[ISEA2020] Panel: Roberta Buiani, Charlotte Jarvis, Felipe Shibuya, Jaden Hastings, Adam Zaretsky & Dalila Honorato — Breeding sentience: queering lineage and voguing enhancement

Panel Statement

Keywords: ART, Baby Bump Selfies, Bio Art, Biobank, Boy or Girl, DNA Valentine, Genetic Art, Genome Editing, GM, Hybrid Life, Medical Imaging, Reproduction Anxiety, Sperm and Eggs, Unnatural Selection

In our indulgence to touch immortality, our fear of being forgotten, our unconvincingly altruistic embrace of selflove, our attempt to get rid of social and biological pressures or simply the uncaring lightness of an inadvertent encounter, we grip the reproductive practice Today’s tales of the birds and the bees are a wholly different reproductive conversation as male fertilization, female ovulation and surrogate gestation have become more and more hacked to respond, not only to the reproductively challenged, but also to a demanding array of kinship design strategies. This panel entitled “Breeding sentience: queering lineage and voguing enhancement” focuses on the enriched experience of procreative manipulation through artistically creative forms of ART (assisted reproductive technology). As critical “reprotech” voices, the six panelists approach the topics of: (a) the unnatural selection of species, (b) the growth of human-animal hybrids, (c) biodiversity and neoeugenic engineering, (d) gender/ genital sociocultural rebalance, (e) matchmaking based on genome sequencing, (f) the impact of preimplantation genetic screening, and (g) prenatal imaging. Our point is that art must be taken into account, to validate the checks and balances, at a time when the ethical limits and the multitude of potential human genetic manipulations are consistently challenged through the practice of formally deregulated principles.

  • Felipe Shibuya was born in São Paulo, Brazil. He studied Ecology and Nature Conservation at the Federal University of Paraná, where he earned his Ph.D. Currently, he is an M.F.A. candidate in Studio Art at the University at Buffalo, working at the intersection between biology and art. All of his work involves aspects of his own identity, and he always highlights the visuality of nature. His current projects involves the deconstruction of archetypes in species that became poetized by humans (such as hummingbirds), and biovisualization.
  • Dalila Honorato, Ph.D, is a facilitator of safe spaces for hosting the interaction of ideas around liminal issues in the frame of Art&Sci. Her research focus is on embodiment, monstrosity, the uncanny and the acrobatic balance between phobia and paraphilia. She is Tenured Assistant Professor in Aesthetics and Visual Semiotics at the Ionian University, Greece, and collaborator at the Center of Philosophy of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal. One of the founding members of the Interactive Arts Lab, she is the head of the steering committee of the conference “Taboo-TransgressionTranscendence in Art & Science”, and, together with Marta de Menezes, the conceptualizer and developer of the project “FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science and Technology”. She was a guest speaker at: Festival Extravagant Bodies: Extravagant Love (Croatia), Coalesce Center for Biological Art (USA), Stamps School of Art & Design (USA), The Fields Institute (Canada), Space Art & Science 21, Leonardo/OLATS, etc.
  • Roberta Buiani is an interdisciplinary artist and media scholar, and the artistic director of the ArtSci Salon at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences (Toronto, Canada). Her recent research creation project draws on collaborative encounters across the sciences and the arts to investigate emerging life forms exceeding the categories defined by traditional methods of classification. Her artistic work has travelled to art festivals (Myseum, Transmediale; Hemispheric Institute Encuentro), community centres and galleries (the Free Gallery Toronto; Immigrant Movement International, Queens, Cocker Architecture Gallery), and science institutions (RPI; the Fields Institute, Ryerson University). Her writing has appeared on Space and Culture, Antennae and The Canadian Journal of Communication among others. With the ArtSci Salon she has launched a series of experiments in “squatting academia”, by re-populating abandoned spaces and cabinets across university campuses with SciArt installations. She holds a PhD in Communication and Culture from York University (CAN). ArtSci Salon website: https://artscisalon.com Personal atomarborea.net
  • Adam Zaretsky (Marist College, Catholic university in New York, USA) is a Wet-Lab Art Practitioner mixing Ecology, Biotechnology, Non-human Relations, Body Performance and Gastronomy. Zaretsky stages lively, hands-on bioart production labs based on topics such as: foreign species invasion (pure/impure), radical food science (edible/inedible), jazz bioinformatics (code/flesh), tissue culture (undead/semi-alive), transgenic design issues (traits/desires), interactive ethology (person/machine/non-human) and physiology (performance/stress). His art practice focuses on an array of legal, ethical, social and libidinal implications of biotechnology.
  • Jaden J. A. Hastings’ work focuses upon the intersection and interplay of art and science – from philosophy to praxis – merging scientific and artistic research, challenging the norms of both disciplines, and moving them into new spaces for exploration. Her research fuses and folds together the fields of machine learning, bioengineering, space exploration, new media art, law and ethics. Jaden’s career in scientific research spans over 15 years and grounded in her longstanding roots as a biohacker. She is alumna of New York University, Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and Central Saint Martins with advanced degrees in Biology, Bioinformatics, and Fine Art. Her artwork has been exhibited in venues across Europe, India, Asia, North America, and Australia.
  • Charlotte Jarvis is an artist working at the intersection of art and science. Her practice often utilises living cells and DNA: she has grown her own tumour, recorded music onto DNA and is currently on a quest to make the world’s first ‘female’ semen. Charlotte has had ten international solo shows and featured in over one hundred and fifty group exhibitions. Charlotte has been resident artist at a number of universities and scientific institutions, including the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Hubrecht Institute. Charlotte’s work has won the Bioart and Design Award in the Netherlands and the Alternate Realities Commission in the UK. She has been peer-review published in Leonardo Journal in the USA. Charlotte is currently a lecturer at The Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths University London, UK.