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Thanks for the intro Renate and thanks to Paul, Lindsay, Byron and Kathy
for your fascinating discussions.
I am currently working on my PhD in biological art at SymbioticA. My
research is focused on the human body as an ecology. This project has
raised quite a few physical, metaphysical, aesthetic and ethical
questions, such as: how do we think of the self if we are multiple, do
we treat our bodies differently if we think of ourselves as hosts, can
thinking of ourselves as ecologies change how we treat our external
ecologies, how do the participants in the human ecology perceive their
ecology/environment, can we understand "what it might be like to be a
[member of this ecology]", can we understand bodies differently . I work
with /Candida albicans, /which is one of the species of this ecology and
usually much maligned as "thrush" or "yeast infection". I make artworks
with this yeast, using scientific and artistic experimental tools and
methods, for human consumption.
Although I am interested in the philosophical aesthetic tradition, such
as Kant and Nietzsche, I am much more interested in materialist
aesthetic experiences, in the sensuality and eros of encounters as a
more-than-human. Phenomenology doesnt work well for CandidaHomo
entanglements, as consciousness is irrelevant. Sarah Ahmed's
"orientation" and Karen Barad's queer performativity are more
interesting here. The two main questions I am working with are 1. how to
understand the other that is self - Barad's intra-active phenomena have
been helpful here where there is no ontological difference; and 2. how
to understand the "self-other" who doesnt have a face, who is not
similar. Empathy based on similarity or vision doesnt apply to
CandidaHomo relations. Bodies are all.
So here is the main point of my work, I guess: If bodies sometimes
irritate or kill their hosts, what, if any, response-ability (to borrow
from Astrid Schrader) does that host have to those bodies? If we cant
get rid of them, how do we live with them? Can we live our bodies
differently?
Tarsh Bates
PhD (Biological Art) Candidate SymbioticA, The University of Western
Australia
w: tarshbates.com <http://tarshbates.com/>
On 28/02/2017 10:29 AM, Renate Terese Ferro wrote:
----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Thank you Paul for your incredibly thoughtful response which really helped me
to understand specifically what your meant by ethics. I’m going to let you
also respond to Erin, but I hope you won’t mind that I introduce our last three
guests just a bit early. I thought it might be interesting to bring in Tarsh
Bates, Antoinette LaFarge, and Margherita Pevere who will join you Paul and
hopefully anyone else out there (Erin, Kathy, Byron) who also might want to
join Paul on this thread of ethics. Just a note that we will keep this
discussion open through Sunday. Welcome and thanks.
Biographies:
Tarsh Bates (AU) Tarsh Bates is an artist/researcher/educator interested in how
knowledge and experience form and transfer through the relationships between
material, bodies, environment and
culture. She completed a Master of Science (Biological Arts) in 2012 and has worked
variously as a pizza delivery driver, a fruit and vegetable stacker, a toilet paper
packer, a researcher in compost science and waste management, a honeybee
ejaculator, an art gallery invigilator, a raspberry picker, a lecturer/tutor in
art/science, art history, gender & technology, posthumanism, counter realism
and pop culture, an editor, a bookkeeper, a car detailer, and a life drawing model.
She is currently a candidate for a PhD (Biological Arts) at SymbioticA UWA where
her research is concerned the
aesthetics of interspecies relationships and the human as a multispecies
ecology. She is particularly enamoured with Candida albicans.
Antoinette LaFarge is an artist and writer whose beat is virtuality and its
discontents. She has a special interest in avatarism, expanded narrative, and
feminist techno-arts. Recent publications include “Pseudo Space: Experiments
with Avatarism and Telematic Performance in Social Media” (MIT Press, 2016) and
“Social Proxies and Real-World Avatars: Impersonation as a Mode of Capitalist
Production” (Art Journal, 2014. Recent new media performance and installation
projects include Far-Flung follows function (2013), Galileo in America (2012),
and Hangmen
Also Die (2010). She is currently working on projects centered on resurfacing
work by women innovators and botanical artists of the late 19th century. She is
on the faculty of the Art Department at UC Irvine. Deeply fascinated by
biological processes,
Margherita Pevere (DE/FI) is a visual artist and researcher investigating decay
and transformation as they are common destiny of human and non-human matter.
Her practice features a unique combination of organic and technological
materials: she grows bacterial cultures, manipulates paper and photographic
film, collects organic relics and plans to store a digitized collection of
memories on bacterial genome. Pevere holds a degree in Political Sciences and
Arts and New Media and is PhD candidate at Aalto University, School of Arts,
Design at Architecture in Helsinki. In Berlin she actively collaborates with
the DIYbio group BioTinkering e.V. and Art Laboratory Berlin. Most recent
exhibitions include the Article Biennial, Stavanger (NO), curated by Hege Tapio
and Nora
Vaage; the Dutch Design Week – BioArt Laboratories, Eindhoven (NL), curated by
Jalila Essaidi; State – Festival for Open Science, Berlin, curated by Daniela
Silvestrin.
Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
rfe...@cornell.edu
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