[-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2: Kathy High and Lindsay Kelley

[High, Kathy]

Hi all,

I will say that this idea of humour and irony is much about absurdity for
me. And perhaps this absurdity and ridiculousness touches on many bio-art
works as well. 

I have been thinking about what you are referencing, Lindsay - and it
makes me think of others as well:
Heather Dewey Hamborg¹s ³Stranger Visions²
http://deweyhagborg.com/projects/stranger-visions and the absurd act of
picking up abandoned gum, cigarette butts and such from the streets of
Brooklyn for DNA sampling;
Adam Zaretsky and Julia Reodika¹s "Workhorse Zoo"
http://emutagen.com/wrkhzoo.html creating a multi-creature work space that
equalises all model organisms;
My own ³Blood Wars² http://vampirestudygroup.com/bloodwars/about/ that
³pits² people¹s white blood cells against each other;
Critical Art Ensemble deploying Human Guinea Pigs to test the use of
biological agents in ³Target Deception² http://critical-art.net/?p=32  ;
Tissue Culture and Art¹s ³Victimless Leather² (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr)
and the creation of biobodies http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/vl/vl.html  ;
Art orienté objet¹s ³May the Horse Live in me³
http://www.clotmag.com/art-oriente-objet - exchange of horse blood -
becoming horse; 
Tarsh Bates¹ work with Candida albicans and us
creatures-that-are-more-than-human https://tarshbates.com/  Š

Bio-art has the potential to push boundaries - ethical, aesthetic,
cultural - and to make the absurd speak volumes.
Happy Saturday!
Kathy






On 16/02/2017, 11:59 PM, "empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
behalf of Lindsay Kelley" <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
behalf of l.kelley at unsw.edu.au> wrote:

>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>Dear Nina and Kathy,
>
>I enjoy hearing about your inspirations‹and I am a lurker too, definitely
>continue to lurk and be happy.
>
>I¹m recalling what Byron said about humor and vulnerability. If you can
>make someone laugh, you¹re creating affective space and all kinds of
>complex matter might seep in. One of my favorite Critical Art Ensemble
>works isn¹t really a ³work² like a work you¹d see in a gallery: it¹s a
>recipe, where they suggest that we cook and eat Eduardo Kac¹s GFP Bunny.
>It¹s called ³Ragout Alba a la Provencal² and it¹s in the ³Betty Crocker
>3000² appendix of Molecular Invasion. There were lots of things that were
>light and funny (and also serious and important) about the GFP Bunny
>project before CAE suggested eating the bunny, but eating the bunny
>really tipped it over into that space of funny/vulnerable for me. When I
>imagine eating the glowing rabbit (and garnishing with GFP parsley!),
>that¹s definitely funny and at the same time I¹m vulnerable to/aware of
>all the technologies we are knowingly and unknowingly eating at every
>meal.
>
>Re laughter more specifically, I have been thinking about how Linda Mary
>Montano is secretly a bioart practitioner. She does performances designed
>to address individual organs, and she has been manipulating her
>perception and environment through color for decades. And she does
>laughter workshops, sometimes designed for specific people, like
>caregivers, and always with an attention to specific bodily systems.
>
>I¹m sad to be missing all the exciting things happening at CAA. I hope
>many of us report back to the list about these great events. Have a
>wonderful time college art associating, and more anon,
>
>Lindsay
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>http://empyre.library.cornell.edu