Suomen Biotaiteen Seura ja Kuvataideakatemia kutsuvat teidät luennolle:
The Finnish Bioart Society together with the Finnish Academy of Fine
Arts cordially invites to the open lecture:
Staging Authenticity: Transhistorical Approaches to Biotechnological Art
by curator Jens Hauser
Time: 27th of May, 18:30 p
Place: Kuvataideakatemia / Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, U113 Doctoral
Programme, Kaikukatu 4, 00530 Helsinki (Taiteen talo, inner courtyard)
Lecture abstract:
The use of biomedia in art can be characterized by an oscillation
between an immediate presence, and a complex hyper-mediated construction
of underlying meaning. Biological objects, subjects or processes are
staged in their apparent aliveness, prompting the viewers’ feeling that
mediality has disappeared, while, in turn, this very illusionism is
being unmasked and its principles made apparent. This often takes place
thanks to a strategy dubbed remediation, according to Bolter and
Grusin’s definition of a medium as that “which remediates and refashions
older media in the name of the real.” Biotechnological artworks
therefore often employ three functional features that historically
granted “authenticity”: the hyperreal (artistic representation, which is
extremely realistic in detail), the ephemeral (expression lasting for a
very short time) and the indexical (expression whose meaning is
dependent on the context in which it is used). Contemporary artworks
using biotechnologies as their medium by Jun Takita, Paul Vanouse, Orlan
and Tissue Culture and Art project are subjected to a transhistorical
analysis leading from Still Life and Vanitas, the imprint and
photography as ‘the pencil of nature’ to today’s gel electrophoresis and
‘genetic fingerprints’.
JENS HAUSER is a Paris-based curator, author and arts and culture
critic. With a background in Media Studies and Science Journalism, he
focuses on the interactions between art and technology, as well as on
trans-genre and contextual aesthetics. He has curated exhibitions such
as L’Art Biotech (Nantes, 2003), Still, Living (Perth, 2007),
sk-interfaces (Liverpool, 2008/Luxembourg, 2009), the Article Biennale
(Stavanger, 2008), Transbiotics (Riga 2010), Fingerprints… (Berlin,
2011) and synth-ethic (Vienna, 2011). Hauser organizes interdisciplinary
conferences and guest lectures at universities and international art
academies. In his current research at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, he
investigates the biomediality paradigm. Hauser is also a founding
collaborator of the European culture channel ARTE and has produced
numerous radio features.