[spectre] On-line seminar Plagues, Monsters and Chimeras: Art and Life Sciences.

[Pau Alsina]

On-line seminar Plagues, Monsters and Chimeras: Art and Life Sciences.

Lecturers: Pau Alsina, Monica Bello, Jens Hauser, Raquel Renno.

This course examines the relationship between art and life sciences
through the fantasies associated with the dreams of transforming or
modifying nature and the living, specifically through the fear of
plagues, the fascination with the creation of monsters or the
endeavour to conjure up chimeras.

If the history of humankind is dotted with references to plagues,
monsters and chimeras in the popular imaginary, at the current moment
in time we find a growing number of artists using plants, cells, genes
and other biological materials in and for their creations.
Practitioners creating eco-installations in the environment and
alterations in the landscape to remind us of the importance of our
surrounding environment. From a humanist approach, they all contribute
to the key issues of recent decades, such as how we construct
ourselves as subjects in our techno-scientific society.

Art has always played a hinge role in the change of perception of our
environment. Art’s relationship with science leads to practices
looking to impinge on the social, ethical and epistemological domains
of contemporaneity. Nowadays, divesting life sciences of their
practical function and recontextualising them in aesthetic forms, we
are exploring the frontiers between nature and art.

Full information of this course is available at:
http://www.uoc.edu/uvv/cultura/plagas_presentacion.html

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On-line summer courses  UOC-LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación
Industrial (from 7th to the 30th of July 2010)
Main language of the seminars: Spanish, (English is needed also)
At the virtual campus of Universitat Oberta de Cataluyna (UOC).
On completion, participants will obtain 1 ECTS credit.
Inscription open until 28th of July 2010.

You can follow all the activities of UOC – LABoral programme of
studies here:

http://laboralcentrodearte.uoc.edu/


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Pau Alsina
Professor dels Estudis d'Arts i Humanitats
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
www.uoc.edu

Director d' Artnodes Journal d'art, ciència i tecnologia
artnodes.uoc.edu