Public Talks, Exhibitions, Workshops
2008
2007
2006
Recent Select Media
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- Art & Activism
UCLA, March 6, 2008
EDA Broad Center
- Art.mov Conference & Exhibition
November 2007
 - Telemig Celular arte.mov - Mobile Media Art International Festival has become consolidated as an event designed for the reflection on the uses and developments of mobile communication technologies and the transformations occurred as a result and the impact on the social and artistic production fields. It also represents a privileged space for sharing knowledge and experience in the area.
The action is based on the following points:
* Education through the promotion of courses, workshops, lectures, etc.;
* Reflection on and discussion of the possibilities and the development of the use of digital and communication technologies;
* Exhibition of artistic works that experiment with the technological resources available in an innovative way;
The 2007 edition of Telemig Celular arte.mov - Mobile Media Art International Festival seeks to focus on the possibilities of using mobile devices for art projects that comprehend public space.
- MutaMorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences & Enter Multimediale
8th - 10th of November 2007, Prague, Czech Republic
International conference MutaMorphosis was organised by CIANT as part of the e n t e r 3 (enter3.org) festival and in the framework of the Leonardo 40th anniversary celebrations. The ENTER festival ran November 5 - 11 under the auspices of the Mayor of Prague Dr. Pavel Bém and United Nations Information Centre in Prague to feature performances, screenings and exhibitions, including the first retrospective exhibition of Frank J. Malina, renowned pioneer of light-kinetic art (Opening of this exhibition entitled POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE will be at Kampa Museum on Wednesday November 7, 2007). The festival was part of the annual Week of Science and Technology organised by the Czech Academy of Sciences (www.tydenvedy.cz)
- SYMPOSIUM:Continuous Bodies: Performance, Space, and Technology
Friday, October 12, 2007, 9am-5:30pm
 - LAUNCH: welcome and introduction
9-9:30am
LINK: global connection in different media and performance forms
9:30-11am
with:
Richard Gough, Theatre & Performance, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
AnnaLee Saxenian, School of Information and City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley
Beatriz da Costa, Arts, Computation, and Engineering, UC Irvine
Freddie Rokem, Theater Studies, University of Tel Aviv, respondent
Introduced by Greg Niemeyer, Digital Media, UC Berkeley
SITE: visual, geographical, and virtual redefinitions of place
11:15-12:45pm
with:
Trevor Paglen, Geography, UC Berkeley
Nick Kaye, Performance Studies, University of Exeter
Adriene Jenik, Computer & Media Arts, UC San Diego
Ken Goldberg, Berkeley Center for New Media, UC Berkeley, respondent
Introduced by Shannon Jackson, Theater Dance, and Performance Studies and Rhetoric, UC Berkeley
VIEW: reorganization of display and sensorial reception across media forms
2-3:30pm
with:
Simon Leung, Studio Art, UC Irvine
Irene Chien, Film Studies, UC Berkeley
Rick Rinehart, Digital Media, Berkeley Art Museum
Anne Walsh, Video and New Genres, UC Berkeley, respondent
Introduced by Whitney Davis, Arts Research Center, UC Berkeley
Late afternoon session location: Zellerbach Playhouse
BUILD: roundtable
4-5:30pm
with:
Marianne Weems and performer Rizwan Mirza from The Builders Association, and UC Berkeley graduate student collaborators on Continuous City. Moderated by Shannon Jackson, UC Berkeley. Reception to follow.
SHOW: performance
8pm
The same day as the symposium, there will be a performance of Continuous City: Excerpts from a Work-in-Progress by The Builders Association, created with students from UC Berkeley. Admission is $14/10/8. Tickets can be purchased at the door or at http://theater.berkeley.edu. See above.
- Bianniale of Electronic Arts Pearth [BEAP] PigeonBlog will be showing as part of BEAP - Still,Living
 - Still, Living
The seminal exhibition Still, Living presents a showcase of art that deals with biological systems. It features the international debut of work developed at SymbioticA by renowned artists such as ORLAN , Critical Art Ensemble and The Tissue Culture & Art Project, as well as other major international artists in this field. Projects range
from a two-headed worm searching for the right direction; live birds learning new feeding technology; frogs that mutate naturally; the non/sense and nuances of DNA fingerprinting; the fallouts of bio-warfare and torture; a multiethnic skin coat of many colours, architecture that is literally growing, a bleeding angel and notions of life in the 21st century.
