Research Colloquium at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Surrey presents

Jennifer Willet

Wednesday March 28, 2007 at 1:30 pm

Room 14-400, SFU Surrey Campus, 14th floor Central City Tower

BIOTEKNICA

BIOTEKNICA is a not-for-profit artist collective founded by Shawn Bailey and Jennifer Willet in 2000. Its purpose is to investigate critically the ethics, aesthetics, and technological potential for new art forms that lie at the intersection of the arts and the biological sciences.

Since 2004 BIOTEKNICA has adopted a critical participatory methodology shifting our research and production from theoretical and virtual environments into biological science laboratories. Serving as Research Fellows at SymbioticA: the Art and Science Collaborative Research Laboratory at The University of Western Australia, Willet and Bailey began growing living prototypes contributing to ongoing BIOTEKNICA research on teratological mutation. Here we commenced research with tissue culture protocols in the production of artwork as pioneered by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, of the internationally recognized Tissue Culture & Art Project, and SymbioticA founders. In 2006, we returned to SymbioticA – and worked in collaboration with Catts and Zurr on a project entitled Teratological Prototypes. The four artists successfully constructed and exhibited a complex functional laboratory installation for ISEA: Zero One San Jose in the summer of 2006.

Abstract:

This presentation will introduce ongoing BIOTEKNICA research, with an emphasis on the social and political implications of artists working in laboratory environments. This presentation will focus on BIOTEKNICA: LiveLifeLab, a new installation and durational performance where Bailey and Willet conduct an ‘experiment’ of sorts (an art action) in which the two artists construct a functional tissue culture lab in the gallery, and continue their ongoing research for the duration of the installation. This work results from ongoing questions arising for artists working with specialized scientific protocols and confronts the problems of access – accountability – and specialization – that typically inhibit non-specialist engagement in the hard sciences.

Bio:

Jennifer Willet is an artist, a faculty member in Studio Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), and a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at the same institution. Her work explores notions of self and subjectivity in relation to biomedical, bioinformatics, and digital technologies with an emphasis on social and political criticism. She has exhibited, and presented her research extensively across Canada and internationally. She is currently completing her dissertation, (RE)Embodying Biotechnology, arguing for the democratization of biotechnology through emerging BioArt practices.

Since 2002, Willet and Shawn Bailey have collaborated on an innovative computational, biological, artistic, project called BIOTEKNICA. BIOTEKNICA has been exhibited in various forms at The FOFA Gallery Montreal, Quebec (2007), ISEA Zero One San Jose, USA in collaboration with Tissue Culture and Art Project (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr) (2006), Break 2.3 Slovenia (2005), Biennial Electronic Arts Perth Perth, Australia (2004), The European Media Arts Festival Osnabrück , Germany (2003), La Société des arts et technologiques (SAT) Montreal, Canada (2005), and The Forest City Gallery London, Canada (2004), amongst others. In addition BIOTEKNICA has been presented in interviews and conferences at multiple venues across Canada, and in France, Australia, Scotland, Germany, Portugal, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Spain. BIOTEKNICA research has been conducted during residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts Banff, Canada (2002), and SymbioticA, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia (2004, 2006). www.bioteknica.org