“Postbiology between protocol and manifest: portraiture of a passing specie” presented by Kera
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Posthumanism I
Presentation Title:
- Postbiology between protocol and manifest: portraiture of a passing specie
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Abstract
Philosophy and art increasingly reflect upon the emergent forms of life, society and politics created in the biotech laboratories and further developed and tested across the biotech industry. These translations of scientific protocols into philosophical tractates (Donna Haraway, Hannah Louise Landecker, Nikolas Rose, Aihwa Ong, Catherine Waldby, etc.) or even art manifests (Symbiotica, Marta de Menezes, Eduardo Kac, Adam Zaretsky, etc.) express our expectations and fears vis-à-vis the newly discovered and created entities. Custom made bacteria, artificial DNA, viral quasispecies, various transgenic, chimeric, synthetic and copyrighted organisms challenge our anthropocentric presumptions, notions of life, evolution and nature – but also normative ideals related to our ethics, society and politics. They transform the common world into a postbiological arena in which the organic and the nonorganic, the natural and the constructed, human and nonhuman, physics and techné, mix, play and blend.
