[aha] Radars & Fences II: Tactical Bioart in the Age of Biotechnology, March 5 @ NYU

[Snafu]

*Radars & Fences II*
*Tactical Bioart in the Age of Biotechnology*
http://blogs.nyu.edu/blogs/md1445/rf/


*Event Time
*
Thursday, March 5, 2009
4:30 PM - 8:30 PM

*Location
*
NYU School of Law
Information Law Institute
40, Washington Square South
Room 218


*Description
*
Radars & Fences II features five researchers and artists who have been 
at the forefront of the battle for the democratization of the life 
sciences over the last decade: Beatriz da Costa, Natalie Jeremijenko, 
Richard Pell, Claire Pentecost, and Paul Vanouse will present their own 
work and discuss with the public models of interdisciplinary engagement 
at the beginning of the "biological century."

Please RSVP at http://www.nyu.edu/media.culture/events/event.html?e_id=1336


*Schedule
*
4:30 - 4:40 pm    Welcome

* Ted Magder, NYU Council for Media & Culture; Chair, Department of
Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU

4:40 - 4:50 pm     Conference Overview

* Marco Deseriis, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Media, Culture, and
Communication, NYU


*4:50 - 6:30 pm     Panel: Tactical Bioart in the Age of Biotechnology 
(Part I)
*
* Beatriz da Costa, Associate Professor of Arts, Computation, 
Engineering at the University of California, Irvine
Of Pigeons, Microbes and Humans: earthly encounters in the 21st century

* Richard Pell, Assistant Professor of Art, Carnagie Mellon University, 
Pittsburgh Permitted Habitats and Endangered GMO's: An introduction to 
the Center for PostNatural History.

* Claire Pentecost, Associate Professor, School of Photography, Art 
Institute of Chicago Fields of Zombies: Biotech Agriculture and the 
Privatization of Knowledge


6:30 - 7:00 pm        Evening Break (Refreshments will be served)

*
7:00 - 8:30        Panel: Tactical Bioart in the Age of Biotechnology 
(Part II)*

* Paul Vanouse, Assistant Professor of Visual Studies, University at 
Buffalo.
Buffaloed and Bamboozled: DNA Hype in the Post-biological Era

* Natalie Jeremijenko, Associate Professor of Visual Arts, Department of 
Arts and Arts Professions, NYU
Living together: on the shocking realities of cohabitation, the human 
biome, the microbial imagination and wrestling the strongest animals in 
the world.


The panel is moderated by Alex Galloway, Associate Professor, Department 
of Media, Culture and Communication, NYU


***
*
Rationale*

In the age of genetics, biotechnology, and bioinformatics, life is 
increasingly
fashioned and configured at the intersection of several discourses and 
practices,
such as population genetics, molecular and informatic sequences, human 
enhancement technologies, and the therapeutic and agricultural 
applications of genomics.

Asides from raising crucial epistemological questions, these 
technoscientific practices compete for attention, credibility, and 
funding within the scientific community,
the market place, and the public domain. But as the far-reaching 
implications of biotech research unravel, the opacity and secrecy 
surrounding the industry and the patenting of life become increasingly 
problematic. This is partly due to the difficult ethical questions 
raised by the life sciences, but also to the rapid extension of
scientific knowledge production to a number of non-scientific environments.

As Bruno Latour (2001) has pointed out, the tendency of the experimental 
method to transcend its modern boundaries is the result of three 
distinct processes: 1) the end of the scientific laboratory as a 
secluded space available only to specialists; 2) the increasing agency 
of patients and ordinary citizens in formulating the scientific 
questions to be solved; 3) and the extension of the scale of scientific 
experiments to the whole planet, as in the case of global warming, AIDS, 
and so on.

Within this triple displacement, which turns the technoscientific 
experiment into a more and more collective endeavor, a thriving 
community of bioartists, researchers, and hobbyists have provided new 
analytical and activist models by which to intervene and participate in 
the life sciences. Through a broad set of hands-on interventions that 
provide a critique-in-action of both the political economy and the 
naturalization of the biotech industry, bioartists and researchers have 
fostered interspecies contacts, engineered hybrid life forms, and set up 
independent Biolabs. Together, they propose new scientific protocols and 
call for a wider, and far more direct participation among lay, artistic, 
activist, and academic publics.

Radars & Fences II features five researchers and artists who have been 
at the forefront of the battle for the democratization of the life 
sciences over the last decade: Beatriz da Costa, Natalie Jeremijenko, 
Richard Pell, Claire Pentecost, and Paul Vanouse will present their own 
work and discuss with the public models of interdisciplinary engagement 
at the beginning of the "biological century."


*****

This forum is being coordinated by doctoral candidate Marco Deseriis as 
part of a grant awarded by the NYU Council for Media and Culture with 
assistance provided by the Information Law Institute

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