Jens Hauser | University of Copenhagen (original) (raw)

Papers by Jens Hauser

The Aesthetics of Necropolitics, 2018

A morbid odour clings to the charm of the pervasive trope of greening everything, from mundane ‘g... more A morbid odour clings to the charm of the pervasive trope of greening everything, from mundane ‘green burials’ to transcendental ‘greening of the gods’ , and even ‘green warfare’ , taught in Military Studies. Despite its, at first sight, positive connotations of aliveness and naturalness, the term ‘green’ incrementally serves the uncritical, fetishistic desire to metaphorically hyper-compensate for a systemic necropolitics that has variously taken the form of the increasing technical manipulation of living systems, ecologies, the biosphere, and of very ‘un-green’ mechanisation which, according to Sigfried Giedion, has ‘taken command’ of life and death . This resonates with Achille Mbembe’s definition of necropolitics as the ‘power and […] capacity to dictate who may live and who must die’; Mbembe also draws attention to the less overt tendencies that concern ‘the generalized instrumentalization of human existence’ and ‘the material destruction’ of human and other-than-human populations, and the environment at large . Paradoxically, green is both the most anthropocentric of all colours and, at the same time, the one that figures human’s otherness. As such, it plays a central role in human evolution and self-understanding – as colour, percept, medium, material biological agency, semantic construct, and ideology. In its inherent ambiguity, between alleged naturalness and artificiality, employed to reconcile humans with otherness as such, greenness urgently needs to be disentangled from terms—both putatively non-technological—such as ‘life’ and ‘nature’.

The printed book and the e-book are available via:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786606853/The-Aesthetics-of-Necropolitics

Recomposing Art and Science, 2016

Dead or Alive! Tracing the Animation of Matter in Art and Visual Culture, 2020

The creation of lifelike appearances is an ever-recurring feature in art. But while art-historica... more The creation of lifelike appearances is an ever-recurring feature in art. But while art-historical approaches to ‘aliveness’ or ‘enlivenment’ are traditionally occupied with the content and status of images, thus addressing the ontological paradox that representations made out of dead matter can, indeed, appear as alive, such strategies fail with regard to contemporary artistic strategies that involve bio(techno)logical processes as such. Historically, by means of form, material, or process, a touch of aliveness has been staged. Art has imagined, represented, mimicked, then simulated, and quite recently manipulated living beings and systems for real, since genetics, tissue engineering, DNA chips, and so-called biobricks have entered the repertoire of resolutely experimental artistic strategies. Phenomena that once assumed the form of artistic images – be they two-dimensional paintings or three-dimensional sculptures – are now being translated, scattered, and fragmented into a variety of instances of mediality, including biomedial artistic settings, that become the theater of ‘microperformativity’.

Published in: Borggreen, Gunhild Ravn; Hansen, Maria Fabricius & Tindbæk, Rosanna Maj Kloster (eds.): Dead or Alive! Tracing the Animation of Matter in Art and Visual Culture. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2020, pp. 371-412. With contributions by Alexander Nagel, Frank Fehrenbach, Jacob Wamberg, Mikkel Bogh, Maria Fabricius Hansen, Katerina Harris, Chris Askholt Hammeken, Rosanna Tindbæk, Jeremie Koering, Gunhild Borggreen, Franziska Bork Petersen and Jens Hauser.

About the book: The image is an ontological paradox; it is made of dead matter, yet appears to be alive. For centuries, artists have created images of the living world – images that are static and yet possess the power to bring to life a frozen moment in time. While this tension has constituted a fundamental challenge for as long as theories on the nature of images have existed, recent scholarship has rekindled interest in the question of what images ‘do to us’. Despite the rational discourse of Modernity, we must acknowledge that we view images as half-living entities. Dead or Alive! addresses the perpetual relevance of images’ enigmatic life-likeness. Each of the twelve chapters, written by scholars of art history and visual culture, conveys how the materiality of images generates this powerful effect of animation. Covering a wide range of practices, from early paleolithic stone engravings, medieval tomb sculpture, renaissance death masks and baroque painting to modern fashion, park design, early cinema, robots and bio art, the book demonstrates that the ontological paradox of the image is not limited to a specific historical period or certain types of images, but can be seen throughout the history of images across different cultures.

