HKUA0361DU Kunsthistorie/visuel kultur/moderne kultur: Bio/media/art - Staging a/Liveness

Årgang 2014/2015
Engelsk titel

Art History/Visual Culture/Modern Culture: Bio/media/art - Staging a/liveness

Kursusindhold

Artistic forgery of DNA fingerprints, tissue cultured ‘victimless leather’ clothes growing in bioreactors, programmed pigeons that defecate soap, phototactic bacteria that first destroy and then ‘repaint’ ancient Roman frescoes, socialized green lab rabbits, or robotic ‘plantimals’ which move through polluted waters thanks to microbial fuel cells – often, these contemporary art projects are being seen as spectacular but unrelated manifestations of a still unclear post-digital paradigm in art.

However, since the earliest anthropomorphic statues, myths of vivification surround artefacts made by the artist’s hand. The animation of malleable matter stands in a long pictorial tradition, and from the 19th century, the biological metaphor is continued in the discussion of the artwork itself as an organism. By means of form, material or process, a touch of aliveness is staged, aiming at involving the viewer viscerally. Art has imagined, represented and mimicked, then simulated and - quite recently - manipulated living beings and systems for real. After painting, sculpture, automata etc., art in the late 20th century has employed “dry” informatics and robotics to stage aliveness, as well as, since shortly, “wet” cell and molecular biology. Transgenics, the synthesis of DNA sequences, so-called biobricks, molecular biological visual imaging media such as gel electrophoresis or DNA chips, cell and tissue engineering observable in real-time growth, the use of retroviruses and the cloning of bacterial plasmid DNA belong to the repertoire of a still marginal but resolutely experimental form of contemporary art today. Contemporary artists who enter the labs are particularly ‘close to life’, and the new discipline of Synthetic Biology is well suited to upgrade art historical paradigms. In parallel, the democratization of lab tools leads to their appropriation by tinkerers and tactical media activists who apply the critical potential of open source culture from the digital age of Media Art to DIY biology and biohacking.

The course provides both a large scope of these contemporary practices that use biomedia and examines the underpinning philosophical and esthetical concepts. But it also loops this art of staging a/liveness back to historical paradigms such as the indexicality of imprints, animation and simulacrum, automata as early ‘artificial life’, as well as to the origins of performativity.

Hvis du tager dette kursus som eksamensmodul på enten Kunsthistorie eller Visuel kultur - og du her skal skrive en fri skriftlig opgave - anbefaler vi, at du som supplement tager kurset i "Akademisk opgaveskrivning KA" - HKUK03702U.

Hauser, Jens: Observations on an Art of Growing Interest. Towards a Phenomenological Approach to Art involving Biotechnology. In: Da Costa, Beatriz and  Philip, Kavita (ed.): Tactical Biopolitics. Art, Activism, and Technoscience. Cambridge, 2008, p. 83-103.

Hauser, Jens: sk-interfaces. Exploding Borders – Creating Membranes in Art, Technology and Society. Liverpool, 2008.

Hauser, Jens: Remediating Still Life, Pencils of Nature and Fingerprints. In: Cubitt, Sean and Thomas, Paul (ed.): Relive. Media Art Histories. Cambridge, 2013, p. 275-307.

Hoffmeyer, Jesper: Biosemiotics. An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs. Scranton/London, 2008.

Kac, Eduardo (ed.): Signs of Life. Bio Art and Beyond. Cambridge 2007.

Mitchell, Robert: Bioart and the Vitality of Media. Seattle, 2010.

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Point
15 ECTS
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