Tag Archives: jrcsciart

Oron Catts on “Post Promethean Art” @ JRC-EC [artist talk]

Talk at the Joint Research Centre, European Commission
Organised by the JRC SciArt project
Tuesday May 24th 2022, 12h CET

Abstract

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

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

[Online Talk] The Magic of Making Sense – the Future-Now of Art, Science and Technology

Online Talk by Ariane Koek
Join us on Thursday, 19 May 2022, 12:30-14h CET

The COVID pandemic continues to expose the fault-lines in human society – including lack of diversity, equity, and mutual understanding. In this age of hyper-flux, what role can art, science and technology play in helping society ride the waves and shifts? Why is ecology often left out of this discussion? And what are the implications of all four working together in sharing and shaping our world and humanity? Drawing on the work of theorists Karen Barad, vital materialist Jane Benett, philosopher Timothy Morton and indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer this talk will be illustrated by key international artists whose work shows the way.

Founding director and designer of the Arts at CERN programme (2009-2015), Ariane Koek is an independent specialist consultant, curator and producer in art science and technology. She works for example as  creative partner to the Cavendish Arts Science programme, (Cambridge University UK), curator and creative producer of Earth Water Sky, environmental arts science residency (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy). She is on the Advisory Board for the JRC SciArt project and in 2021 was a Creative Director at the Venice Biennale. www.arianekoek.com

This talk is part of the series “Changing the Ground: Reconsidering the Post-Covid Worldview” organised by JRC SciArt project in collaboration with the European School of Administration.

If you would like to register for the talk, please send us an email at caterina.benincasa@ec.europa.eu

Download Full brochure here

Related talks:
“Changing the Ground. Quantum Ecologies” by Derrick de Kerckhove, 28/10/2021
“What next for Science Communication in Times of Planetary Crisis?” by Michael John Gorman, 16/12/2021
“Who is Afraid of Artificial Intelligence? Posthumanism, Technology and Society”, byFrancesca Ferrando, 20/01/2022
“Quantum Theory as Critical Theory:  Entanglement and the Politics of Social Physics”, byAlexander Wendt, 10/02/2022
“Re-thinking Race, Identity and Migration: Cultural Inquiry as Curatorial Strategy”, by Nicola Triscott, 17/03/2022
“Beyond Black Swans · Educating towards unpredictability to inhabit hypercomplexity”, by Piero Dominici, 31/03/2022

[Online Talk] Beyond Black Swans · Educating towards unpredictability to inhabit hypercomplexity

Online Talk by Prof. Piero Dominici
Join us on 31 March 2022, 12:30-14h CET

“We will debate the illusions of the hyper-technological, hyperconnected civilization and its ongoing anthropological transformation, including: 1) the “tyranny of concreteness” and “great mistake”: the belief that all problems can be solved by delegating solutions solely to technology, and that (hyper)complexity can be measured, managed and predicted through data, algorithms, formulas and statistics. 2) The fracture between the sciences and the humanities, and between the natural and the artificial represented by “false dichotomies”. 3) The illusions of social control and elimination of error. 4) the vision of an ordered, regular society occasionally interrupted by “black swans”, without recognizing that emergency, error, uncertainty and unpredictability are intrinsic to all complex adaptive systems, which follow an irreversible arrow of time.”

Prof. Piero Dominici is a sociologist and philosopher, Fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science (WAAS), UN Invited Expert and Speaker, is Scientific Director of the International Research and Education Program CHAOS and Director of Scientific Listening at the Global Listening Center. He teaches Public Communication, Sociology of Social Complexity, Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes and Intelligence. Complex Systems and Networks at the University of Perugia. As scientific researcher, educator, author and international speaker, his main areas of expertise and interest encompass (hyper)complexity, interdisciplinarity and knowledge sharing in the fields of education, systems theory, technology, innovation, intelligence, security, citizenship and communication. Member of the MIUR Register of Revisers, (Italian Ministry of Higher Education and Research), of the IPSA (International Political Science Association) and of the WCSA (World Complexity Science Academy), he is also standing member of several of the most prestigious national and international scientific committees. Author of numerous essays, scientific articles and books. He is involved in research, education and international projects, including the EU-funded Horizon project (2020-2023).

This talk is part of the series “Changing the Ground: Reconsidering the Post-Covid Worldview” organised by JRC SciArt project in collaboration with the European School of Administration.

If you would like to register for the talk, please send us an email at caterina.benincasa@ec.europa.eu

Download Full brochure here

Related talks:
“Changing the Ground. Quantum Ecologies” by Derrick de Kerckhove, 28/10/2021
“What next for Science Communication in Times of Planetary Crisis?” by Michael John Gorman, 16/12/2021
“Who is Afraid of Artificial Intelligence? Posthumanism, Technology and Society”, byFrancesca Ferrando, 20/01/2022
“Quantum Theory as Critical Theory:  Entanglement and the Politics of Social Physics”, byAlexander Wendt, 10/02/2022
“Re-thinking Race, Identity and Migration: Cultural Inquiry as Curatorial Strategy”, by Nicola Triscott, 17/03/2022

[Online Talk] Re-thinking Race, Identity and Migration: Cultural Inquiry as Curatorial Strategy

Online Talk by Dr. Nicola Triscott
Join us on 17 March 2022, 12:30-14h CET.

