Jens Hauser
Jens Hauser is a Paris and Copenhagen based media studies scholar and art curator focusing on the interactions between art and technology, trans-genre and hybrid aesthetics. He is currently a professor in art history at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), an affiliated researcher at University of Copenhagen’s Medical Museion, and a senior postdoc researcher at the Medical University Vienna. He is also a distinguished affiliated faculty member of the Department of Art, Art History and Design at Michigan State University, where he co-directs the BRIDGE artist in residency program, an affiliated faculty member at the Department for Image Science at Danube University Krems, a guest lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and at the University of Innsbruck, a guest professor at the Department of Arts and Sciences of Art at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a researcher affiliated with École Polytechnique Paris-Saclay. Hauser has been the chair of the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts’ 2018 conference in Copenhagen. At the intersection of media studies, art history and epistemology, he has previously developed an aesthetic and epistemological theory of biomediality as part of his PhD at Ruhr University Bochum, and also holds a degree in science and technology journalism from Université François Rabelais in Tours. His curated exhibitions include L’Art Biotech (Nantes, 2003), Still, Living (Perth, 2007), sk-interfaces (Liverpool, 2008/Luxembourg, 2009), the Article Biennale (Stavanger, 2008), Transbiotics (Riga 2010), May the Horse live in me (Que le cheval vive en moi) - Art Orienté Objet (Ljubljana, 2011), Fingerprints... (Berlin, 2011/Munich/2012) Synth-ethic (Vienna, 2011), assemble | standard | minimal (Berlin, 2015), SO3 (Belfort, 2015) WETWARE (LA, 2016), Devenir Immobile - Yann Marussich (Nantes, 2018), {un][split} (Munich, 2018), MATTER/S matter/s (Lansing, 2018), ‘Applied Microperformativity (Vienna, 2018), UN/GREEN (Riga, 2019), OU \ / ERT (Bourges, 2019), Holobiont. Life is Other (Bregenz, 2021/Vienna, 2022), gREen - Sampling Colour/Farbe Vermessen (Munich, 2021) and gREen - De/Growth (Munich, 2022), among other co-curated exhibitions and performance projects. Hauser serves on international juries of art awards such as Ars Electronica, STARTS EU, Kairos, Transitio and Vida, as well as of several national science foundations. He has also been a founding collaborator of the European culture channel ARTE since 1992, has produced numerous reportages, documentary films and radio features for German and French public broadcasting services, and widely published essays in print journalism and in art books for many years.
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Papers by Jens Hauser
The printed book and the e-book are available via:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786606853/The-Aesthetics-of-Necropolitics
Published in: Borggreen, Gunhild Ravn; Hansen, Maria Fabricius & Tindbæk, Rosanna Maj Kloster (eds.): Dead or Alive! Tracing the Animation of Matter in Art and Visual Culture. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2020, pp. 371-412. With contributions by Alexander Nagel, Frank Fehrenbach, Jacob Wamberg, Mikkel Bogh, Maria Fabricius Hansen, Katerina Harris, Chris Askholt Hammeken, Rosanna Tindbæk, Jeremie Koering, Gunhild Borggreen, Franziska Bork Petersen and Jens Hauser.
About the book: The image is an ontological paradox; it is made of dead matter, yet appears to be alive. For centuries, artists have created images of the living world – images that are static and yet possess the power to bring to life a frozen moment in time. While this tension has constituted a fundamental challenge for as long as theories on the nature of images have existed, recent scholarship has rekindled interest in the question of what images ‘do to us’. Despite the rational discourse of Modernity, we must acknowledge that we view images as half-living entities. Dead or Alive! addresses the perpetual relevance of images’ enigmatic life-likeness. Each of the twelve chapters, written by scholars of art history and visual culture, conveys how the materiality of images generates this powerful effect of animation. Covering a wide range of practices, from early paleolithic stone engravings, medieval tomb sculpture, renaissance death masks and baroque painting to modern fashion, park design, early cinema, robots and bio art, the book demonstrates that the ontological paradox of the image is not limited to a specific historical period or certain types of images, but can be seen throughout the history of images across different cultures.
