Auteur : Clarisse Bardiot

Publisher : CECN

A fluorescent bunny, butterflies of unknown patterns, an extinct variety of frogs, a strange type of flora, cloned trees planted in San Francisco… In an era of biotechnology, numerous artists go into partnership with research laboratories. Biotechnology is not merely in the spotlight of the media; it is also a new medium. Genetic manipulations on plants or animals, tissue cultures, hybridizations, cloning, syntheses of artificially produced DNA sequences, etc.: the Living is to Bio Art what the canvas is to painters. After digital technology, it is biotechnology that enters the artistic field. The creation of a new prize category in 2007 within Ars Electronica entitled “Hybrid Art” can be seen as a symbol of this phenomenon. The cell tissue sculptures by the Australian collective Tissue Culture (on the cover of this issue) and the performance Bleu remix by Yann Marussich were rewarded in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Bio Art implies performance, in the original sense of the term. Working on the Living, on the subject, it is an art of presence and incarnation. Thus, it stages and questions organisms, sometimes human ones, and provokes multiple controversies. In a more general way, Bio Art remains a field that questions our own bodies. Several exemplary approaches of Bio Art are gathered in this special survey, which gives great importance to “live shows” – an expression which here acquires a new meaning. With Yann Marussich, Eduardo Kac, Art Orienté Objet, Critical Art Ensemble, Annick Bureaud, Jens Hauser

Thematic axes : Aesthetics & Relationships between the Arts (including the performing arts)

Updated on 01/02/2009