"Let’s step back a moment, this welcome moment of stillness in the eye of the breaking storm above an increasingly media-hyped art field. As biology’s ascent to the status of hottest physical science has been accompanied by the massive use of biological metaphors in the Humanities, this has also generated a wide range of biotech
procedures that are providing artists simultaneously with the topics and new expressive media: transgenics, cell and tissue culture, plant and animal selection and breeding, homografts, synthesis of artificial DNA sequences, neurophysiology, synthetic biology,
visualisation techniques borrowed from molecular biology and biomedical research. Artists are in the labs." Jens Hauser, Curator
Still, Living is produced by SymbioticA: the Art and Science Collaborative Research
Laboratory, School of Anatomy and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia.
In 2007, SymbioticA was awarded the prestigious Prix Ars Electronic for Hybrid Art.
SYMPOSIUM: Still, Talking
A SymbioticA Symposium at The Bakery ARTRAGE Complex
Wednesday 19 September, 1–6pm
SymbioticA will present an afternoon discussion around the ideas of the Still, Living exhibition. Symbiotic and parasitic engagement across living systems and artistic practice will be dissected by artists, scientists and academics. Entry free.
ART ISTS :
Art Oriente objet (France)
S.Chandrasekaran and Gary Cass
(Singapore/Australia)
The Tissue Culture & Art Project
(Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr) NoArk
Vessel design in collaboration with
Marcus Canning (Australia)
Verena Kaminiarz (Germany/Canada)
Paul Vanouse (USA )
Critical Art Ensemble (USA )
Natalie Jeremijenko (Australia/USA )
Zbigniew Oksiuta (Poland/Germany)
ORLAN (France)
Beatriz da Costa (Germany/USA )
Brandon Ballengee (USA )
CURAT OR: Jens Hauser (Germany/France)
- Still Open
Sept. 2007
Still Open will be as a series of free two-day workshops in Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane, each accompanied by a public evening forum. Facilitators will work with 15 artists, scientists, writers and developers in each city to introduce open source modes of thinking and resources for collaborative and distributed development; to provide hands on experience; and to initiate local networks and projects.
Still Open focuses on both the practice and theory of open source which can be applied through networked art and software development, print and online publishing, and in the scientific arena where the open science movement encourages a collaborative environment in which science can be pursued by anyone who is inspired to discover something new about the natural world.
Lab Facilitators are publisher and media artist Alessandro Ludovico (Italy) editor in chief of the online and print publication Neural; free software hacker and new media activist Andy Nicholson (Australia) who is part of the Engage Media collective; and interdisciplinary artist and researcher Beatriz da Costa (USA), who works with open science.
- Invisible Dynamics Symposium
[organized by the Exploratorium]
June 21, 2007
Firehouse, Fort Mason, San Francisco
- Artist Talk
UC Santa Barbara
June 5, 2007
- AIR at Riverside
A collaborative event between Preemptive Media and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice
Panel at UC Riverside and Walking Tour in Mira Loma
May 31st, 2007
AIR at Riverside examines overlaps and mutual interests between artistic projects, activist agendas and community involvement. Following the panel presentation at UC Riverside, CCAEJ and Preemptive Media will conduct a walking tour through Mira Loma, an area in Riverside County heavily affected by diesel pollution. Mira Loma is the most air polluted area in the United States, and number four worldwide only after Jakarta, Indonesia; Calcutta, India; Bangkok, Thailand. The pollution issues in the area are directly linked to the establishment of mega-warehouses, designed to serve as temporary storage facilties for goods and products arriving at the Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbor. CCAEJ works closely with the community and has won 5 lawsuits against the county. Walking tour participants are invited to carry the AIR pollution monitoring devices to discover current levels from themselves and will also receive background information about the histories, problems and current activities to alleviate problems in Mira Loma.
- PigeonBlog is showing as part of BIOS_4
Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Sevilla, Spain
May 3 - Sept.2, 2007
BIOS 4 es una exposición y una plataforma de información con ejemplos seleccionados de dos importantes segmentos del arte cognitivo y tecnológico en los inicios del siglo XXI desarrollados principalmente a partir de 1980: la creación interesada en la biotecnología y el medioambiente. Una incursión en los terrenos de la bioarquitectura y la biorobótica complementa esta indagación en uno de los campos más arriesgados e insólitos de la creación contemporánea.