This chapter is part of the book 'Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art' (ed. by Rachel Rivenc and Kendra Roth) published by the Getty Conservation Institute (2022), following the symposium 'Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art / La Materia Viva: Conservación de materiales orgánicos en el arte contemporáneo', which took place June 3–5, 2019, in Mexico City: https://shop.getty.edu/products/living-matter-the-preservation-of-biological-materials-in-contemporary-art-978-1606066874
https://www.kunstforum.de/band/2021-277-leonardo-im-labor-kunst-und-wissenschaft/
https://www.kunstforum.de/artikel/kuenstliche-lebendigkeit/
Direct access to the full digital version of the publication: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/25/3?nav=tocList
Link for purchasing physical copies from the Centre for Performance Research Bookshop: https://thecpr.org.uk/product/25-3-on-microperformativity/
In times when performance art—which until recently involved mainly human bodies—shifts towards the more general pattern of performativity in art, artists and performers profoundly redefine what actually is considered a body, human or nonhuman, consequently displacing the focus from its mesoscopic actions to its microscopic functions, from physical gestures to physiological processes, and from staged diegetic time to real performative time. Microperformativity, understood as a technical–cultural hybrid phenomenon, questions the human scale (both with regards to space and time)—philosophically, politically and aesthetically—as a crucial point of reference.
Artists who choose microperformative tactics and material instances of biomediality, from microbiome research and synthetic biology to concerns about anthropogenic effects on ecosystems, are indicative of the shift from performance to performativity, from human actions to non-human agency, including its progressive acceptance by audiences, and develop strategies of how the retreat of human performers can be compensated by inventive aesthetic solutions to create encounters with, and experiences for perceivers.
Published in: Tiere und / als Medien
ed. by Jessica Ullrich & Stefan Rieger, Tierstudien 18, 2020.
https://neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/zeitschriften/tierstudien/1014/tiere-und/als-medien
ISBN(Print): 978-3-95808-315-8
ISBN(PDF): 978-3-95808-366-0
In: Aldouby, Hava (ed.): Shifting Interfaces: Presence and Relationality in New Media Arts of the Early 21st Century. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020, p. 193-210.
"Early 21st century media arts are addressing the anxieties of an age shadowed by ubiquitous surveillance, big data profiling, and globalised translocations of people. Altogether, they tap the overwhelming changes in our lived experience of self, body, and intersubjective relations. Shifting Interfaces addresses current exciting exchanges between art, science, and emerging technologies, highlighting a range of concerns that currently prevail in the field of media arts. This book provides an up-to-date perspective on the field, with a considerable representation of art-based research gaining salience in media art studies. The collection attends to art projects interrogating the destabilisation of identity and the breaching of individual privacy, the rekindled interest in phenomenology and in the neurocognitive workings of empathy, and the routes of interconnectivity beyond the human in the age of the Internet of Things. Offering a diversity of perspectives, ranging from purely theoretical to art-based research, and from aesthetics to social and cultural critique, this volume will be of great value for readers interested in contemporary art, art-science-technology interfaces, visual culture, and cultural studies."
Bakterien sind groß im Kommen.1 Sie finden zunehmend Beachtung in der Kunst, der Philosophie, den Natur- und Gesundheitswissenschaften und sie erlangen Omnipräsenz in der kunstbasierten Forschung ebenso wie in der forschungsbasierten Kunst. In der Folge werden Bakterien in der zeitgenössischen konkret ausgerichteten biomedialen Kunstpraxis als älteste, kleinste, strukturell einfachste, aber ubiquitäre Organismen mit lebenswichtiger Funktion für andere Lebensformen wiederentdeckt und erhalten eine herausgehobene Rolle sowohl im künstlerischen Diskurs als auch in ästhetischen Settings. Waren Bakterien in der früheren Biomedienkunst noch ontologische blinde Flecken – Zellen, Gewebe und Gensequenzen galten als geeignetere biologische Entitäten für die mikroskopische ›Verkörperung‹ oder ›Codierung‹ der Einzelorganismen, für die sie pars pro toto standen –, so dienen Bakterien und die zugehörigen Metaphern derzeit als erkenntnistheoretische Indikatoren.
Online version of the whole journal:
https://www.universi.uni-siegen.de/katalog/zeitschriften/navigationen/940027.html
Hauser, Jens & Hallensleben, Markus: Performing the Transfacial Body: ORLAN’s Harlequin Coat. In: Donger, Simon; Shephard, Simon and Orlan (ed.): ORLAN. A Hybrid Body of Artworks. Oxon: Routledge, 2010, p. 138-153.
See direct link: https://www.routledge.com/ORLAN-A-Hybrid-Body-of-Artworks/Donger-Shepherd/p/book/9780415562348
RUSSIAN: Люди по своей технической природе склонны посредством культуры гиперкомпенси- ровать то, что, по их мнению, они утратили. В нашей медиаархеологической дискуссии мы обсуждаем два случая. Первый связан с теми формами современного искусства, в которых биотехнологии используются как реальная практика. Как ни парадоксально, они подчеркивают, с одной стороны, свою «жизненность» и аутентичность, а с другой – свою явную технологичность и искусственность.
