Body cluster events
Wednesday, October 5th: Ed Cohen (lecture)
Ed Cohen teaches cultural studies and directs the doctoral program in women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University.
In A Body Worth Defending, Ed reveals the unacknowledged political, economic, and philosophical assumptions about the human body that biomedicine incorporates when it recruits immunity to safeguard the vulnerable living organism. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s writings about biopolitics and biopower, Cohen traces the migration of immunity from politics and law into the domains of medicine and science. Offering a genealogy of the concept, he illuminates a complex of thinking about modern bodies that percolates through European political, legal, philosophical, economic, governmental, scientific, and medical discourses from the mid-seventeenth century through the twentieth. He shows that by the late nineteenth century, “the body” literally incarnates modern notions of personhood. In this lively cultural rumination, Cohen argues that by embracing the idea of immunity-as-defense so exclusively, biomedicine naturalizes the individual as the privileged focus for identifying and treating illness, thereby devaluing or obscuring approaches to healing situated within communities or collectives.
Other events coming soon...
Bioart events
For questions about the events we are organizing, please contact the course cluster TA, Justine de Penning (MA candidate in Aesthetics and Politics).
PAST EVENTS...
SEPTEMBER
Thursday, September 23rd. 8-9pm, Gallery A116.
Cluster kick-off (first cluster night), with short presentations by the course cluster faculty.
Pizza and soda will be provided.
Wednesday, September 29th, 7-9pm, Gallery A116.
Screening of Strange Culture by Lynn Hershman Lesson, a documentary/fiction film about the case of Steve Kurtz, an artist who was arrested for bioterrorism. For more info, read the post about Steve Kurtz on this blog.
OCTOBER
Thursday, October 7th. 7:30-9:30pm, Café A.
TIMOTHY MORTON
Timothy Morton (English, UC Davis), author of Ecology without Nature and The Ecological Thought, will give a talk titled “Hyperobjects”. This event is part of the MA in Aesthetics and Politics lecture series.
Thursday, October 14th. 8-9pm, Gallery A116.
Second cluster night, with Miranda Wright and Ian Garrett from the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts.
Pizza and soda will be provided.
NOVEMBER
Friday, November 5th
Workshop by Richard Pell and Philip Ross at Machine Project on how to make web cam based microscopes. More info coming soon...
Saturday, November 6th
Calling All Microscopy Hacks!!!!
We live in a golden age of microscopes, in which new forms, designs and applications for this fantastic tool are constantly being developed and employed. This coming November CRITTER Salon and Machine Project will be putting together an event for the Hammer Museum called An Enormous Microscopic Evening, which will celebrate, demonstrate and display a variety of magnification devices, from state of the art equipment and futuristic gadgets to home made single lens scopes designed to see the invisible. The event will have an entire section on mobile and home-made microscopy, and Machine Project would like to encourage people to join this one night event to show off any hacked microscopy applications or technology that they would like to share.
You can see some images from a smaller version of this event that happened up in the Bay Area last year:
http://crittersalon.blogspot.com/2009/08/critter-hosts-sf-mobile-museum-aug-28.html
If you would like more information or have something to submit, please contact CRITTER at:
critter@gmail.com
Tuesday, November 9th
4:30-6:30pm, Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA.
SYMPOSIUM ON BIOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE ARTS
Featuring Martie Haselton, Philip Ross, David Dunn, Anne Marie Oliver, Robert Mitchell, and others.
7:30-9:30pm, Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA.
CATHERINE MALABOU
Catherine Malabou teaches philosophy at the University Paris X-Nanterre and the State University of New York, Buffalo. Her work articulates the notion of plasticity at the crossroads of philosophy and neuroscience. Her publications in English include The Future of Hegel, Counterpath (with Jacques Derrida), What Should We Do With Our Brain?, and Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing. This event is part of the MA in Aesthetics and Politics lecture series.
Thursday, November 18th. 8-9pm, Gallery A116. **MOVED TO THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9TH**
Third cluster night, visiting speaker TBA.
COMING UP...
DECEMBER
Thursday, December 9th, 7:30-9:30pm, Gallery A116.
Opening reception for the bioart gallery show (Friday, December 3rd-Friday, December 10th) featuring work from students enrolled in at least one of the cluster courses.
Pizza and soda will be provided.
Check out the flyer on our homepage for more information.
For images from the gallery show, click here.
