[-empyre-] Week 3: Thanks to Kathy and Lindsay and Welcome Soyu, Paul and Yiyun

[Renate Terese Ferro]

I have been trying to sort through some glitches in our system but am going to plod on in hopes you are getting our posts.  Just a reminder that you can check on what has been posted by going to our main archived space here 

http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/


I want to take this opportunity to thank Kathy High and Lindsay Kelley for helping me through Week 2 while I was traveling to NYC.  The discussion was a great beginning into the nuances of doing interdisciplinary work that is so meshed and intertwined with politics, the environment, health, and so much more.  I appreciated Kathy’s early post last week when she wrote:

<snip>
I am very aware that my role as an artist, feminist, educator, queer person, and provocateur is essential more so now than even before! As so-called bio-arists (and I say that because the term “bio-art” is such a terrible “catch all” term that needs to be examined as it needs to serve for “eco-artists”, "genetic-artists” “transgenetic artists" "synthetic biology
artists” and so on, all terms needing to be unpacked), ― and generally we, as bioartists, work with living materials and we make decisions about the ethics that we apply to these materials. 

<snip>

My hope is that we can use the base that both Kathy and Lindsay provided for us to deconstruct the layers within “Bio Art” that manifest themselves today BETWEEN BIOLOGY AND ART. For me its the between maybe that holds the key to our examination?  Not sure but would love to hear from more of you. 

Welcome Soyo Lee, Paul Vanouse and Yiyun Chen.  It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to our -empyre- space and hope that you will post.  Realizing that Soyo and Yiyun are sleeping right now (they in Australia and Singapore) we will wish them sweet dreams and look forward to their contributions a bit later.  Paul I know is awake and probably in his Coalesce Lab right now or teaching at U. of Buffalo but hopefully he will have time to write in when he gets a chance. 

And to you lurkers….hope you will be inspired to write even short posts.  This is a conversation and without you in this space I feel lonely sometimes thinking that there is absolutely no one out there. So if you are reading this please be inspired to write.  I will refer to the question that t Tim Murray and I wrote last month.  Is the listserv -empyre no longer relevant if our subscribers do not participate.  Something to think about for sure.

Biographies are below.  Looking forward. 
Warmly,  Renate

Soyo Lee(KR) is an artist who is interested in changing social and ethical conceptions about various living organisms in human culture. Her recent project Ornamental Cactus Design, looking at the cultural history of a popular horticultural product, was presented at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art(Seoul), Museum of Contemporary Art(Sydney), ISEA(Albuqerque), and SLSA(Perth). She holds a Ph.D in Electronic Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and runs an independent art space and publisher Lifeforms in Culture in Seoul, Korea.

Paul Vanouse has been working in emerging media forms since 1990. Interdisciplinarity and impassioned amateurism guide his art practice. His electronic cinema, biological experiments, and interactive installations have been exhibited in over 20 countries and widely across the US. Vanouse is a Professor of Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo, NY.
 

Yiyun Chen is an artist currently based in Shanghai. She graduated from MA Design Interactions at Royal College of Art in London, and obtained a diploma of Traditional Chinese Medicine at
Shanghai University of TCM. Drawing and film are main mediums of her narrative works, which often based on fictional scenarios, aiming to provide alternative prospectives by raising dilemmatic questions through proposing critical concepts. She currently interests in the realms where art, psychology and medicine connect, and her work now mainly concerned with the human body under
the topic of disease and wellness as an ideology. Her work ‘Sick Better’ is nominated by The Helen Hamlyn Design Awards and currently exhibiting in London.Yiyun just finished her bioart residency in SymbioticA, Perth, Australia.





Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
rferro at cornell.edu