C-Lab review
- Food Bioneers (Conference)
April 13-14, 2007.
 - A gathering of artists, scientists, scholars, activists and community organizers sharing their work concerning food production, consumption & distribution.
- Graduate Seminar in Public Art.
University of Southern California.
Feb. 22, 2007, 6-9pm.
- OPEN - A gathering for open source users, advocates, and developers.
UCLA, Feb, 9 & 10.
Symposium (Friday 9 February 2007):
Cory Doctorow - USC, Boing Boing
Greg Niemeyer - UC Berkeley
David Cuartielles - Arduino.cc, K3 Malmo
Beatriz da Costa - UC Irvine
Xavier Amatriain - UC Santa Barbara, MATi, CREATE
Michael Zbyszynski - UC Berkeley, CNMAT
Ben Fry - Processing.org, Carnegie Mellon
Robert Nideffer - UC Irvine
Workshops (Saturday 10 February 2007):
Processing - Ben Fry
Arduino - David Cuartielles
PD - August Black and Alex Norman
- ARTISTS INVESTIGATING AND EMPLOYING INTERSPECIES
COLLABORATION
as part of The Society for the Social Studies of Science meeting in Vancouver (Nov1-4)
- Artists investigating and employing interspecies collaboration
Panel description:
Contrary to what "survival of the fittest" theories tells us, human and non-human animals seem to want to help each other out, judging from both extensive circumstantial evidence and recent scientific research. Everyone living with a pet can testify that their animal seem to know and respond to their needs, and companion animals are now employed in various therapeutic contexts. The interest in human-animal connections are reflected in mass media, stories such as the one about the old tortoise adopting an orphaned baby hippo, is abundant on TV news. Current scientific research indicates that chimpanzee toddlers are inclined to help a human if they perceive that the human is in need.
The prospect of interspecies collaborations seriously questions our leading scientific and artistic (and religious) paradigms. How do we conduct research in collaboration with someone whose experiences, sensations and knowledge cannot be understood, and certainly not quantified? How do we make a meaningful reading of an artwork when we cannot be sure there is an intention behind it, and even less certain about what that intention could be. Both the scientific world and the art world have a long tradition of "using" animals. How do we transition to collaboration?
The four artists on the panel address questions such as: How can we set up meaningful collaborations with non-human animals? How can we interact meaningfully with an "other" that has been conditioned for centuries, if not millennia, to mistrust us? How can we use technologies to enable and facilitate these collaborations?
Panelists: Lisa Jevbrat, Kathy High, Beatriz da Costa, Natalie Jeremijenko.
- PigeonBlog First Public Release
August 7-13, 2006
 - PigeonBlog had its first Public Release at the ISEA 01 Festival in San Jose.
- Wetware Hackers at ISEA
A Series of Hands-On How-To Workshops on Biotech Art and Wet Lab Procedures.
Aug. 7 & 8, 2006.
 - With Artist Teachers Natalie Jeremijenko, Oron Catts, Phil Ross, Paul Vanouse and Beatriz da Costa
wetwarehackers website
Over the past 20 years, biotechnology has revolutionized the pharmaceutical industry, the agricultural industry and the field of animal and human medicine. As such, its impacts on human life are tremendous and biotechnology implementations direct areas such food production and consumption, global trade agreements, human and animal reproduction, environmental concerns as well as biosecurity and biodefense.
The Human Genome Project, as well as other International Genome Initiatives, stimulated the merging of computational research with areas of the life sciences. Simultaneously, a number of artists originating in the field of new media art have shifted their attention from experimenting, hacking and reverse engineering digital code and electronics to similar explorations using micro-organisms and molecular biology. Similar developments also took place amongst artists, designers and other interested individuals originating outside the field of emergent technology art (including biologists bioengineers becoming interested in the usage of living materials within social and artistic contexts). As an emerging media form, many of the issues are similar: How do we re-imagine cultural production with wetware as a medium and explore its full tactical and signifying potential? However, many of the wetlab procedures needed in order to conduct this type of work remain opaque and abstract to the general public and artists who don’t have access to life science research facilities and expertise. “Wetware Hackers” is a series of hands-on workshops open to ISEA attendees taught by practitioners in the field. Workshops will be conducted in moderately equipped facilities and are designed for motivated non-experts. Rather than promoting only well-established techniques, “Wetware Hackers” encourages modification and play with respect to wetware projects.