Co-Corporeality of Humans, Machines, & Microbes, 2022

This text has been commissioned as the foreword to the 'Co-Corporeality' book on architecture, AI... more This text has been commissioned as the foreword to the 'Co-Corporeality' book on architecture, AI, and microbiology, based on a conception of the built environment as a biological entity that opens up a space for coexistence and interaction between humans and microbial life. Based on design-led research, the book explores how we can develop environments for a multi-species world. It focuses on the agency of both human and nonhuman actors. New sensor tools enable observation of and interaction between these different actors. Co-Corporeality links microbiology to material science, artificial intelligence, and architecture. The focus is on how microbial activity can create new proto-architectural materials, how living systems can be integrated into architecture and cooperate along different time scales. The full book can be downloaded at: https://birkhauser.com/en/books/9783035625882

Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art , 2022

Biomedia art that appropriates the most recent technologies of the life sciences updates, at firs... more Biomedia art that appropriates the most recent technologies of the life sciences updates, at first sight, art historical tropes of "aliveness" and "creation" when coming close to "life" in a very literal, biological sense. However, while museums and collectors traditionally deal with the ontological paradox that aesthetic representations made out of dead matter can, indeed, appear as alive, such strategies fail with regard to artistic modes that insist on the authenticity of their staged biological agents, functions, and processes. Such contemporary practices pose unprecedented challenges in terms of staging, conservation, and transport. In addition, they may willfully challenge institutions' status as art depositories or "cemeteries.

This chapter is part of the book 'Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art' (ed. by Rachel Rivenc and Kendra Roth) published by the Getty Conservation Institute (2022), following the symposium 'Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art / La Materia Viva: Conservación de materiales orgánicos en el arte contemporáneo', which took place June 3–5, 2019, in Mexico City: https://shop.getty.edu/products/living-matter-the-preservation-of-biological-materials-in-contemporary-art-978-1606066874

KUNSTFORUM International , 2021

MOTIVES, METAPHORS, MEDIA AND MISCONCEPTIONS: When artists today - in the face of the Anthropocen... more MOTIVES, METAPHORS, MEDIA AND MISCONCEPTIONS: When artists today - in the face of the Anthropocene, threatened biodiversity, viral pandemics and presumably man-made via zoonoses - work with recent biotechnological methods in actual practice they emphasize above all a continuum of life in which the spectrum of human action is counteracted by the microperformative agency of non-human actors. In a genealogical view of this trend, however, neither technological fantasies of omnipotence nor human hubris dominate.

https://www.kunstforum.de/band/2021-277-leonardo-im-labor-kunst-und-wissenschaft/

https://www.kunstforum.de/artikel/kuenstliche-lebendigkeit/

Performance Research, 2020

This issue, edited by Jens Hauser and Lucie Strecker, aims to scrutinize both the epistemological... more This issue, edited by Jens Hauser and Lucie Strecker, aims to scrutinize both the epistemological and aesthetic potential of the notion of ‘microperformativity’. The concept denotes a current trend in theories of performativity and performative artistic practices to destabilize human scales (both spatial and temporal) as the dominant plane of reference and to emphasize biological and technological micro-agencies that relate the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic. Investigations into microperformativity redefine what art, philosophy and the technosciences actually consider a ‘body’ today, in times when performance art shifts towards generalized and pervasive performativity in art. Microperformative positions enquire how artistic methods can engage critically with technologies that exploit life on a microscopic and molecular level to merge bio- and digital media, including for global capitalization. How can performative art and discourses inform these processes to think biopolitics and necropolitics in relation to the dystopia of economy and the utopia of ecology alike? This issue contains contributions on biotechnological performances, physiological processes and micro-gestures, traditional rituals and techniques of craft, on microperformativity seen through the lens of the natural sciences, as well as in economics in times of algorithmic finance and high frequency trading. Performance Resarch (Routledge) Vol. 25, No. 3: ‘On Microperformativity’ (2020) Issue Editors: Jens Hauser, Medical Museion—University of Copenhagen & Lucie Strecker, University of Applied Arts Vienna