Цель данной работы – провести параллельный анализ тропов «живое» и «зеле- ное», имеющих положительные коннотации как в истории культуры, так и в искусстве. Считается, что эти термины могут быть противопоставлены технологическому, при этом предполагается их связь с понятием «природного». Анализ первого тропа может быть проведен на основе представления в произведениях искусства идеи «оживле- ния», проходящей красной нитью через все историю искусств. С появлением в конце XX века программного обеспечения и компьютеров, новых профессий в сфере инфор- мационных технологий возникла необходимость провести границу между понятиями «жизнь» и «природа». Посредством использования в искусстве программного обеспе- чения и компьютеров происходит «оживление» технологических процессов, а затем специалисты осуществляют технологизацию того, чему уже был дал импульс «жиз- ни». Это означает, что «живое» не может больше быть синонимом «природного».
Та же проблема возникает и в отношении столь популярного в нашей культуре опре- деления «зелёный», то есть «экологичный»: «жизненность» и «экологичность» соединя- ются понятием «биофактичности», идеей создания биологических артефактов, которые одновременно способны развиваться и в то же время изначально сконструированы по- средством технологий. Понятия «экологичности» и «природы» мы также обязаны разде- лить. «Экологичность», которую часто ассоциируют с «природностью» и «естественно- стью», будет представлена как предельно антропоцентрическое явление, краеугольный камень человеческого самосознания, как воспринимаемый образ, медиум, материальный биологический объект, семантический конструкт и идеология.
Participating artists:
Brandon Ballengée (USA *1974)
Peter Buggenhout (Belgium *1963)
Lee Bul (South Korea *1964)
Mark Dion (USA *1961)
Brad Downey (USA *1980)
Thomas Feuerstein (Austria *1968)
Eli Gur Arie (Israel *1964)
Tue Greenfort (Denmark *1973)
Patricia Piccinini (Australia *1965)
Donato Piccolo (Italy *1976)
Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger (Switzerland *1967, *1964)
Günter Weseler (Germany *1930)
David Zink Yi (Peru *1973)
The printed book and the e-book are available via:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786606853/The-Aesthetics-of-Necropolitics
Published in: Borggreen, Gunhild Ravn; Hansen, Maria Fabricius & Tindbæk, Rosanna Maj Kloster (eds.): Dead or Alive! Tracing the Animation of Matter in Art and Visual Culture. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2020, pp. 371-412. With contributions by Alexander Nagel, Frank Fehrenbach, Jacob Wamberg, Mikkel Bogh, Maria Fabricius Hansen, Katerina Harris, Chris Askholt Hammeken, Rosanna Tindbæk, Jeremie Koering, Gunhild Borggreen, Franziska Bork Petersen and Jens Hauser.
About the book: The image is an ontological paradox; it is made of dead matter, yet appears to be alive. For centuries, artists have created images of the living world – images that are static and yet possess the power to bring to life a frozen moment in time. While this tension has constituted a fundamental challenge for as long as theories on the nature of images have existed, recent scholarship has rekindled interest in the question of what images ‘do to us’. Despite the rational discourse of Modernity, we must acknowledge that we view images as half-living entities. Dead or Alive! addresses the perpetual relevance of images’ enigmatic life-likeness. Each of the twelve chapters, written by scholars of art history and visual culture, conveys how the materiality of images generates this powerful effect of animation. Covering a wide range of practices, from early paleolithic stone engravings, medieval tomb sculpture, renaissance death masks and baroque painting to modern fashion, park design, early cinema, robots and bio art, the book demonstrates that the ontological paradox of the image is not limited to a specific historical period or certain types of images, but can be seen throughout the history of images across different cultures.
This chapter is part of the book 'Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art' (ed. by Rachel Rivenc and Kendra Roth) published by the Getty Conservation Institute (2022), following the symposium 'Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art / La Materia Viva: Conservación de materiales orgánicos en el arte contemporáneo', which took place June 3–5, 2019, in Mexico City: https://shop.getty.edu/products/living-matter-the-preservation-of-biological-materials-in-contemporary-art-978-1606066874
https://www.kunstforum.de/band/2021-277-leonardo-im-labor-kunst-und-wissenschaft/
https://www.kunstforum.de/artikel/kuenstliche-lebendigkeit/
Direct access to the full digital version of the publication: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/25/3?nav=tocList
Link for purchasing physical copies from the Centre for Performance Research Bookshop: https://thecpr.org.uk/product/25-3-on-microperformativity/
In times when performance art—which until recently involved mainly human bodies—shifts towards the more general pattern of performativity in art, artists and performers profoundly redefine what actually is considered a body, human or nonhuman, consequently displacing the focus from its mesoscopic actions to its microscopic functions, from physical gestures to physiological processes, and from staged diegetic time to real performative time. Microperformativity, understood as a technical–cultural hybrid phenomenon, questions the human scale (both with regards to space and time)—philosophically, politically and aesthetically—as a crucial point of reference.
