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Registration
Doktoral students, and those interested in participating, please register in advance by
contacting Andreia Caroline Karnopp, Coordinator of the Interuniversitäres
Doktoratsprogramm: akarnopp@access.uzh.ch.
Organisation
Romanisches Seminar
Jens Andermann, Dayron Carrillo Morell, Lisa Blackmore, Sandra Frimmel, Andreia
Caroline Karnopp. Doktoratsprogramm Romanistik: Methoden und Perspektiven UZH,
Interuniversitäres Doktoratsprogramm Iberoromanistik, Zentrum Künste und
Kulturtheorie UZH.
Locations
Universität Zürich
Romanisches Seminar
Zürichbergstrasse 8
8032 Zürich
Room: ZUG-D 31
Universität Zürich
Schönberggasse 11
8001 Zürich
Room: SOE-E-2
Cabaret Voltaire
Spiegelgasse 1
8001 Zürich
Workshop
Life Forms:
Biotechnology and Aesthetics
in the Art of Eduardo Kac
With Eduardo Kac (School of Art Institute of Chicago)
and Gabriel Giorgi (NYU)
Universität Zürich
12-13 March 2015 | 18-20h | 10-20h
www.rose.uzh.ch/doktorat/interuni/
Interuniversitäres Doktoratsprogramm Iberoromanistik
Description
Thursday, 12 March 2015
Co-sponsored by the SNF-funded research project ‘Modernity and the Landscape in
Latin America: Aesthetics, Politics, Ecology’ (Prof. Dr. Jens Andermann, Romanisches
Seminar) and the Zentrum Künste und Kulturtheorie (ZKK), this event comprises a
two-day workshop with Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac and Argentine cultural theorist
and critic Gabriel Giorgi, as well as a public ‘salon’ with Eduardo Kac at Cabaret
Voltaire.
18.00-20.00 | D-31 | Romanisches Seminar
Presentation (in Spanish) by Gabriel Giorgi: El umbral animal. Cultura y biopolítica en
Sudamérica.
Kac’s work has raised eyebrows especially for his ‘transgenic art’ projects (among
others: Genesis, 1999; GFP Bunny, 2000; The Eight Day, 2001; Natural History of the
Enigma, 2003/08), which employ genetic interventions into living organisms as well as
drawing audience reactions from playful interaction to open reaction into their creative
process. Yet whereas the ethical and political challenges Kac’ work poses have been
taken up within and beyond the realm of the arts –can and must art engage with the
‘creative’ potentials of biotechnology and genetics? Do these not in fact (as Vilém
Flusser and others have suggested) hold the key to realizing the vanguardist dream of
merging art and life? Or should the artist, from the vantage point of his own creative
practice, warn us against the ethical and political risks involved in genetic
engineering? etc.— much less attention has been paid to the way Kac’ art also
continues and transforms a particular legacy of post-concretist, ambient and
performance art in Latin America.
10.00-12.00 | SOE-E-2 | Workshop Session 1
14.00-16.45 | SOE-E-2 | Workshop Session 2
18.00-20.00 | Salon at Caberet Voltaire with Eduardo Kac, Jens Andermann (Latin
American and Luso-Brazilian Studies, UZH), Marcelo Sánchez
(Paleontology, UZH).
Kac himself has referred to Brazilian artists Flávio de Carvalho, Hélio Oiticica and
Lygia Clark as informing his interest in open, participative forms (both with regard to
his transgenic and earlier, ‘tele-presence’ projects); other examples of contemporary
artists working with habitat forms, living and materials include Luis Fernando Benedit,
Nicola Constantino, Nuno Ramos, or Teresa Margolles. In what ways, the event asks,
does Kac’ work in particular and Latin American bio-art in general represent a
continuation as well as a challenge to long-standing representations of the New World
as a repository of ‘nature’, from colonial chronicles of discovery to contemporary
discourses of biodiversity and conservation? Responding to Kac will be Gabriel Giorgi,
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University and the
author of several books on biopolitics, human-animal relations, and non-normative
bodies in Latin American literature and art.
Friday, 13 March 2015
Bios
Eduard Kac is internationally recognized for his telepresence and bio art. A pioneer
of telecommunications art in the pre-Web '80s, Eduardo Kac emerged in the early '90s
with his radical works combining telerobotics and living organisms. His visionary
integration of robotics, biology and networking explores the fluidity of subject positions
in the post-digital world. At the dawn of the twenty-first century Kac opened a new
direction for contemporary art with his "transgenic art"--first with a groundbreaking
piece entitled Genesis (1999), which included an "artist's gene" he invented, and then
with "GFP Bunny," his fluorescent rabbit called Alba (2000). Kac’s work has been
exhibited worldwide, showcased in international biennials and is part of the permanent
collection of important museums. He is a Professor at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago and author of Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond (MIT Press, 2007); Telepresence
& Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits, & Robots (University of Michigan Press, 2005);
and Luz & Letra: Ensaios De Arte, Literatura E Comunicação (Contra Capa, 2004).
Gabriel Giorgi is Associate Professor at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
at New York University (NYU). He received his Ph.D in Spanish and Portuguese from
NYU, has a BA in Letras Modernas y Magíster en Semiótica from the Universidad
Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. He has published Formas comunes. animalidad,
cultura, biopolítica (Eterna Cadencia, 2013) and Sueños de exterminio.
Homosexualidad y representación en la literatura argentina (Beatriz Viterbo Editora,
2004). He is co-editor of Excesos de vida. Ensayos sobre biopolítica (Paidós, 2007) a
selection translation of essays by Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze,
Antonio Negri and Slavoj Zizek. He is the author of essays on, among others, Osvaldo
Lamborghini, Néstor Perlongher, Copi and Joao Gilberto Noll.