Direct access to the full digital version of the publication: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/25/3?nav=tocList

Link for purchasing physical copies from the Centre for Performance Research Bookshop: https://thecpr.org.uk/product/25-3-on-microperformativity/

Performance Research, 2020

The neologism microperformativity denotes a concept that cross-fertilizes aesthetics, media and p... more The neologism microperformativity denotes a concept that cross-fertilizes aesthetics, media and performance theory, as well as science and technology studies, to contextualize the recent attention paid to other-than-human agencies, biological and technical ones alike, which challenge and subvert the mesoscopic tradition within which human phenomenological considerations are, still, rooted. Given the contemporary artistic interest in biotechnology and ecology alike, and the progressive convergence of hard, soft and wetware, microperformativity is intertwined with the notion of biomediality: While art since the 1990s has appropriated a large variety of increasingly available biotechnologies as performative media in order to literally, and materially, stage ‘aliveness’, including at microscopic scales in vivo and in vitro, biomediality denotes the ensemble of all enabling factors that arise as a result of technical manipulation or appropriation of living organisms or organic biological entities, elements and processes.

In times when performance art—which until recently involved mainly human bodies—shifts towards the more general pattern of performativity in art, artists and performers profoundly redefine what actually is considered a body, human or nonhuman, consequently displacing the focus from its mesoscopic actions to its microscopic functions, from physical gestures to physiological processes, and from staged diegetic time to real performative time. Microperformativity, understood as a technical–cultural hybrid phenomenon, questions the human scale (both with regards to space and time)—philosophically, politically and aesthetically—as a crucial point of reference.

Artists who choose microperformative tactics and material instances of biomediality, from microbiome research and synthetic biology to concerns about anthropogenic effects on ecosystems, are indicative of the shift from performance to performativity, from human actions to non-human agency, including its progressive acceptance by audiences, and develop strategies of how the retreat of human performers can be compensated by inventive aesthetic solutions to create encounters with, and experiences for perceivers.

Performance Research, 2020

In this encounter, historian and philosopher of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger discusses to what e... more In this encounter, historian and philosopher of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger discusses to what extent the performative paradigm can be made useful for understanding the natural sciences and how the different notions of performativity transpire in interdisciplinary and art–science collaborations. In conversation with issue editors Jens Hauser and Lucie Strecker, and against the grain of the ‘two cultures’ thesis assumption that the natural sciences and the humanities have grown apart into fields of knowledge that can no longer understand each other, Rheinberger approaches the notion of microperformativity in the light of scientific experimentation. He is putting the focus less on the action of the human experimenter than on the agency of the non-human dimensions involved: substances and organisms are staged to interact with each other, or environments are created to initiate processes in which these interactions can take place—and from which the experimenter can withdraw. Therefore, in the laboratory, two performance contexts and concepts collide. In the experimental process, endless feedback loops are created through the interaction, for instance, between human performers and viruses, which attack bacteria, get them to burst and thus generate forms of technically controlled visualization – by ‘compression’ and ‘dilatation’: Microperformativity implies a sensitization not only to other levels of spatiality but also of temporality than those accessible to the mesoscopic phenomenology of the human, which correspond to the established concept of performativity in art and theatre studies, linguistics and anthropology. In addition, the conversation takes a look at the agential relationships between the micro-, meso- and macrocosmic dimensions with regard to the much-cited term ‘Anthropocene’: An analysis of the performativity of both non-human actors and human technology results in a reversion of the notion of performance: The globe, the planet is striking back—and it is no longer primarily the people who are acting.