Artists who choose microperformative tactics and material instances of biomediality, from microbiome research and synthetic biology to concerns about anthropogenic effects on ecosystems, are indicative of the shift from performance to performativity, from human actions to non-human agency, including its progressive acceptance by audiences, and develop strategies of how the retreat of human performers can be compensated by inventive aesthetic solutions to create encounters with, and experiences for perceivers.
Published in: Tiere und / als Medien
ed. by Jessica Ullrich & Stefan Rieger, Tierstudien 18, 2020.
https://neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/zeitschriften/tierstudien/1014/tiere-und/als-medien
ISBN(Print): 978-3-95808-315-8
ISBN(PDF): 978-3-95808-366-0
In: Aldouby, Hava (ed.): Shifting Interfaces: Presence and Relationality in New Media Arts of the Early 21st Century. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020, p. 193-210.
"Early 21st century media arts are addressing the anxieties of an age shadowed by ubiquitous surveillance, big data profiling, and globalised translocations of people. Altogether, they tap the overwhelming changes in our lived experience of self, body, and intersubjective relations. Shifting Interfaces addresses current exciting exchanges between art, science, and emerging technologies, highlighting a range of concerns that currently prevail in the field of media arts. This book provides an up-to-date perspective on the field, with a considerable representation of art-based research gaining salience in media art studies. The collection attends to art projects interrogating the destabilisation of identity and the breaching of individual privacy, the rekindled interest in phenomenology and in the neurocognitive workings of empathy, and the routes of interconnectivity beyond the human in the age of the Internet of Things. Offering a diversity of perspectives, ranging from purely theoretical to art-based research, and from aesthetics to social and cultural critique, this volume will be of great value for readers interested in contemporary art, art-science-technology interfaces, visual culture, and cultural studies."
Bakterien sind groß im Kommen.1 Sie finden zunehmend Beachtung in der Kunst, der Philosophie, den Natur- und Gesundheitswissenschaften und sie erlangen Omnipräsenz in der kunstbasierten Forschung ebenso wie in der forschungsbasierten Kunst. In der Folge werden Bakterien in der zeitgenössischen konkret ausgerichteten biomedialen Kunstpraxis als älteste, kleinste, strukturell einfachste, aber ubiquitäre Organismen mit lebenswichtiger Funktion für andere Lebensformen wiederentdeckt und erhalten eine herausgehobene Rolle sowohl im künstlerischen Diskurs als auch in ästhetischen Settings. Waren Bakterien in der früheren Biomedienkunst noch ontologische blinde Flecken – Zellen, Gewebe und Gensequenzen galten als geeignetere biologische Entitäten für die mikroskopische ›Verkörperung‹ oder ›Codierung‹ der Einzelorganismen, für die sie pars pro toto standen –, so dienen Bakterien und die zugehörigen Metaphern derzeit als erkenntnistheoretische Indikatoren.
Online version of the whole journal:
https://www.universi.uni-siegen.de/katalog/zeitschriften/navigationen/940027.html
Hauser, Jens & Hallensleben, Markus: Performing the Transfacial Body: ORLAN’s Harlequin Coat. In: Donger, Simon; Shephard, Simon and Orlan (ed.): ORLAN. A Hybrid Body of Artworks. Oxon: Routledge, 2010, p. 138-153.
See direct link: https://www.routledge.com/ORLAN-A-Hybrid-Body-of-Artworks/Donger-Shepherd/p/book/9780415562348
RUSSIAN: Люди по своей технической природе склонны посредством культуры гиперкомпенси- ровать то, что, по их мнению, они утратили. В нашей медиаархеологической дискуссии мы обсуждаем два случая. Первый связан с теми формами современного искусства, в которых биотехнологии используются как реальная практика. Как ни парадоксально, они подчеркивают, с одной стороны, свою «жизненность» и аутентичность, а с другой – свою явную технологичность и искусственность.
Цель данной работы – провести параллельный анализ тропов «живое» и «зеле- ное», имеющих положительные коннотации как в истории культуры, так и в искусстве. Считается, что эти термины могут быть противопоставлены технологическому, при этом предполагается их связь с понятием «природного». Анализ первого тропа может быть проведен на основе представления в произведениях искусства идеи «оживле- ния», проходящей красной нитью через все историю искусств. С появлением в конце XX века программного обеспечения и компьютеров, новых профессий в сфере инфор- мационных технологий возникла необходимость провести границу между понятиями «жизнь» и «природа». Посредством использования в искусстве программного обеспе- чения и компьютеров происходит «оживление» технологических процессов, а затем специалисты осуществляют технологизацию того, чему уже был дал импульс «жиз- ни». Это означает, что «живое» не может больше быть синонимом «природного».
