capsule, also conveyed the gravity and irreversibility of the act. We held hands, closed our eyes, and sang together the amino acids of oxytocin “CYIQNCPLG.” Then we smashed open the glass and ingested the virus together.
It began as a cult phenomenon but caught on with a speed and reckless audacity you only see in people facing the end of the world. Newsfeeds featured models and actors splayed on the grass, entwined in a loving embrace, with the subtle red glow of one who has been infected. A new group dance style emerged, the tangle—bodies enmeshed, hand in hand, arm in arm, leg in leg, shapes subtly shifting in place. All the clubs now featured electric blue lights to enhance your glow.
Family changed. Prejudice based on blood gave way to a radical openness. At any moment, the people and animals who were with you became your family.
People began holding hands again while walking down the street, sometimes in huge groups, before meals, while dancing.
And then there was the rejection of devices. Huge piles of discarded phones, tablets, laptops, flat screens, VR goggles filled city streets like barricades in the French Revolution. It became the thing to demonstrate how “over digital” you were. There was of course the resistance. And they retreated even further into their virtual world, but most of us actually left it behind and came together.
We called it, Becoming One.
Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an information artist and bio-hacker. She is best known for her project Stranger Visions, a series of portraits created from DNA she recovered from discarded items, such as hair, cigarettes, and chewing gum while living in Brooklyn, New York.
Cite This Essay
Dewey-Hagborg, Heather. “Lovesick.” Biodesigned: Issue 1, 6 May, 2020. Accessed [month, day, year].