GOOD GENES
Kathryn Hamilton / Ireland / 2023
Good Genes is a documentary performance and interactive installation that blends archival research, DNA forensics, and feminist science into a singular work of biological-performance.
In 2016 a stagehand at the Berliner Ensemble gave me a hat, the costume of a soldier in Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, which had never been washed, as Brecht wanted it to ‘stink like the war’. Working with a biology lab, I recovered DNA samples from three actors who once wore this hat. I use both scientific and archival evidence to trace their stories.