Та же проблема возникает и в отношении столь популярного в нашей культуре опре- деления «зелёный», то есть «экологичный»: «жизненность» и «экологичность» соединя- ются понятием «биофактичности», идеей создания биологических артефактов, которые одновременно способны развиваться и в то же время изначально сконструированы по- средством технологий. Понятия «экологичности» и «природы» мы также обязаны разде- лить. «Экологичность», которую часто ассоциируют с «природностью» и «естественно- стью», будет представлена как предельно антропоцентрическое явление, краеугольный камень человеческого самосознания, как воспринимаемый образ, медиум, материальный биологический объект, семантический конструкт и идеология.
Participating artists:
Brandon Ballengée (USA *1974)
Peter Buggenhout (Belgium *1963)
Lee Bul (South Korea *1964)
Mark Dion (USA *1961)
Brad Downey (USA *1980)
Thomas Feuerstein (Austria *1968)
Eli Gur Arie (Israel *1964)
Tue Greenfort (Denmark *1973)
Patricia Piccinini (Australia *1965)
Donato Piccolo (Italy *1976)
Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger (Switzerland *1967, *1964)
Günter Weseler (Germany *1930)
David Zink Yi (Peru *1973)
This international and interdisciplinary conference brings together botanists, biologists, philosophers and artists to question the plant as both a figure of thought and a collaborating agent, and emphasizes the importance of material, epistemological and political commitment in the arts at a time of environmental crisis. The conference will deconstruct the superficial use of ‘green’ as a masquerade, supposedly synonymous with ecology and plant life, while highlighting the sensory modalities of plants and traditional knowledge about pharmacopoeia, in order to increase our perception of the environment and the current climate conditions.
The 4th International Art-Science Conference
In the framework of the RIXC Festival:
UN/GREEN ― Naturally Artificial Intelligences Riga, July 4―6, 2019
Venues: The Latvian National Museum of Art and The Art Academy of Latvia
Exhibition/Exposition 18.10.2019 - 18.1.2020,
Emmetrop - Antre Peaux, Bourges/France
Commissariat: Jens Hauser & Aniara Rodado Production
Project supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme GREEN (Green Revisited: Encountering Emerging Naturecultures) in collaboration with Bandits-Mages and ENSA Bourges / Projet soutenu par le programme Europe Créative de l’Union Européenne, GREEN (Green Revisited: Encountering Emerging Naturecultures), Avec la collaboration de l’association Bandits-Mages et l’ENSA de Bourges.
Communicating with plants, updating their rela- tionship with and knowledge of witchcraft, invent- ing eco-technical systems where humans become superfluous, dancing with phytoplankton, planting herbicide-resistant gardens or planting virtual trees to offset the CO2 footprint of our digital life, performing the sick body with organ or molecu- lar transplants, or synthesizing hyper-toxic green pigments, far from the images of the idealised pastoral nature... The OU\ /ERT artists open up debates around the pervasive greenness trope, get physically involved and bring plants and other symbiotic creatures into the limelight. Trans-species alliances that challenge anthropocentric claims in the age of ubiquitous greenwashing. Distrustful of green and superficial metaphors, they insist on the importance of situat- ed knowledges related to our chlorophyllous fellow organisms, essential for all other forms of life. / Communiquer avec le végétal, actualiser sa filiation avec les savoirs sorciers, inventer des systèmes éco-techniques où l’humain devient superflu, danser avec du phytoplancton, planter des jardins de résistance aux herbicides ou planter des arbres virtuels pour compenser l’empreinte du CO2 de notre vie numérique, engager le corps malade dans des per- formances avec des transplants d’organes ou moléculaires, ou encore synthétiser des pigments de cou- leur verte hyper-toxique, loin des images de la nature pastorale idéalisée... Les artistes de l’exposition OU\ /ERT s’engagent physiquement et mettent en scène les plantes et autres créatures symbiotiques. Des alliances trans-espèces qui défient les prétentions anthro- pocentriques à l’heure du greenwashing omnipré- sent. Méfiants à l’égard des métaphores vertes et superficielles, elles.ils insistent sur l’importance des savoirs situés en lien avec des organismes chlorophylliens, essentiels pour toutes les autres formes de la vie.
Communicating with plants, updating their relationship with and knowledge of witchcraft, inventing eco- technical systems where humans become superfluous, dancing with phytoplankton, planting herbicide- resistant gardens or planting virtual trees to offset the CO2 footprint of our digital life, performing the sick body with organ or molecular transplants, or synthesizing hyper-toxic green pigments, far from the images of the idealised pastoral nature... The OU\ /ERT artists open up debates around the pervasive greenness trope, get physically involved and bring plants and other symbiotic creatures into the limelight. Trans-species alliances that challenge anthropocentric claims in the age of ubiquitous greenwashing. Distrustful of green and superficial metaphors, they insist on the importance of situated knowledges related to our chlorophyllous fellow organisms, essential for all other forms of life.
