[rohrpost] Evolving (Un)Naturally? Artists Enter the Biotechnology Debate, New York, NY, Friday, October 28, 2005

[Ingeborg Reichle]

Evolving (Un)Naturally? Artists Enter the Biotechnology Debate
A PANEL DISCUSSION

Free & Open to the Public

Moderated By: Ellen K. Levy
Panelists: Robert Shapiro, Joe Davis, Samuel A. Cucher, David Joselit

When:
Friday, October 28, 2005
6:30 - 8:30 PM

Where:
Department of Art & Art Professions
NYU Steinhardt
Einstein Auditorium, First Floor
34 Stuyvesant Street, New York, NY
(Between 3^rd and 2^nd Avenues at 9^th Street)

The Biotechnology Debate:
Artists are exploring some of the ramifications of biotechnology,
stressing its potential to alter life as we know it. Critical issues are
at stake, including the use (and misuse) of living organisms or their
products to modify health, the environment, and existing socio-economic
structures. The debate encompasses economic benefits, academic and
industrial relationships, fear of a resurgence of eugenics (a social
policy that advocates the ³improvement² of human heredity traits), the
ethics of introducing new life forms into the environment, and the role
of the government.

The Artistic Response:
This panel explores a range of approaches to biotechnology that includes
art as a form of research, of philosophy, and of critique. In addition
to traditional media and simulations, artists now employ concepts that
envision DNA as ³information² and as a ³code of life² not just as a
metaphor but as a new model of art production that manipulates genetic
information. This panel highlights the strange and sometimes unnatural
evolution contemporary artists are now charting in the age of 
biotechnology.

Participants:

Ellen K. Levy, an artist and teacher of art and science, is
President of the College Art Association. She creates genealogies of
technological inventions and has exhibited widely. With Berta M. Sichel
she was guest editor of a special issue of the /Art// Journal/,
"Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code" (55:1, 1996) and contributed to
Art et Biotechnologies (L. Poissant et E. Daubner eds. Presses de
l'Université du Québec, 2005). Her art is included in the traveling
exhibition, ³Gregor Mendel: The Genius of Genetics.²

Robert Shapiro is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Senior
Research Scientist at New York University. He is author or co-author of
over 120 publications, primarily in the area of DNA chemistry. His
research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of
Health, Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation. ³The
Human Blueprint², (St. Martin¹s Press, 1991) was a selection of the
Book-of-the-Month Club. He received a Ph.D. degree from Harvard and
holds held a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of
Health.

Sammy Cucher is one half of the collaborative team of Aziz + Cucher,
whose work with digital imaging is considered pioneering in the field
and has been exhibited and collected widely in the U.S. and abroad since
1992. Recipients of numerous awards, they address issues arising from
the interaction between technology and the human body. Their recent
4-channel video installation "Synaptic Bliss: Villette" will travel to
the Sydney College of Art, Australia, where they will be Artists in
Residence in the spring of 2006.

David Joselit is author of many publications dealing with art¹s
relationships to biotechnology, gender, and social issues. He worked as
a curator at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from 1983-1989
and is currently Professor in the History of Art Department at Yale
University. Joselit is author of /Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp
1910-1941/ (MIT Press, 1998) and /American Art Since 1945/ (Thames and
Hudson, World of Art Series, 2003). His current book project is
³Feedback: Art and Politics in the Age of Television.²

Joe Davis has been a research associate at MIT in the laboratory of
biology professor Alexander Rich since 1992. He has done extensive
research in molecular biology and bioinformatics for the production of
genetic databases and new biological art forms. He has also worked with
laser teleoperator systems and structural welding in mild steel. From
1982­1992 he was fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at
MIT. He is at the forefront of artists working in transgenic art and has
exhibited in the United States and abroad at Ars Electronica.


The Department of Art and Art Professions is committed to the
construction of new knowledge through the creation of innovative art and
academic research that envisions new ways for the visual arts to
transform society. Students, practicing artists, educators, and art
professionals work together in a richly interactive, multidisciplinary
community that fosters imaginative art-making and intellectual exchange.