- Preemptive Media Workshop
Jun. 24, 1-5pm, Eyebeam, NYC.
Winners of the 2005 Social Sculpture Commission awarded by Eyebeam and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Preemptive Media (Beatriz da Costa, Jamie Schulte and Brooke Singer) is holding a public workshop on June 24th from 1pm-5pm at Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street between 10th & 11th Avenues. During this workshop Preemptive Media will present and field-test AIR (Areas Immediate Reading), a work in progress being developed as the 2005 Social Sculpture Commission awarded by Eyebeam and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
AIR is a networked, social experiment in which individuals will self-monitor the byproducts of fossil fuel combustion by carrying small, portable devices. These devices will display current levels of air pollution and the location of other roaming AIR devices for participants to better understand that they are part of a nomadic network. Online viewers can send text messages to prompt people to go to specific locations or volunteer to become a carrier to keep the network “moving and alive.†Data from the devices will transmit to a central database. This information will be dynamically visualized along with other information on a digital billboard in Lower Manhattan and the web when the project launches in September 2006.
- Zapped! at SONAR!
June 2006, Madrid, Spain.
Sonar Matica explores the new mobile culture and location projects. After the last two years, in which the new media exhibitions frame of the festival focused on the phenomenon of micronations and twenty-first century landscaping, SonarMatica completes the trilogy of projects based around the concept of contemporary territory with a display dedicated to the most lively and significant art scene using new media - mobile culture and location projects.
- Critical Issues in BioArt, [SLSA]
Jun.13-16, 2006, Amsterdam, NL.
- The 4th European Biannual Conference of the Society for Science, Literature & the Arts
Amsterdam, 13-16 June 2006
STREAM J Arts and Genomics
CRITICAL ISSUES IN BIOART - (2 PANELS )
Chair: Ernestine Daubner
CRITICAL ISSUES IN BIOART - PANEL 1 (20-minute presentations)
Ellen Levy, (USA) artist, writer, teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Brooklyn College New York. President of the College Art Association
"(Bio)Art and Biomimetics: The Artistic Advantages and Limitations of Copying from Nature"
Dmitry Bulatov, (KALININGRAD, RUSSIA) artist, writer, curator / Editor of BioMediale: Contemporary Society and Genomic Culture
"Third Modernization: techno-biological artworks"
Jens Hauser, (GERMANY/FRANCE), writer, documentary filmmaker, curator of exhibition and editor of book, l'Art Biotech in Nantes, France (2003)
"Rematerialization and Performativity - Bio(art)bodies beyond representation. Textes - Contextes - Paratextes"
CRITICAL ISSUES IN BIOART - PANEL 2 (20-minute presentations)
Beatriz da Costa (USA/GERMANY) Artist, Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science /Associate Director, Arts Computation Engineering Graduate Program University of California, Irvine.
"Combining BioBricks with EcoBricks"
subRosa (Faith Wilding) (USA) Cyberfeminist art collective, cultural researchers, activists, artists, writers
"Performing Biotech Bodies"
Ernestine Daubner (CANADA ) Writer, theorist, art historian , Concordia University / Co-editor of book of collected essays & DVD-Rom Anthology, Art et biotechnologies (2005)
"Gender, Ethnicity and Difference: Bioart Bodies that Matter"
RESPONDENT: Eugene Thacker (USA) - Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, Author of Biomedia (University of Minnesota Press, 2004) and The Global Genome (MIT Press, 2005). Member of the Biotech Hobbyist collective.
- UCIRA, STATE OF THE ARTS CONFERENCE
May 19-20, UC Santa Barbara.
- UCIRA Annual State of the Arts Conference
We propose a major, annual conference organized by UCIRA: The State of the Arts. The first annual conference, to be held May 19-20, 2006 will address practical and policy issues confronting artists, arts administrators, and educators. At the same time, it will challenge and move beyond conventional academic conference formats by showcasing new work in the arts and new approaches to arts education. This will be a forum for presenting the results of some of the UCIRA Arts Research initiatives. The conference may combine elements of an arts festival and a conference that would bring together UC artists, policy makers, and arts educators for workshops and discussions. A model for such a gathering is the two-day conference held in 2004 at the British Museum, "Free State". The theme for the 2006 conference will be "State of Emergence/Emergency."
