[-empyre-] [-empyre] Biology & Art

[Tarsh Bates]

Heyo soft-skinners

Thanks so much Byron, Lindsay and Kathy (and Nina) for your contributions.

I oscillate between struggle with and adoring the absurdity of the world 
and we seem to be in a very absurdist time. I find myself despairing and 
then am delighted by art projects that poke at the absurd. The bio-art 
(however you define it) projects that I love are the ones that are 
seriously playful and playfully serious, those that resist the urge to 
take biology too seriously but show us the nasty under the banal. Both 
Lindsay's and Kathy's works do this and so many others (Loren 
Kronemyer's and Ian Sinclair's "Ecosexual bathhouse" is doing this for 
me at the moment 
http://helloponyexpress.com/projects/#/ecosexualbathhouse/). I would 
love to able to make laugh out loud and absurdist artworks, but my work 
tends to manifest as more serious than I expect.

Do you find that your works do this or are they more ridiculous than you 
expect? How does collaboration (with non/humans) affect this process for 
you?

Tarsh Bates