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Gibson said he’d been in training for his naked performance by going outside wearing shorts and a T-shirt when the temperature was at zero. Within 20 minutes, he said, he got cold.

“I’m not out here to kill myself,” he said.

“If I get a chill, I’m going to say, ‘OK, that’s it.’”

He became interested in clothing and the environment during a trip to the far southern end of South America where he visited a museum and was introduced to the Yaghan. They were an indigenous people decimated by disease and then eliminated by outright genocide by the Argentinian government which wanted to clear the land of its original inhabitants.

“I was there in the summer wearing a fleece and a wind breaker — and that was the nice time of the year,” he said.

“I was stunned by what they could tolerate.”

He said with the invention of the CRISPR-Cas9 (a tool which can edit the genome of a species by causing a mutation in DNA), editing genes in living organisms is now possible. But gene splicing in Canada is prohibited by the Assisted Human Reproduction Act. Penalties include 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000, he said.

“It harkens back to a knee-jerk, we-don’t-know-what-the-future-is reaction,” Gibson said.

“What I’m proposing is that we don’t get rid of the law. Instead of prohibiting the activities, let’s regulate them. Let’s open the doors to discussion.”

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Gibson framed as performance art what some people might simply call a protest. He said his ideas about art go back when he was a youngster growing up and reading political cartoons in newspapers. He loved their combination of politics and humour. He still does.