Talk at the Joint Research Centre, European Commission
Organised by the JRC SciArt project
Tuesday May 24th 2022, 12h CET
Abstract
Our relationships with the world around us; with our bodies, with concepts of nature, life, materiality and identity are getting quite messy; there is a sense of impending crisis. The desperate technological attempts to fix things tend to maintain the extractive mindsets that caused many of the issues at hand and exuberate the confusion. To make things even more muddled, the era of post truth seems to take a toll on the ways we read and engage with different epistemologies and ways of doing things. It can be argued that in the last century we developed specific ways of reading and engaging with different disciplines and their respected epistemologies. This can be referred to as idealised social contracts, in practical in regard to the relationships with the idea of truth. This talk will explore and probe what role art that deals with emerging knowledge and technologies of life can play, within the messiness of the 21st century. To do so, it will use different interpretations to Promethean mythologies and narratives, ranging from foresight to techno-utopianism. Drawing on art projects developed at SymbioticA and elsewhere, the idea of Post Promethean Art will be suggested.
Oron Catts is the Co-Founder and Director of SymbioticA: The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Human Sciences at the University of Western Australia (UWA). SymbioticA was awarded the inaugural Golden Nica for Hybrid Arts in the Prix Ars Electronica in 2007, and the WA Premier’s Award in 2008. In 1996 he founded the Tissue Culture & Art Project with Ionat Zurr. Catts was a Professor at Large in Contestable Design at the Royal College for the Arts UK, a visiting Scholar at the Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University and a Visiting Professor at the School of Art, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, Helsinki. Catts curated thirteen exhibitions, published/co-edited four books, published more than eighty book chapters and journal articles. His art projects featured in venues such MoMA NY, Centre Pompidou, Mori art Museum, Science Gallery London and Dublin, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Ars Electronica, National Art Museum of China, and more.
This talk will be held in person at the JRC in Ispra, and live-streamed via WEBEX. The talk is accessible to externals.
To register for this talk and access connection details please write to caterina.benincasa@ec.europa.eu
Image:
Title: Victimless Leather- A Prototype of Stitch-less Jacket grown in a Technoscientific “Body”
Artists: The Tissue Culture & Art (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr)
Medium: Biodegradable polymer skin and bone cells from human and mouse
Dimension of original: variable
Date: 2004