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DANM Digital Arts and New Media Festival
May 4-7, UC Santa Cruz.
 - The DANM Festival is a forum for the investigation of the boundaries and possibilities of digital art and new media.
How have the roles of the artist and audience evolved in these new forms of art? How do the established disciplines such as the arts, computer sciences and engineering, and social sciences contribute to this rapidly evolving field? How do history, theory and criticism respond to the wide variety of new media practices?
- Public Genomics & BioArt
April 14th, Duke University.
- On Friday, April 14th, an incredibly interdisciplinary audience gathered in the McClendon Tower to discuss the rise of a definition-defying art form, a genre that has perhaps been most accurately described as "bioart." Public Genomics and Bio-Art brought bio-artists and literary critics to campus to consider the questions such art raises about the public sphere, human creativity, and issues surrounding intellectual property. The event demonstrated how an art form invested in shuttling between scientific and artistic production might also enable new and innovative intellectual networks to be forged within, across, and beyond the disciplines.
- PREEMPTIVE MEDIA is part of "FLOATING POINTS 3"
March, 16, 3-5pm.
 -
About the Series [organized by Turbulence]
Floating Points 3 (FP3) will address the subject of "Ubiquitous Computing" or "Ubicomp", where computing and wireless capabilities are so integrated into the fabric of everyday life (clothing, cars, homes, and offices) that the technologies recede into the background and become indistinguishable from everyday activities. FP3 will consist of two moderated panel discussions, one on February 8 and the other on March 15. The first will focus on artist-thinkers who work collaboratively with research teams--including scientists--to produce environments and systems that respond to the human presence; it will include Mark Goulthorpe, Susan Kozel and Chris Salter. For the second panel, we have invited artist-thinkers who question and confront the ongoing development of networked objects and work creatively to subvert them, for instance, the ever-enlarging practice of surveillance and data mining. Our guests will be Adam Greenfield, Beatriz da Costa and Brooke Singer (Preemptive Media), and Michelle Teran.
- UCDARnet:INFORMATION EXCHANGE [UC DARNet Annual System-Wide Gathering]
Friday/Saturday, March 3 & 4.
E|DA, Kinross North, UCLA.
 -
The UC Digital Arts Research Network (UC DARNet) is a transdisciplinary Multicampus Research Group of University of California faculty who utilize digital media for cultural and theoretical research and in their creative production. UC faculty established DARNet in 1997 to lay the foundation for a UC-wide program to facilitate collaborative research and teaching within a distributed digital arts and humanities community.
Culture is in the midst of an increasingly rapid shift to computer-mediated forms of creative production, distribution and communication. The role of digital media is fundamental to this shift. Media Artists create a natural bridge across the traditional disciplinary divide between the humanities and the sciences. UC DARNet, provides an opportunity for critical engagement and conceptual dialogue between humanists, scientists, and those in the media arts.
Friday, March 3
10:00 - 10:30 am
UC mixer
10:30 - 12:30 pm
Computer Games Session moderated by: Greg Niemeyer, UCB
Greg Niemeyer, UC Berkeley, Sheldon Brown, UC San Diego, Robert Nideffer, UC Irvine, Warren Sack UC Santa Cruz
1:45 - 3:30 pm
Computing & Communities Session moderated by: Sharon Daniel, UCSC
Sharon Daniel, UC Santa Cruz, Brian Goldfarb UC San Diego, Antoinette LaFarge, UC Irvine, Margaret Morse, UC Santa Cruz, Fabian Wagmister, UC Los Angeles
3:30 - 4:30 pm
UC mixer
Saturday, March 4, 2006
10:30 – 1:30 pm
Art|Science Session moderated by: UC DARNet director, Victoria Vesna, UCLA
Victoria Vesna/ Jim Gimzewski, UC Los Angeles, Bowen Chung/Henri Lucas, UC Los Angeles, Elliot Anderson UC Santa Cruz, Beatriz da Costa/ Tau-Mu Yi, UC Irvine, Shlomo Dubnov, UC San Diego, Marko Peljhan, UC Santa Barbara.