Gilberto Esparza (Mexico)
Špela Petrič (Slovenia)
Quimera Rosa (France/Argentina)
Adam Brown (United States)
Agnes Meyer-Brandis (Germany)
Eva-Maria Lopez (Germany)
Joana Moll (Spain)
Francisco López (Spain)
Baggenstos & Rudolf (Switzerland)
Karine Bonneval (France)
Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot (France)
Jean Marc Chomaz, with Giancarlo Rizza & Vincenzo Giannini (France)
José Le Piez & Patricia Chatelain (France)
La Bruja de Texcoco (Mexico)
Lechedevirgen Trimegisto (Mexico)
Dance for Plants (France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium)
Tina Tarpgaard (Denmark)
Roger Rabbitch (Spain)
Pedro Soler (Ecuador)
Tiziano Derme & Daniela Mitterberger (Italy/Austria)
Communiquer avec le végétal, actualiser sa filiation avec les savoirs sorciers, inventer des systèmes éco- techniques où l’humain devient superflu, danser avec du phytoplancton, planter des jardins de résistance aux herbicides ou planter des arbres virtuels pour compenser l’empreinte du CO2 de notre vie numérique, performer le corps malade avec des transplants d’organes ou moléculaires, ou encore matérialiser des pigments de couleur verte hyper-toxique, loin des images de la nature pastorale idéalisée... Les artistes de l’exposition OU\ /ERT s’engagent physiquement et mettent en scène les plantes et autres créatures symbiotiques. Des alliances trans-espèces qui défient les prétentions anthropocentriques à l’heure du greenwashing omniprésent. Méfiants à l’égard des métaphores vertes et superficielles, elles.ils insistent sur l’importance des savoirs situés en lien avec des organismes chlorophiliens, essentiels pour toutes les autres formes de la vie.
Artistes:
Gilberto Esparza (Mexique)
Špela Petrič (Slovénie)
Quimera Rosa (France/Argentine)
Adam Brown (États-Unis)
Agnes Meyer-Brandis (Allemagne)
Eva-Maria Lopez (Allemagne)
Joana Moll (Espagne)
Francisco López (Espagne)
Baggenstos & Rudolf (Suisse)
Karine Bonneval (France)
Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot (France)
Jean Marc Chomaz (France)
José Le Piez et Patricia Chatelain (France)
La Bruja de Texcoco (Mexique)
Lechedevirgen Trimegisto (Mexique)
Dance for Plants (France, Allemagne, Danemark, Belgique)
Tina Tarpgaard (Danemark)
Roger Rabbitch (Espagne)
Pedro Soler (Équateur)
Tiziano Derme & Daniela Mitterberger (Italie/Autriche)
at the microdynamics between living matter, technology and capital is inspired by the quest to grasp the scales of space but also of time, where life is transformed to code and furthermore into a tradable commodity. The format of the symposium seeks to experimentally apply critical performance, counter biotactics, research and theory.
It invites the discovery of microperformati vity not solely as a tool to describe complex interstices, but as a force that reconciles the dystopia of the economy with the utopia of ecology — with the capacity to visualize an intra-action between living matter, human economic behavior and technology.
Curated by Lucie Strecker, Klaus Spiess and Jens Hauser
Further informationt: appliedmicroperformativity.net
Organized and moderated by Jens Hauser, with the participation of Judith van der Elst, Åsa Ståhl & Kristina Lindström, Klaus Spiess & Lucie Strecker,
Aniara Rodado, Klau Kinki, Paula Pin & Oscar Martin, Timothy Morton,
Špela Petrič and Jacob Wamberg.
All the artists in this exhibition were invited through Michigan State University's BRIDGE Residency and Lecture Program, which aims to create a platform for intermedia art that goes beyond the creation of forms and narratives, and engages in alternative forms-equally poetic and political-to produce knowledge. The exhibition thus reveals an "epistemological turn" in the arts and sciences-a focus on how knowledge is produced, and how that process of production inflects meaning and interpretation. The chosen artists have interacted with faculty members and students in different fields across the university's many colleges. These partnerships involved hands-on learning experiences and use of the university's many technical fabrication facilities.
Skin is our natural ‘interface’ with the world – more and more, however, technological extensions are taking over its role; ‘interfaces‘ create both new freedoms and new constraints. In the cross-disciplinary exhibition sk-interfaces, twenty international artists reflect on how modern techno-sciences have altered our relationship with the world: telepresence, digital technology, speculative architectures, bio-prostheses, tissue culture or transgenics – for the artists they are not mere topics but tools, methods and media to appropriate. They test the permeability of the borders between disciplines, art and science. Their interfaces connect us with other species, put satellite bodies up for debate, destabilize our conception of what it means to be human today, and create evolutionary scenarios confronting the technological pressure to adapt and the sociopolitical implications.