When many people think of an art gallery or museum, they picture a serious place where visitors stand quietly contemplating rows of paintings on white walls. But art institutions are far more than containers and displayers of art objects – they are complex reflections of the cultures that produced them and continue to produce them. Directors of art institutions are increasingly aware of their role  within the broader social, political, and cultural landscape, and the responsivity that is needed to serve the intellectual, cultural and social needs of their diverse communities. Most also struggle with issues of social relevance, elitism, and ownership. My talk will explore an approach to directing a contemporary art institution in which ‘curating’ is centred in developing cultural collective inquiries that involve artists, scientists, researchers, audiences and participants in addressing an important societal topic. In this case study, the topic is our shifting perceptions of race, identity and migration

Nicola Triscott PhD is Director/CEO of FACT Liverpool, the UK’s leading organisation for the support and exhibition of art and film that embraces new technology. Previously, she was founding Director of Arts Catalyst (1994-2019), a London-based art and research organisation. A curator and researcher specializing in the intersections between art, science, technology and society, she lectures and publishes internationally, and has edited books on art and technology in the Arctic, art and space, physics in culture, and ecological art.

This talk is part of the series “Changing the Ground: Reconsidering the Post-Covid Worldview” organised by JRC SciArt project in collaboration with the European School of Administration.

If you would like to register for the talk, please send us an email at caterina.benincasa@ec.europa.eu

Download Full brochure here

Feeling Science: A Theatre Experiment

An art-science theatre play about women in science, commissioned by the Joint Research Centre – European Commission.

The theatre & science initiative Parola di Donna@JRC is culminating 1.5 years of deep cross-disciplinary work at the intersections of artistic inquiry and science for policy, with the play

“Feeling Science: un esperimento teatrale”
Friday 11th of March 2022
Teatro Santucci, Varese (IT)

“ These are complex times for our European history, and we have personally felt the complexity of the relationship between science and policy. We need to find a new order, a new way to deal with the cognitive power that science offers policy. At this very moment, as a group of women, scientists who work to support European policy, we feel the urgency to step on stage and challenge ourselves. Western theatrical tradition has long given us female bodies that are sacrificed in the name of new social orders, starting from Antigone and Iphigenia. So what happens if political and scientific language meet in the ritual field of theatre, using female bodies, for once not as scapegoats, but bodies that are thinkers, agents, writers of a new “logos”? Conscious of these nuances and issues, we are trying to understand how to make them interact in a new way, that allows a new TECHNE to make itself known; using artists and scientists as willing guinea pigs, as human bodies with agency in a ritual space. A techne that in fact uses rationale and absurdity, consciousness and the subconscious, and scientific and emotive language, in new, possible, combinations…“

Project by Angela Dematté and Simona Gonella.
Jointly directed by Simona Gonella and Andrea Chiodi.
Screenplay by Angela Dematté.
Assistant playwright – Gianluca Madaschi.
Scientific counsel provided by JRC SciArt.
Video recording directed by Fabio Bilardo.
Light design by Marco Grisa. Music by Ferdinando Baroffio.

Joint creation and performance by JRC researchers:
Sandra Coecke, Naouma Kourti, Matina Halkia, Alba Bernini, Isabella Cerutti, Rosanna di Gioia, Agnes Hegedus, Nicole Ostlaender, Joanna Bartnicka in collaboration with actress Franca Maria de Monti

Organised by JRC SciArt in collaboration with Parola di Donna Varese.

Language: Italian

Tickets are fully booked. The play will be performed again in October 2022. Stay tuned!

[Online talk] Quantum Theory as Critical Theory:  Entanglement and the Politics of Social Physics (10/2/2022)

Online Talk by Alexander Wendt, 10/02/2022, 12h30 – 14h00

Abstract
Society is based on the world described by physics. But which physics?  The orthodoxy is that our minds are just complex machines that follow the laws of classical physics.  Teaching this materialist worldview has naturalized an understanding of ourselves as fully separable individuals, for whom conflict is natural and cooperation is a problem (Hobbes).  But what if people actually have quantum minds?  In that case our individuality would be intrinsically relational rather than separable, entangled non-locally in socially shared wave functions of meaning. 


If you would like to register for the talk, please send us an email at caterina.benincasa@ec.europa.eu

This is the fourth of a series of talks, Changing the Ground , organised by the JRC SciArt project, in collaboration with the European School of Administration, running October 2021 – June 2022.

[Online Talk] Who is Afraid of Artificial Intelligence? Posthumanism, Technology and Society (20/01/22)

The JRC SciArt project, in collaboration with the European School of Administration, has organised a series of lunch time talks on Changing the Ground.

Join us on 20 January 2022, 12:30-14h CET. Award winning philosopher Francesca Ferrando will discuss about how posthuman philosophy conceptualises humans as part of a planet, nets of ecological and technological emergencies and expressions of cosmic phenomena. This will be a journey of self-inquiry and self-discovery: into technology, into society, and most importantly, into ourselves…

Online talk JRC SciArt Cycle: Who is Afraid of Artificial Intelligence? Posthumanism, Technology and Society

Date: 20/01/2022, 12h30 – 14h00

In the 21st century, a spectre is haunting humans – the spectre of technology. From algorithmic predestination to internet addiction, from the technosphere to super-intelligent AI: technology is here to stay. This realization is not a neutral statement, nor does this entail an uncritical acceptance of the ways these technologies are being actualized. Instead, it is a wake-up call to be aware of where we are at – as individuals, as a society, and as a species. We can no longer think of technology in separation from humanity and ecology; its material production has to be taken into consideration as well. In order to understand technology in the era of the Anthropocene, we need a radical change in people’s world-views. Anthropocentric and human-centric values that are still ingrained in many societies, in and outside of Europe, are serious obstacles towards this shift, which is urgently needed in the rise of global catastrophes. 

In this talk, we will approach the human condition through the philosophies of posthumanism, by addressing humans as part of a planet, nets of ecological and technological emergencies, expressions of cosmic phenomena. We will understand together how each of us can help in tracing new horizons. This will be a journey of self-inquiry and self-discovery: into technology, into society, and most importantly, into ourselves…

If you would like to register for the talk, please send us an email at caterina.benincasa@ec.europa.eu