The Xerces Society, Installment VI:
Sir Samuel Cropia's Public Laboratory
Multimedia performance and installation
2004

This installment of The Xerces Society displayed the typical workplace of a lepidopterist, Sir Samuel Cropia, who harbors a fanatical devotion to his butterflies and beliefs. Sir Cropia is a fictitious, world-renowned lepidopterist known for an extreme dedication to the preservation and proliferation of butterflies. Over the course of one month, regular performances by various laboratory players and the presentation of key artifacts helped reveal the malevolent nature of Sir Cropia's research and methodologies. In the laboratory, Sir Cropia's private goals subtly manifested themselves through painstaking manipulation of laboratory personnel and the exploitation of scientific authority.

click here to read: "Under Xerces Wings: Laleh Mehran's Laboratory Politics," by Lizzie Zucker Saltz, Art Papers, March/April 2005