Hair, heir: dynamics of self-destruction

Between hair and heirs is a film and ongoing research on genetic inheritance, and how current medical procedures attempt to alter it—by editing the genes of germ cells, causing the permanent deletion of part of the individual’s biological memory, i.e., the edited genes are passed down to further generations as well as the changes. I investigate the new meanings of the human body that are created with the possibility of altering it on this level—which implies a flexible and mutable identity of the human.

I am interested in genetic diseases, as they grant to the individual the status of an ‘anomaly’, a variation in the health standards that is part of the person’s genealogy. My goal is to explore the questions about this genetic memory that can be triggered in a certain moment of one’s life—e.g. when the person is confronted with a health problem related to his/her genetics—, and to what extent our inherited genes determine and define who the individual is.