[-empyre-] Conceptual medium, visceral materiality, aesthetic formality

[Renate Terese Ferro]

Dear Margherita, Soyo, Antoinette and Tarsh,  What amazing posts you have made. My mission is to address each and every one of you  during this last week on empyre I am hoping as we tease out a few more issues that might be percolating between your practices  As we work through those issues I am so looking forward to your posting links and articles about your work. Our listserv is archived and it is important for us to include as much information about each of you as possible.  

 I am curious Marguerita if you could clarify  my reading of your post that understands that microbial cellulose is a conceptual medium where memory Is mapped?  So does that mean that this is a participatory work and how are you archiving? The method of archiving then must be connected to the helix of the DNA?  I may be way off base here but this appears so poetic.  The poetics of memory and the poetics of DNA seem like potentially interesting pairings. And what about the notion of aesthetics?

Tarsh I am such a huge fan of your work on Candida albicans.  You wowed me with your work at the Hong Kong ISEA this past summer.  What also interests me is how seemlessly you move from the material to the theoretical/philosophical with such ease. By weaving bodily ecologies as the self/other as double is it possible to replicate further? Hope you will unpack this a bit for our subscribers. 

Thanks to Paul and Erin for extending our conversation on aesthetics.  The tension between conceptual underpinnings, visceral qualities of the material and the aesthetic formalities of vision seem to create tensions  that open interesting gaps for critique.  Curious how you all feel.  

To the rest of you more soon I promise.  I just got home after a long day and am hoping to write more a bit later but I hope this spurns some conversation between the four or five or six of you!  Looking forward to our extended conversation. 
Renate




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