2:30 - 4 pm
Database Aesthetics Session moderated by George LeGrady, UCSB
George Legrady/ Rama Hoetzlein, UC Santa Barbara, Amy Alexander/ Vincent Rabaud, UC San Diego, Lev Manovich, UC San Diego
- Database Imaginary at Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts
February 10 to April 2.
DATABASE IMAGINARY
Cory Arcangel, Natalie Bookchin, Heath Bunting & Kayle Brandon, Alan Currall, Graham Harwood/Mongrel, Agnes Hegedus, Pablo Helguera, Lisa Jevbratt/C5, Lev Manovich, Muntadas, Edward Poitras, Preemptive Media, Thomson & Craighead, University of Openess, Angie Waller, Cheryl L Hirondelle Waynohtew.
VERNISSAGE
Thursday, February 9, 6:30pm
Preceded by a tour of the exhibition with curator Sarah Cook at 6pm
- BIOETHIC THINKING
[as part of ARCO Expert Forum]
Feb, 2006.
 - V.37- V.42
BIOTECHNOLOGICAL ART
The contemporary world is unequivocally transdisciplinary. So much so that the interaction between art, science, technology and society is accepted as a genuine path for the exploration of innovations and inventions in the territory of the arts, and as a path to provide support to a debate exploring, anticipating and critiquing possible futures.
And along this path several perspectives begin to emerge. To provide a few examples, we have nanotechnology (Victoria Vesna), genomics (Eduardo Kac), robotics (Stelarc), neuronal algorithmic systems and molecular biology (genetics, cultural weave, hybridisation, etc.), which are fused on the boundary between models of the mind and consciousness and propose a dialectic gaze able to bring together quantum coherence and age-old spiritual models.
In fact, we are already quite some way down this path. At a time in which the modification of the body (whether prosthetic or merely aesthetic) has been institutionalized, in which assisted procreation, gene therapy and cloning (and even the conception of the cyborg), invade the collective imaginary and everyday language, it turned out that the biotechnologies on which they are based are pushing forward the frontiers of artistic creation even further than what had been previously achieved by micro-computing when it inspired the birth of net.art and virtual worlds.
Biotechnologies brought about Biotechnological Art or BioArt and, with it, a concretion of the virtual in the living, posing several questions of which we had no previous inkling. From the perspective of the History of Art we perhaps ought to ask ourselves questions of the calibre of: How will biotechnological innovations be applied to the field of the arts? What is the place in today's world for the chimeras and monsters dreamt up by these new bio-artists, chimeras and monsters which incarnate the fears and hopes of a society embroiled in bioethical debate? What responsibility can be assigned to artists experimenting with the living? Jeremy Rifkin has even claimed that, inasmuch as an artistic form, the genetic genius incarnates all the wonder of the new post-modern thinking that has revolutionised the perception of our existence itself. Whether we agree with Rifkin or not, the truth is that BioArt is here to stay.
It has existed ever since artists decided to exchange their studios for medical laboratories. And it exists ever since these artists decided to change the support for their work and the materials with which they work: BioArt can use human skin, ovules, butterflies and even DNA and cellular heritage. Bio-artists, whether accomplices or transgressors, deconstruct and decompose living beings in order to recreate them. From the perspective of art, they question and challenge us on our relationship with the living.
Among the pioneers is the Brazilian-born, US-based artist Eduardo Kac, whose transgenic bunny Alba came about from the crossing of the genes of a jellyfish and a rabbit embryo, and is the first living chimera. The Worry Dolls by SymbioticA (Oron Catts and Lonat Zurr) are even more spectacular given that they use molecular biology to produce art from the semi-living. This work consists of seven dolls made from real human tissue cultivated in a laboratory, each one representing a human fear. From a biology laboratory in Holland, the Portuguese painter Marta de Menezes managed to draw motifs on the wings of insects: and thus she came up with Nature? (creating butterflies with modified wing patterns). Or Joe Davis, who abandoned architecture for molecular biology, and is now developing artistic molecules with the idea of introducing written messages or graphic symbols translated in DNA code to living cells, and thereby touching one of fundamental taboos of human culture: the message written in our DNA.
