http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/01/body-enhancement-cosmetic-surgery-genetics

Stelarc, Martyn Ware, Andrew Shoben, Dr Jonathan Freeman, Chaired by Michelle Kasprzak

What do we want our bodies to look like in the future? How will technology shape our relationship with the physical environment and the multifaceted identities we create? A panel including Stelarc (Brunel University), Martyn Ware (the Illustrious Company), Andrew Shoben (Greyworld), Dr Jonathan Freeman (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Michelle Kasprzak (Scottish Arts Council), will explore the shifting boundaries between the technologically adapted body and the concept of self and the sense of place.

Duration: 1 hour.

Organised by: PEACH, presence research in action www.peachbit.org

http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/Events/Talking-Science/Bodies-of-the-Future

INTERSPECIES

Can artists work with animals as equals? Interspecies uses artistic strategies to stimulate dialogue about the way we view the relationship between human and non-human animals, in the year of celebrations of Darwin’s birth 200 years ago.

Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK
70 Oxford Street, M1 5NH
Exhibition open
24 January – 29 March 2009, Tue – Sun

www.artscatalyst.org

Interspecies comprises new works by four artists – Nicolas Primat, Kira O’Reilly, Antony Hall and Ruth Maclennan, and existing pieces by Rachel Mayeri, Beatriz Da Costa and Kathy High. All the artists in Interspecies question the one-sided manipulation of non-human life forms for art. They instead try to absorb the animal’s point of view as a fundamental part of their work and practice.

Kira O’Reilly presents an action/installed performance featuring herself and a sleeping female pig, Delilah, Falling Asleep With A Pig, taking place at the private view on Friday 23 January, and on Saturday 24 January. The work addresses the ethics of human and non-human animal interaction, acknowledging the implicit ambivalence in the appropriation of animals as a resource. The artist will inhabit a gallery redesigned for the comfort and welfare of a pig. At some point the pig and/or the artist will sleep. Documentation of the event will be shown in the exhibition.

Nicolas Primat is the only artist in the world that specialises in working with monkeys and apes in collaboration with primatologists. He will show video works resulting from his residencies at the Primatology station, CNRS, Marseille, working with baboons, at the Pasteur Institute, Cayenne, Guyana, working with Saimiris (squirrel monkeys) and at the Animal Park of Apenheul, Holland, working with Bonobo apes.

Anthony Hall’s work ENKI allows electric fish and humans to commune on the same level, avoiding the use of language as such; instead stimulating a shared empathy through physical connection. The project explores the possibilities of cross species communication and human to fish relationships, in particular the electric fish. Is it possible that a symbiotic relationship between human and electronic fish can be effected through passive and active electronic media?

Ruth Maclennan’s work for Interspecies explores the relationship between a bird of prey and the human being who trains it. Like eagles and falcons, the symbolic life of the hawk exceeds its ‘natural’ life, which is itself encouraged by human intervention—in breeding, nesting and the habitat. This is the latest stage in a project that looks at people, architecture, the city, and landscape, from the perspective of a cyborg ‘hawk-camera’.

Two existing works will also be shown in the touring exhibition: Rachel Mayeri’s Primate Cinema, which casts human actors in the role of non-human primates seeking mates, and Beatriz Da Costa’s PigeonBlog which provides an alternative way to participate environmental air pollution data gathering, equipping urban homing pigeons with GPS-enabled electronic air pollution sensing devices.

INTERSPECIES Events at Cornerhouse

Sat 24 January, 2 – 4pm
Artists’ Open Forum
Nicolas Primat, Antony Hall, Ruth Maclennan, Rachel Mayeri and Beatriz da Costa
Join us for this open forum, a unique opportunity to meet the artists and discover more about the ideas behind Interspecies.

Sun 25 January, 4pm
Kira O’Reilly in Conversation
Join performance artist Kira O’Reilly and curator Rob La Frenais, as they discuss Kira’s exhibition piece in relation to her work on sleep and dream research with humans and pigs.

Mon 26 January, 6 – 8pm
Wed 28 January, 2 – 4pm
Workshop: Primate Cinema – How to act like an animal
Participate in a performance workshops led by Interspecies artist Rachel Mayeri, exploring how primates communicate. Through discussion and video clips, learn about animal behaviour in the wild and in cinema and find out about primatology. You will get the chance to engage in physical theatre techniques and learn how to improvise movement and social interactions as non-human primates.

Cornerhouse, 70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5HN
Box office: 0161 200 1500
Opening hours: Tues – Sat: 11.00 – 18.00  Thurs until 20.00
Sun 14.00-18.00
e: info@cornerhouse.org
www.cornerhouse.org

Wednesday, February 25, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 406AB, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center

The Makrolab and Luminous Green: New Formations of the Collective
Marko Peljhan, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, University of California, Santa Barbara  (images in HF)

Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology
Shifting Paradigms in Media Art, Science, and Technology Education in a Global Context
Friday, February 27, 5:30 PM–7:00 PM

The Contextualization of Art in Expanding Areas of Research
Paul Thomas (images in HF)

Database Aesthetics: Artists sorting through Bits & Flesh
Saturday, February 28, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 406B, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Chair: Victoria Vesna, University of California, Los Angeles

Time Capsule
Eduardo Kac, School of the Art Institute of Chicago  (Essay and Images in HF)

Cosmetic Cultures to be held in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Leeds from the 24 to 26 of June 2009.

Papers on any element of ‘cosmetic cultures’ are welcomed but the conference seeks to move beyond well rehearsed ‘Beauty Myth’ arguments.

Beauty has often been conceptualised as the concern only of women (or the only concern of women!) and as idealised in ‘whiteness’or ‘Westerness’. Whilst many have found significant evidence to support these claims, work in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies has already flagged up the importance of men, masculinities and beauty, both in the ‘West’ and ‘East’ and has disrupted the idea that whiteness alone presents idealised beauty in all parts of the world, or even in this one. Whilst beauty ideals may be important in one sense, this conference also aims to explore beauty practices. The subject’s engagement in beauty practices may be ‘transformative’ in line with current ideals, and undertaken in the clinic, or it may
be everyday and mundane, practices in the home or ‘salon’.

Themes will include:

National beauty cultures and histories and the intersection between local and globalised ideals;
Beauty practice ranging from ‘spectacular’ makeover cosmetic surgery to mundane beauty technologies such as diet and exercise, skin tanning/ lightening, hairstyling, hair removal and tattooing/piercing.
Intersections of ‘race’, class, gender and beauty cultures and practices; men, masculinities and beauty;
LGBI and Trans beauties; surgical tourism;
TV makeover shows;
Work in the ‘beauty industry’, including medical practices and cultures, beauty salons and cosmetics marketing and manufacture as well as (fashion and glamour) modelling.

By encouraging participants to explore beauty cultures, practices and politics in their broadest sense we hope to advance current debates and develop an international network of researchers.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

* Professor Carolyn Cooper – University of the West Indies
* Professor Kathy Davis – University of Utrecht
* Dr Debra Gimlin – University of Aberdeen
* Dr Meredith Jones – University of Technology, Sydney
* Professor Toby Miller – University of California, Riverside
* Professor Elspeth Probyn – University of Sydney

200 word abstracts and panel suggestions should be emailed to: Matthew Wilkinson at m.wilkinson@leeds.ac.uk  no later than 1 March 2009. Please mark all emails with ‘Cosmetic Cultures’ in the subject line.

For further info, visit the conference website: http://www.wun.ac.uk/genderstudies/leeds_2009/main.html

Best wishes