Skin represents a place where art, science, biopolitics, philosophy and social culture inter-face. sk-interfaces presents the work of 17 international artists reflecting on the way current technologies are changing our lives, with an emphasis on the transformation process itself. The artworks in sk-interfaces deal with the concept of liminality - a period of transition between two states of being - and the fluctuating ‘in-betweeness’ of our current socio-cultural climate. Curator Jens Hauser has devised an exhibition in which skin becomes a symbol: skin is the largest organ in the human body making up 16% of our body weight; it is a semi-permeable membrane demarcating the outside world from the internal spaces of the body. As technology becomes more sophisticated, so our notion of what is organic or ‘natural’ and what is man-made becomes blurred. In this exhibition the idea of an interface - the point of connection, the place in between one thing and another - is challenged.
Three tender significant others - Trois tendres moitiés significatives" at the Espace multimédia gantner, Bourogne (France) in 2015.
Three tender significant others:
Between art, biology and (al)chem(istr)y, this triptych
of infectious works encourages affectionate experiences with our gentle but usually despised biological better halves: viruses, bacteria and plasmids appear as our significant others (SO), as today’s science focuses on the benefits of bacteriophages, microbiome studies, or decontamina- ting bacteria. Three artists, three experimental formulas, to stage these agents of aliveness: Tagny Duff performs literally viral tattoos on skin samples. Paul Vanouse enacts bacterial plasmids to subvert DNA portraits that reveal other identities. And Adam Brown produces gold with the help of extremophile bacteria – may the Philosopher’s Stone have been found?
Trois tendres moitiés significatives:
Entre art, biologie et (al)chimie, ce triptyque d’œuvres infectieuses encourage des expériences affectueuses avec nos douces moitiés biologiques habituellement méprisées : des virus, bactéries et plasmides deviennent des significant others (SO), comme l’anglais désigne nos compagnons de vie, à la lumière de la science actuelle qui s’intéresse de plus en plus au microbiote, aux bienfaits des virus bactériophages, ou encore aux bactéries décontaminantes. Trois artistes, trois formules expérimentales, pour mettre en scène ces acteurs du vivant : Tagny Duff réalise des tatouages littéralement viraux sur des échantillons de peau. Paul Vanouse a recours à des plasmides bactériens pour traficoter des portraits d’ADN qui laissent apparaître d’autres identités. Et Adam Brown produit de l’or grâce à des bactéries extrêmophiles – la pierre philosophale serait-elle trouvée ?
ISSN 1766-6465
Exhibition Website: https://www.biofaction.com/portfolio/synth-ethic-art-exhibition/
‘On Microperformativity’ (April/May 2020)
Issue Editors:
Jens Hauser, Medical Museion—University of Copenhagen
Lucie Strecker, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Proposal deadline: Monday 2nd September 2019
The aim of this issue is to scrutinize both the epistemological and aesthetic potential of the notion of 'microperformativity' (Hauser 2006, 2014). The concept denotes a current trend in theories of performativity and performative artistic practices to destabilize human scales (both spatial and temporal) as the dominant plane of reference, and to emphasize biological and technological micro-agencies that, beyond the mesoscopic human body, relate the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic. Investigations into microperformativity redefine what art, philosophy and the technosciences actually consider a 'body' today, in times when performance art shifts towards generalized and pervasive performativity in art. Agencies of genetic sequences, cellular 'machineries', bacteria, fungi, enzymes and other proteins and so forth are no longer conceived of as mere functions, but staged as aestheticized actions, employed to either act as identity proxies, or to stage non-human agencies in relation to performative techno-scientific systems, thus addressing contemporary dynamics linking the machinic and the organic (Salter 2010). This tendency to include 'aliveness' at all levels completes the scope of the previously ambiguous term 'live arts' (Heathfield 2004). Microperformative positions enquire how artistic methods can engage critically with technologies that exploit life on a microscopic and molecular level to merge bio-and digital media, including for global capitalization (Spiess and Strecker 2016, 2017). In parallel to algorithmic finance and high-frequency trading, the instrumentalization of sequential micro-transformations in bioindustrial production lines marks society's shift from human and machine labour to increasingly pervasive forms of microbial manufacturing and computerized bio-optimization. Meanwhile the anthropocentrism of 'artificial intelligence' in its preference of computational approaches to model human-like capacities and consciousness has come under critical scrutiny, microperformative postures may search for 'natural intelligence' in an eco-systemic logic within a larger bio-semiotic web. Such postures insist on the production of meaning and mutual interpretation between organisms in their environments, thus bringing the field of biosemiotics into play as a new modality for contemporary performance studies.