Much more than foreshadowings of future, the future is already here, the future is now.
Including a cycle exploring the issue of Biotechnological Art within the 4th International Contemporary Art Experts Forum will further consolidate ARCO’s leadership in art theory among the world’s major contemporary art fairs.
Director: Ángel Kalenberg
Director, Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales; Art Critic and Curator, Montevideo, URUGUAY.
Art Critic, Independent Curator and Director, National Museum of Visual Arts, Montevideo, Uruguay. He was curator of the Latin-American Section at the 10th Paris Biennial, and member of the International Committee at the 17th São Paulo Biennial. He has organised over 450 exhibitions and has written several books and countless essays in catalogues and magazines. Member of the Brazilian Association of Art Critics, he has been profusely awarded in recognition to his professional trajectory.
V.37
The Era of Posthuman Engineering
Friday 10th February, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
North Convention Centre
Room N - 108
Participants:
Victoria Vesna
Professor, Department of Design and Media Arts, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), USA.
Media artist, professor and director of the Art|Sci center at the UCLA School of the Arts. Her work can be defined as experimental research that resides in between disciplines and technologies. She explores how communication technologies affect collective behaviour and how perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Currently she is collaborating with nano-scientist Jim Gimzewski to develop a series of installations that address the impact of nanoscience on culture and consciousness in an experiential manner. In 2004 they developed a largescale exhibition, NANO, which was on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for ten months. Vesna has exhibited her work internationally in 18 solo exhibitions, over 80 group shows, published over 20 papers and gave more than 100 invited talks in the last ten years.
Gunalan Nadarajan
Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, College of Arts and Architecture, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA.
Art theorist and curator from Singapore, he is currently Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at the College of Arts and Architecture at the Penn State University. His publications include a book, Ambulations
(2000) and many catalogue essays and academic articles. He has curated many exhibitions in Indonesia, New Zealand, South Korea, Germany and Singapore and has served on the jury of several international exhibitions, most recently for transmediale05 in Berlin. Gunalan is on the Board of Directors of the Inter Society of Electronic Arts, an international new media arts organization. He was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Gunalan’s research interests are in art and biology, robotic arts, toys and virtual reality.
V.38
From Body Art to the Transgenic Body
Friday 10th February, from 4 to 6 p.m.
North Convention Centre
Room N - 108
Participants:
Oron Catts
Co-Founder and Artistic Director, SymbioticA, Crawley, AUSTRALIA.
Artist / researcher and curator, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of SymbioticA, The Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory at The School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia. In 1996, founded the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A), an ongoing artistic research and development project into the use of tissue technologies as a medium for artistic expression. Oron’s pioneering research includes wet biology art practices, and in particular the use of living tissue from complex organisms.
Marta de Menezes
Artist, Lisbon, PORTUGAL.
Portuguese artist with a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Lisbon, and an MA in History of Art and Visual Culture from Oxford. She has been exploring the interaction between art and biology, working in research laboratories, showing that new biological technologies, DNA, proteins and live organisms can be used as art media. Her work has been presented internationally in exhibitions, articles, and lectures. She is currently artistin- residence at the Structural Biology Department, Oxford University.
V.39
A Mutating Corporality
Friday 10th February, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
North Convention Centre
Room N - 108
Participants:
Orlan
Artist, Saint-Etienne, FRANCE.
Born in 1947 in France, Orlan lives and works between Los Angeles and New York since 2004. She has been featured in exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum and Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Palazzo della Esposizioni in Rome, Georges Pompidou, Centre National de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo and Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Kunsthalle and MAK in Vienna, Kunsthalle in Kiele, Austria, Reckermann Gallery in Munich, Casino Luxembourg, Miro Foundation in Barcelona, Museum of Contemporary Art (Vitoria, Spain), Museum of Photography (Salamanca, Spain), Musée de l’Élysée (Lausanne, Switzerland), House of Photography in Moscow, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, Art Museum of Lima in Peru.
Jens Hauser
Organiser, L’Art Biotech, and Curator, Paris, FRANCE.
