[csaa-forum] Symposium Annoucement: The Art and Science of Synthetic Biology, UQ Nov 22

[Elizabeth Stephens]

The Art and Science of Synthetic Biology:
Critical and Creative Perspectives on “New Life”


“Living fragments of biological bodies, forms of lab-grown life . . . require a different epistemological and ontological understanding and, by extension, a different taxonomy of life. The liminality of this kind of technological approach to life can lead to a form of fetishism, which we call Neolifism.”  (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Partial Life)


Recent rapid advances in the biosciences have had a transformative impact not only on the biosciences themselves, but also on the wider cultural imaginary, reshaping research and cultural production across of wide range of very different fields.  The emergence of synthetic biology has played a particular important part in this.  Developments such as Charles and Joseph Vacanti’s “earmouse”—in which an artificially-grown ear was transplanted under the skin of a hairless mouse—have been widely reported in the popular press, and seen to herald a new era of biological engineering, of infinitely malleable bodies made up of exchangeable and artificial parts.  Contemporary artists like Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr draw on techniques in synthetic biology to produce artworks that are both aesthetic provocations and critical interrogations of the new existence of “lab-grown life.”  Disciplines across the humanities, particularly affect theory and new materialism, have also urged a critical turn towards the biological.  As Elizabeth Wilson argues: “In most projects on ‘the body,’ the body is pursued in its socially, experientially, or psychically constituted forms, but rarely in its physiologically, biochemically, or microbiologically constituted form” (Neural Geographies).  In recent years, this call to turn from the cultural to the biological body has been pursued with increasing vigour.  Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti and Nik Rose, amongst others, have drawn on foundational works by Darwin, Bergson, Canguilhem and Deleuze to theorise changing understanding of “life itself” over the course of the 20th century.

This symposium has two aims.  The first is philosophical and historical: to examine the impact of synthetic biology on existing concepts of the biological through consideration of its historical emergence and philosophical implications.  The second is to consider how artistic production and cultural expressions informed by work in the biosciences areable to feed back into debates in the biosciences themselves, or to cast new light on the way knowledge in these fields is developed and circulated.  Our purpose is to bring these different perspectives to bear on two central questions: whether synthetic biology and the development of technologically-mediated life represent the emergence of a new kind of biology, in which the line between the artificial and organic has become increasingly uncertain; and, secondly, whether the invocation of these questions in both the biosciences and humanities represent the emergence of new forms of knowledge, in which the clear delineation of disciplinary boundaries has become increasingly irrelevant.

This symposium is funded by a UQ-UWA Bilateral Research Collaboration Award.  It is free and all are welcome to attend.  Please RSVP to Elizabeth Stephens for catering purposes: e.stephens at uq.edu.au<mailto:e.stephens at uq.edu.au>


Time and date
9.00-5.30, with a reception to follow
Thursday, November 22, 2012

Venue
Room 228
Molecular Biosciences Building (76)
University of Queensland
St Lucia

Map:
http://www.uq.edu.au/maps/?id=52

A provisional program follows below.  Please see the Centre for the History of European Discourse’s website for updates: http://www.ched.uq.edu.au


Provisional program

9.00-9.30
Welcome and Introduction

9.30-11.00
Keynote Address
Elizabeth Wilson: “Co-adaptations of Gender: Mutuality, Darwin, Lamarckianism”

11.00-11.30
Morning tea

11.30-1.00
Panel session
Alison Moore: “Culture as an Organism? The History of Biology in the Humanities”
Peter Cryle: “Philosophical and Historical Perspectives on the Normal in French Bio-Medical Thinking: Canguilhem and Foucault”
1.00-2.00
Lunch

2.00-3.30
Panel session
Elizabeth Stephens: “The Biological Imaginary: Aesthetics as Critique in Synthetic Biological Art”
Greg Hainge: “P(art)ial Life: Situating the Art in Bioart”

3.30-4.00
Afternoon tea

4.00-5.30
Keynote Address
Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr: “Neolifism: Life With No Context”

5.30-6.30
Wine reception


Speakers
Elizabeth Wilson, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Emory University and author of Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body (Duke University Press, 2004) and Affect and Artificial Intelligence (University of Washington Press, 2010).

Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Directors of SymbioticA, centre of Excellence in the Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia and founders of the Tissue Culture and Art Project.

Elizabeth Stephens, Deputy Director of the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland, author of Anatomy as Spectacle: Public Exhibitions of the Body From 1700 to the Present (Liverpool and Chicago University Presses, 2011), and editor of Anatomical Imag(inari)es: The Cultural Impact of Medical Imaging Technologies (Somatechnics Journal 2.2 [2012])

Greg Hainge, Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, and author of Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise (Continuum, 2012)

Alison Moore, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Western Sydney and co-author of Frigidity: An Intellectual History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Peter Cryle, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland, and co-author, most recently of Frigidity: An Intellectual History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).



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