SymbioticA

Deborah Dixon

Further information

Country of origin

Wales

Website

Dixon’s residency was part of a broader project that set out to investigate the emergence, working practices and underlying philosophies of what has become known as ‘critical BioArt’.

Biography

Deborah Dixon graduated with an undergraduate degree in Geography from Cambridge University before gaining an MSc from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD from the University of Kentucky. Dixon was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, East Carolina University, before moving to Aberystwyth University in 2000. She has been Book Review Editor for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Area, is on the editorial boards of Dialogues in Human Geography and Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, and is Editor of Gender, Place and Culture.

 

She has served on the boards of the Geographic Perspectives on Women group of the AAG, and the Women and Geography Study group of the RGS-IBG. Currently Deborah's research is concerned with the geographic deployment of post-structural and feminist theories, particularly as they relate to a range of 'monstrous' topics such as Bioart, touch and the anomalous.

Research project

Creating the future-body: The visceral aesthetics of BioArt

Though all manner of works may be labelled BioArt in the sense that their subject is biotechnology, a categorical distinction has been asserted between Art that seeks to represent life, or use it as metaphor, and “Art that uses the matter and energy of life itself as a point of departure” (Zaretsky 2005).

Critical BioArt, then, is a very new, loosely held collaborative endeavour between Artists and Scientists wherein biological materials, developed and nurtured within the laboratory, are used as material for Art installations. Cell and tissue cultures, neuro-physiology, bio-robotics and bio-informatics, artificially produced DNA sequences, Mendelian cross-bred organisms, xeno-transplants, homo-grafts, and medical self-experimentation have all come under the banner of a critical BioArt (Hauser, 2005).

Though Art and Science have never been self-sufficient categories -- rather, they revolve within a shared history, locked in an awkward embrace -- this particular form of collaboration moves beyond the usual semantics of synthesis and antithesis, into the more complex terrain of negotiations, mutualities and symbioses.

It is this rendering of critical BioArt as a ‘breach’ of both artistic and scientific protocols that allows it a distinctive contribution to the many debates concerning biotechnology. For the most part, commentators have looked to the way in which biotechnology exacerbates existent processes and tendencies.

Rifkin (1999), Stock (2002) and Fukuyama (2002), for example, dwell on:  the degree to which biotechnology will ameliorate or aggravate current,  global-scale economic divides; the appropriate extent of national and  supra-national regulation of such practices; and the contributory role  of biotechnology in augmenting, or erasing, specifically ‘human’ capacities. Academics across a range of disciplines have pointed out  the rapid proliferation of biotechnology in a number of economic, political and cultural contexts, and the many tensions and anxieties  wrought in its wake (eg., Bostrom 2005; Brown et al 2006; Davies 2006).

Critical BioArt, by contrast, aspires to provide a way of thinking about the future that lies outside of these established horizons, positioning itself as a fulcrum around which alternative visions of the future have been formulated. Within critical BioArt a radical re-ordering of the living organism, as well as nature/society relations  more generally, has come to be regarded as a realisable outcome of  biotechnological advances; what is more, these possibilities are  presented to the public, alongside business and government, in a new  language that, it is argued, is constituted from all manner of  laboratory-created ‘partial lives,’ each contributing its own, distinctive, visceral aesthetic (Kac 2005; Zurr and Catts 2006).

Though critical BioArt is a very recent development there is no doubting its relevance not only to broad-scale debates on the appropriate role of technology in reworking what we consider to be ‘nature,’ and especially ‘human nature,’ but also to our understanding  of how the history of artistic and scientific practice allows for such  a collaboration to be envisioned and realised.  Accordingly, this visit  will focus on one of the world’s leading centers for the creation of critical BioArt – the SymbioticA laboratory cum gallery housed within The University of Western Australia’s (UWA) School of Anatomy and Human Biology – in order to gain insight into:

  • The manner in which institutional space,  financial support and  intellectual capital have  been brought together at UWA in order to  allow  BioArtists from a number of backgrounds to  collaborate on a  series of Tissue Culture-based  projects subsequently exhibited at  national and international symposia.
  • The specific practices through which biological materials are re-worked such that a  ‘new’ visceral aesthetic of form and feature is  borne.
  • The underlying philosophies that animate the initial selection and drawing up of such  projects, as well as their materialisation and  mode of display.

For a month in Perth a number of methodologies will be used to explore the above questions including: archival research into the formation and development of SymbioticA, using the media and university-based materials collected by  the UWA library; in-depth interviews with resident and visiting BioArtists regarding their background, their views on the broader role  of biotechnology in transforming society/nature relations and their vision of BioArt and its associated projects as a particular form of  commentary; and, hopefully, observation of the working practices of  BioArtists, noting the technological means through which biological materials are accessed, re-worked and prepared for exhibition, but also the day-to-day negotiations (face to face as well astechnologically-mediated) through which these collaborative projects are brought into being.

Period of research

April – May 2008

References
  • Bostrom, N. (2005) Transhumanist Values, Review of Contemporary Philosophy 4.1-2: 87-101 Brown, N. et al (2006) Regulating Hybrids –  ‘making a mess’ and ‘cleaning up’ in Tissue Engineering and  Xenotransplantation, Social Theory and Health 4: 1-24
    Davies, G. (2006) The sacred and the profane:  biotechnology, rationality and public debate, Environment and Planning  A 38.3: 423-43
  • Fukuyama, F. (2002) Our Posthuman Future:  Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Hauser, J. (2005) Bios, Techne, Logos:  A timely art career. Santa  Mònica Art Centre Newslettera
  • Kac, E. (2005) Telepresence and Bio Art -- Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press
  • Rifkin, J. (1999) The Biotech Century. Toronto, McArthur and Co
  • Stock,  R. (2002) Redesigning Humans: Our inevitable genetic future. Boston, Houghton Mifflin
  • Zaretsky, A. (2005) The Mutagenic Arts, Magazine Électronique du CIAC 23
  • Zurr, I. and Catts, O. (2006) Towards a New Class of Being: The Extended Body, Intelligent Agent 6.2.