JENNIFER WILLET


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(RE)Embodying Biotechnology
Towards the Democratization of Biotech Through Embodied Art Practices

250 page text with accompaning DVD
2006 - 2008

Contemporary biotechnologies are often portrayed as if all forms biological manipulation are genetic, and equivalent in protocol to data entry command key-strokes <insert>, <delete>, <copy> and <paste>.  This blanket application of computational models to instances of biotechnology provides a sterilizing affect, removing all that is wet, bloody, unruly, and animal, from mass imaginations of the biotech future.  (RE)embodying Biotechnology will focus on moving away from computational models and reuniting notions of embodiment with the language and representation of biotechnology, with a social and political mandate towards informed discourse and public consent.  Methodologically I will propose artistic means for non-specialists to engage in biotechnology as an embodied practice.  Resulting in a complex text, that neither supports or denounces the advancement of biotechnology – (RE)embodying Biotechnology argues for a more holistic understanding of evolving biotechnologies through practical means.

(RE)Embodying Biotechnology serves to investigate the intersection of art and scientific practices in the biotechnological sphere – with an emphasis on the transformative potential of BioArt practices towards complex embodied ethical engagement in public discourses surrounding biotechnology.

Selections of this text have been published as: Why BioArt? Towards Redefining the Specialist, in DIAS DE BIOARTE07, Barcelona, Spain (2007), and Bodies in Biotechnology, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, special issue “Wild Nature and the Digital Life” (2006.) 


J.Willet
Bodies in Biotechnology 2006
Leonardo Electronic Almanac, special issue “Wild Nature and the Digital Life.”

J.Willet
Why BioArt? Towards Redefining the Specialist 2007
DIAS DE BIOARTE07
CAPSULA, Barcelona, Spain.