Anab was invited by Pat Kane, to give a talk about the “new normal” in the context of synthetic biology at Nesta’s inaugural Futurefest 2013. We presented our Lab’s work Dynamic Genetics vs Mann, exploring the future of personal genomics, nationalised healthcare and genetic crimes.

‘In ‘Dynamic Genetics vs. Mann’, we offer a glimpse of a future Britain. Using the evidence gathered in a legal case brought against one Arnold Mann, the project extrapolates current trends to envisage a world of mandatory health insurance, algorithmically-determined genetic risk profiling, and backstreet gene-fixing. The projects protagonist, Arnold Mann, is a ‘regular guy’ who finds him self in an imposable situation when a government DNA spit test causes an unaffordable rise in his health insurance contributions. Trapped between inflated premiums and the costs of private genetic therapy, Mann approaches a black market clinic. Treated with a bootlegged therapy, the cost of Mann’s insurance initially falls, but the illegality of his actions are quickly discovered, and evidence is gathered by the therapy’s licence holder, Dynamic Genetics, in the case against Mann.

Comprising a range of photographs, artefacts, documents and video footage, the body of evidence that comprises ‘Dynamic Genetics vs. Mann’ asks the audience to figure out the timeline of events, and, in doing so, explore the politics of power and control in a troublingly familiar future world.