Seeing colors is a sensory experience that goes beyond ocular perception. Color, in short, shapes our understanding of reality. Color can provoke unexpected behavior.Color directly affects our mood, our communication, and our well-being. While color has a profound influence on our lives, it has all kinds of cultural variations, which may go back to specific geographical origins based on regional vegetation, different qualities of light, environmental experience, etc. Even the mimetic principle of colors as a way to represent reality, while universal, differs from culture to culture. At some point, these differences may even be- come direct cultural contradictions—as we find, for example, in the symbolism of the color white as purity for European cultures, but as mourning for Chinese and other Asian cultures.
KEYNOTES:
• Jens HAUSER, University of Copenhagen
• Michel MENU, Palais du Louvre, Paris
• Jaycee NAHOHAI, potter & painter, Zuni Nation
• Frédérique TOUDOIRE-SURLAPIERRE, PU Lettres, Université de Limoges
• Hertha Sweet WONG, English Department, University of California, Berkeley
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 30th November 2020
Not everything that grows is green, and the human imprint sometimes makes good ‘green' intentions fade away: With experimental bio(techno)logical performances and media art installations, Muffathalle's second gREen festival questions which aspects remain underexposed in the talk of ‘green growth’. In the eld of tension between art, nature and science, the artistic positions at gREen get to the bottom of the increasingly uncritically accepted symbolism of ‘green’ beyond the rampant ‘greenwashing’ - as a RE-mix and RE-evaluation of contradictions and paradoxes. Is economic growth really as unlimited as the plant metaphor suggests? What would a kilogram of wheat cost if the ‘ecosystem services’ assumed to be natural and self-evident were really accounted for? And what are the implications on biodiversity when the complexity of the plant world is reduced to its oxygen production and CO2 absorption?
What is ‘green’? Are we ‘green’? And is it the vegetative world at all? Do algae count as ‘superfoods’, environmental pests, or both? Is biofuel green? Through monumental biotechnical installations, artistic olfactory portraits of trees, and the chemical re-enactment of historical toxic pigments, Muffathalle initiates a series of events dubbed gREen that fosters debates in climate politics in the field of tension between art, nature and science.
Beyond the rampant ‘greenwashing’ of our times, the artistic positions get to the bottom of the increasingly uncritically accepted symbolism of ‘green’ - as a RE-mix and RE-evaluation of contradictions and paradoxes. Engineers praise ‘green’ chemistry or biotechnology as ecologically benign, while climate researchers bemoan the ‘greening of the earth’1 as an alarming sign of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and toxic algal blooms discredit the overused association of ‘green’ with sustainability. The economic and political sciences often use the greenness trope in a naively literal way, when ‘green growth’2 is supposed to reconcile ecologically sustainable development with market-based economic models:3 the fallacious symbolic connection between economic and vegetal growth is purposefully maintained to capitalise on the metaphor’s positive connotations. Is ‘green’ perhaps so important to us because of the oscillation of naturalness and artificiality, the healthy and the toxic, the hoped-for and the lost?
Performance Resarch (Routledge) Vol. 25, No. 3: ‘On Microperformativity’ (2020)
Issue Editors: Jens Hauser, Medical Museion—University of Copenhagen & Lucie Strecker, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Direct access to the full digital version of the publication:
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/25/3?nav=tocList
Link for purchasing physical copies from the Centre for Performance Research Bookshop:
https://thecpr.org.uk/product/25-3-on-microperformativity/
Medical Museion exhibited two series of Feuerstein’s works, which prompted discussions about the relationships between body, culture, metabolism and art. While the boundaries between art, science and public engagement have been increasingly dented in the past decades, Feuerstein’s work in the tension field between the arts, philosophy and the biosciences became ‘food for thought’ (and ‘thought for food’, as this volume will demonstrate).
Printed copies can be purchased here:
http://shop.medm.us/product/metabolic-machines-stofskrifter-english-catalogue-only/
https://www.museion.ku.dk/en/whats-on/future-exhibitions/stofskifter/
https://green-slsa2018.ku.dk
https://hss-opus.ub.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/opus4/frontdoor/index/index/docId/6071
The orginal publication in French has not been available anymore since 2008; this PDF is made accessible with the agreement and the kind support of the Filigranes publishing house, until an augmented new edition will be be available. Great thanks to Filigranes and Patrick Le Bescont! https://www.filigranes.com
The publication has not been available anymore since 2008; this PDF is made accessible with the agreement and the kind support of the Filigranes publishing house, until an augmented new edition will be be available. Great thanks to Filigranes and Patrick Le Bescont! https://www.filigranes.com