24 November 2009

  

24 November 2009

Who are you? And who do you think you are? The Identity Project is a nine-month season of activity from the Wellcome Trust, including a major exhibition and diverse events presented in Wellcome Collection, plus exhibitions, live events and films at other venues across the UK.

In June 2000, the first draft of the Human Genome Project was published: the 'book of life', it promised greater scientific insight into our identity than ever before. The next month, riding a wave of TV programmes proclaiming to show us our ‘real’ selves and a rising trend for people to make their private identities public through the media or the internet, the first UK series of Big Brother aired - attracting millions of viewers.

As we approach the tenth anniversaries of these two very different symbols of the past decade of grappling with questions about our identity, which has taught us more about who we are?

Over the next nine months, the Wellcome Trust will be exploring scientific and social perspectives of identity through The Identity Project, a season of exhibitions, events and experiments that will encourage debate and discussion across the country, and ask how well we will ever be able to know ourselves.

The season begins with a major new exhibition opening on 26 November at Wellcome Collection in London entitled 'Identity: Eight rooms, nine lives', representing people whose life stories are bound up in issues of identity. The Identity Project will continue with events across the UK and will culminate in June 2010, with the reopening of the Science Museum's 'Who Am I?' gallery in the Wellcome Wing on the week the world celebrates ten years since the sequencing of the human genome.

Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, says: "Identity cards, the National DNA database, over the counter genetic tests, identity theft - these contentious topics seem inherently modern, but questions of identity have always been part of the human condition. Science, philosophy, art, politics - so much of human activity seems to rely on trying to define or question aspects of our identity.

"The Wellcome Trust supported the sequencing of a third of the human genome. We are now supporting research into understanding how variation in the sequence of the genome between different people is associated with variation in health and disease. This work is identifying inherited differences between people in some of the important pathways that influence the risk of development of conditions such as obesity, diabetes and cancer.

"But can such scientific information give us a better sense of who we are? It is striking that people make such important and often harmful distinctions between each other based on social, religious and national identifications. When you look at the underlying biology, you see that our genetic similarities are much greater than our differences and that humans share common ancestry. When it comes to identity, will biology trump sociology or, as seems more likely, will our social environment continue to provide the dominant context in which our identities are forged?"

Identity: Eight rooms, nine lives

'Identity: Eight rooms, nine lives' is a major new exhibition opening in November at Wellcome Collection in London, with each room representing an individual and using their life and work to explore different concepts of identity.

The science of identity is represented by figures such as Francis Galton, whose obsession with measuring human characteristics led to the introduction of identification based on fingerprints, and Alec Jeffreys, who invented DNA profiling.

The infamous Big Brother chair will take pride of place in the exhibition's 'diary room', dedicated to people such as Samuel Pepys who have created public or private identities through their diaries.

Other rooms show the complexity that modern identities can have - from the so-called 'time-warp twins' (non-identical twins born through IVF two years apart) to artist Claude Cahun, whose political activism and self-portraits constantly challenged the way she was seen and identified by others.

Ken Arnold, Head of Public Programmes at the Wellcome Trust, says: "Scientific means of identification grow ever more sophisticated, but people have never felt - and perhaps never will - that all these measurements and scans and biometric data add up to 'the real me'. Identity resides not just in what makes us different to each other, or even what makes us the same. There's so much more that makes each of us an individual, and it's in the unfathomable gap between identification and identity that this exhibition is going to explore."

Complementary events up and down the country will extend The Identity Project to cover the whole of the UK. Exhibitions, films and drama will bring the topics to life and get everyone talking about identity.

• Professor Richard Wiseman will be running a mass participation experiment to build the first 'Identity map' of the UK. Everyone can take part online, charting personality traits across the country and perhaps challenging some deep-rooted stereotypes about British regional characteristics.
  'Inside DNA', a touring exhibition on genomics is on show in Dundee, delving into ethical questions such as whether genetic testing could lead to discrimination and the role of DNA databases.
  'Photo ID' is a major exhibition exploring issues of identity through the work of ten specially commissioned photographers. Originally seen in Norfolk this summer, the show will tour to other venues during the Identity season.
  'Chameleon' is an interactive video installation that adapts to the visitors' emotional expressions, asking questions about 'emotional contagion', or the way the atmosphere in a room can be changed by one person's smile. This will be on show in Edinburgh in May 2010
  'Interior Traces', a radio drama looking at the effect brain imaging has had on our understanding of identity; 'Mincemeat' by acclaimed theatre company Cardboard Citizens dramatises the mysterious case of the body of a military man washed up on a Spanish beach.
  A number of films funded by the Wellcome Trust will be screened at various venues. Documentary, fiction, animated and short films, all taking an idea about identity and making it engaging and entertaining. For example 'Nature's Great Experiment' looks at the intriguing world of twins and the scientists who study them.

And next summer, as the last set of housemates enters the Big Brother house and as scientists the world over celebrate ten years of the Human Genome Project, the 'Who Am I?' gallery will reopen in the Wellcome Wing at London's Science Museum, where the questions of identity and identification will continue to be explored.

Visit The Identity Project online.

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Media contact:

Wellcome Trust Media Office
T +44 (0)20 7611 8866

Mike Findlay
E m.findlay@wellcome.ac.uk

Katrina Nevin-Ridley
E k.nevin-ridley@wellcome.ac.uk

Ruth Cairns/ Rachel Duffield (Colman Getty Consultancy)
T +44 (0)20 7631 2666
E Rachel@colmangetty.co.uk
E ruth@colmangetty.co.uk

For more details of the 'Who Am I?' gallery and the Science Museum contact Andrew Marcus
T +44 (0)20 7942 4357
E andrew.marcus@sciencemuseum.org.uk

Notes to editors:

The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over £600 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.