Paris-based art curator, writer, cultural journalist and filmmaker. He has organised a huge show on biotechnological art at Le Lieu Unique National Arts and Culture Centre in Nantes (France), including 11 artists employing biotechnology as a means of expression, and published L’Art Biotech
(2003). His forthcoming exhibitions deal with the paradigm of ‘skin as a technological interface’. A PhD candidate in Media Studies at Ruhr University, Bochum, he also lectures at universities and art schools in a number of countries. He has been a contributor to the European cultural channel ARTE since 1992.
V.40
The Posthuman Body:
Hybridization Between Flesh and Prosthesis
Saturday 11th February, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
North Convention Centre
Room N - 108
Participants:
Eduardo Kac
Artist, Oak Park, USA.
Eduardo Kac is an artist who exhibited in 2005 at Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome; and Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, among others.
In 2005, Kac held a solo show at Galerie Biche de Bere, Paris. He is currently working on a public art commission for the Weisman Art Museum, in Minneapolis, where he will have a solo show in 2006.
In March 2006, Kac will have a mini-retrospective at the Telefónica Foundation, Buenos Aires. Kac is represented at Arco 2006 by Black Box Gallery, Copenhagen. The book Eduardo Kac: Move 36, edited by Elena Giulia Rossi, was published by Filigranes Éditions, Paris, in 2005. Eduardo Kac’s site is http://www.ekac.org.
Stelarc
Artist, Sidney, AUSTRALIA.
Stelarc has performed with a Third Hand, a Virtual Arm, a Stomach
Sculpture and Exoskeleton, a 6-legged walking machine. Since 1997 he has attempted to construct an Extra Ear. In 2003 he completed the Prosthetic Head project, the Muscle Machine and collaborated with TC&A with the Extra Ear: ? Scale. His present projects include the tissue cultured Partial Head and the robotic Walking Head. He is currently Visiting Professor, School of Art and Design at The Nottingham Trent University and an Adjunct Professor at SOCA, Edith Cowan University in Perth. He has been awarded a New Media Arts Fellowship by the Australia Council for 2005 & 2006. His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in Sydney. stelarc@va.com.au - www.stelarc.va.com.au
V.41
Biotechnology, the Theoreticians and the Artists
Saturday 11th February, from 4 to 6 p.m.
North Convention Centre
Room N - 108
Participants:
Isabelle Bertolotti
Curator, Musée d’ Art Contemporain de Lyon, FRANCE.
Since 1990, curator at the museum of contemporary art of Lyon, France.
Involved in exhibitions like James Turrell, 1992; Gary Hill, 1994; Michelangelo
Pistoletto, 2001; Andy Warhol, The Late Work and the touring exhibition Laurie Anderson- record of the Time, 2002-2005. Specific interest in new technology and emerging artists with exhibitions like New
York, New Sounds, New Spaces, 2002; Bertrand Lacombe, 2002; Mathieu
Briand, 2004 etc. and the annual exhibition Rendez-vous. She has written many essays for exhibition catalogues and books.
Paul Vanouse
Associate Professor, University at Buffalo, Researcher and Artist, Buffalo, USA.
Has been working in emerging technological forms since 1990.
Interdisciplinarity and impassioned amateurism guide his art practice. His electronic cinema and installations have been exhibited in 19 countries and widely across the US. Vanouse is an Associate Professor of Art at the University at Buffalo in NY. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at SymbioticA laboratory in Perth, Australia, where he is undertaking a new DNA imaging project, Latent Figure Protocol.
V.42
Bioethic Thinking
Saturday 11th February, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
North Convention Centre
Room N - 108
Participants:
Beatriz da Costa
Interdisciplinary Artist and Researcher, Long Beach, USA.
From 2000-2005 she worked in collaboration with Critical Art Ensemble, and is a co-founder of Preemptive Media – an art, activism and technology group. Beatriz’s interests include social robotics, biopolitics and the politics of surveillance. She is a core faculty member and the Associate Director of “Arts Computation Engineering” graduate Program at the University of California Irvine.
Yves Michaud
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Rouen, and Art Critic, Paris, FRANCE.
Philosophy teacher and art critic. Has imparted courses at the universities of Montpellier, Berkeley, Edinburgh and Paris-Sorbonne. Latest books published: Critères esthétiques et jugement de goût (1999 and 2005), L’art
à l’état gazeux, essai sur le triomphe de l’esthétique (2003). He is currently a Member of the University Institute of France, and a Professor at the University of Rouen.
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