[-empyre-] CAA between Biology and Art

[High, Kathy]

Hi Renate,
I love your post - and many of the artists you mention I know well and
really admire their work! Thanks for the descriptions Renate!
Natalie¹s MAKE IT BETTER - reminds me of the meme FAIL BETTER - basically
it is all about trying an pushing ourselves!
These are fabulous examples of interventions with great spirit! LOVE!

I was Coalesce¹s first artist resident last Fall in Buffalo. Such a
special place, I recommend it for all. Through Coalesce and another
residency, Imagenomics, I participated in on the west coast with William
DePaolo¹s lab at USC and now UW/Seattl,e I am working on collecting gut
micro biomes from families to develop a signature bio-family crest. What
similarities does your family share as represented through your gut micro
biome? This project has taken a lot of time working out logistics
(scientific, research-wise and also ethics reviews), but later this year I
will put it into action! I thank Paul Vanouse and Will Depaolo (an
immunologist I met through ArtSci at UCLA!) for the opportunity to work
with them! Also thanks to their lab teams as well (Colon and Van in
Buffalo, and Denise, Melissa, Amy, Tania and Patrice!).

And I should also mention another project I am involved in that might
excite people - it is called REFRESH
It started with an article published through the Guardian called
#KissMyArs - (co-authored with Heather Dewey-Hamburg, Addie Wagenknecht,
Camilla Mørk Røstvik and myself) that criticised the EU festival Ars
Electronica for only awarding their Golden Nica Award to women 10% of the
time (over their entire history). See the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/sep/12/ars-electronica-
festival-gender    After that we started organising to bring together
people to create an alternative art and tech biennial and movement
representing underrepresented artists including women, people of color,
people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
https://refreshart.tech/  Please check it out and join REFRESH

I send you all good vibes.
More soon, thanks, Kathy


On 18/02/2017, 9:58 PM, "empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
behalf of Renate Terese Ferro" <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
on behalf of rferro at cornell.edu> wrote:

>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>Thanks Kathy and Lindsay for carrying on without me over the past two
>days.  I wanted to let you all know that we are being joined by a few new
>subscribers that I met at College Art Association panel that I hope will
>be inspired to post.
>
>Yesterday the Gibson New Media Round Table  was full with with many
>pioneer artists and emerging artists who work between and through Biology
>and Art in excitedly broad and interdisciplinary ways.  Our panel
>featured art historian Maria Fernandez who juxtaposed post-feminism and
>new materialisms in some brand new research that she has been working on.
> Her presentation highlighted the work of Sonja Baumel and  Karolina
>Sobecka.  Natalie Jeremijenko brought her Environmental Health Clinic to
>CAA.  Making a case to all of us that we need as artists to not just make
>but MAKE IT BETTER.  Mutualism was her mantra as she highlighted a
>selection of her current projects all dubbed with semantic puns as
>Natalie so brilliantly and passionately does.   Byron Rich and Mary
>Maggic Tsang:  Open Source Estrogen introduced their project Open Source
>Estrogen which combines do-it-yourself science, body and gender bending
>politics with ecological ramifications. The project is an ironic but
>humorous assemblage of biotechnical civil disobedience reacting to the
>slow violence of corporate and institutional pollution and regulation.
>Finally, Paul Vanouse presented a selection of his work and ended with
>his America Project.  In the project Vanouse isolates DNA from the
>combined spit of visitors using it as raw material to create images with
>gel electrophoresis, a process by which an electric current pulls DNA
>fragments across a porous gel at differing rates depending on each
>fragment¹s size.I conic images such as the American Flag result from the
>DNA.  Vanouse also talked about his new lab  Coalesce the new University
>of Buffalo. The Biolab houses a teaching program, research labs,  and
>artist¹s residencies.  Thank you to all of you for spending time with us.
>
>At the heart of the session laughter, humor and irony filled the room but
>also an urgent understanding that as artists must practice tactics of
>resistance against current shifts that have eliminated protections
>against our water, air and environment.  The consensus within the room
>was that in this particular political time that political, social,
>ecological resistance must manifest itself especially for the our
>survival.  In light of the political urgency issues of ethics also
>loomed. 
>
>It was a delight to feel the energy of all things Biology and Art and my
>sense is that the short discussion that followed could have gone on for
>quite some time.  My own work spins around ecological issues but I am not
>a dedicated ³bioartist² right now.  However I was honored that the New
>Media Caucus invited me to host and organize this panel Hoping that all
>of you out there will not be afraid to make a post to extend our
>discussion Between Biology and Art.
>
>Good Night Kathy and Good Morning Lindsay.  Hoping to talk more tomorrow
>now that I am back online a bit more reliably.
>Renate
>
>Renate Ferro
>Visiting Associate Professor
>Director of Undergraduate Studies
>Department of Art
>Tjaden Hall 306
>rferro at cornell.edu
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>http://empyre.library.cornell.edu