Tierstudien, 2020

The artwork of Brandon Ballengée can be analysed as a re-materialized form of post-digital Media ... more The artwork of Brandon Ballengée can be analysed as a re-materialized form of post-digital Media Art, taking into account historical accounts of media as milieu stemming from the natural sciences, and using frogs as living measuring devices. Ballengée’s holistic practice includes eco-actions and participatory survey field trips in the spirit of amateur science, the collecting and conservation of amphibians or other wetland species with deformities and malformations – or promoting the growth of such anomalies in controlled laboratory simulations. His selective breeding and micro-surgery projects to intervene in natural developmental processes, the presentation of these animals either alive, or cleared and stained in a highly aestheticized fashion, or the colourful, oversized and abstract, yet seemingly alive scanner photographs of the specimens’ physiologies, encompass an expansive range of transdisciplinary practices.

Published in: Tiere und / als Medien
ed. by Jessica Ullrich & Stefan Rieger, Tierstudien 18, 2020.

https://neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/zeitschriften/tierstudien/1014/tiere-und/als-medien

ISBN(Print): 978-3-95808-315-8
ISBN(PDF): 978-3-95808-366-0

Shifting Interfaces: An Anthology of Presence, Empathy, and Agency in 21st-Century Media Arts, 2020

Bacteria are increasingly considered in art, philosophy, the natural and the health sciences, bec... more Bacteria are increasingly considered in art, philosophy, the natural and the health sciences, becoming omnipresent in art-based research and research-based art. In the contemporary field of hands-on biomedia art practices, bacteria as the oldest, smallest, structurally simplest but ubiquitous organisms vital for all other life forms are being rediscovered and given a crucial role in both artistic discourse and aesthetic settings. While in earlier biomedia art bacteria remained ontological blind spots—cells, tissues, and genetic sequences were considered more suitable biological entities to microscopically ‘embody’ or ‘encode’ individual organisms for which they stood in pars pro toto—bacteria and their related metaphors currently serve as epistemological indicators.

In: Aldouby, Hava (ed.): Shifting Interfaces: Presence and Relationality in New Media Arts of the Early 21st Century. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020, p. 193-210.

"Early 21st century media arts are addressing the anxieties of an age shadowed by ubiquitous surveillance, big data profiling, and globalised translocations of people. Altogether, they tap the overwhelming changes in our lived experience of self, body, and intersubjective relations. Shifting Interfaces addresses current exciting exchanges between art, science, and emerging technologies, highlighting a range of concerns that currently prevail in the field of media arts. This book provides an up-to-date perspective on the field, with a considerable representation of art-based research gaining salience in media art studies. The collection attends to art projects interrogating the destabilisation of identity and the breaching of individual privacy, the rekindled interest in phenomenology and in the neurocognitive workings of empathy, and the routes of interconnectivity beyond the human in the age of the Internet of Things. Offering a diversity of perspectives, ranging from purely theoretical to art-based research, and from aesthetics to social and cultural critique, this volume will be of great value for readers interested in contemporary art, art-science-technology interfaces, visual culture, and cultural studies."

Navigationen, 2021

Bacteria are getting 'big'. They are attracting attention in art, philosophy, the natural and hea... more Bacteria are getting 'big'. They are attracting attention in art, philosophy, the natural and health sciences, and they are becoming ubiquitous in both art-based research and research-based art. As a result, bacteria are rediscovered in contemporary, specifically bio in medial art practice as the oldest, smallest, structurally simplest, but ubiquitous organisms. While bacteria were still ontological blind spots in earlier biomedical art - cells, tissue and gene sequences were considered more suitable biological entities for the microscopic 'embodiment' or 'coding' of the individual organisms for which they stood pars pro toto - bacteria and the associated metaphors serve currently as epistemological indicators.
Bakterien sind groß im Kommen.1 Sie finden zunehmend Beachtung in der Kunst, der Philosophie, den Natur- und Gesundheitswissenschaften und sie erlangen Omnipräsenz in der kunstbasierten Forschung ebenso wie in der forschungsbasierten Kunst. In der Folge werden Bakterien in der zeitgenössischen konkret ausgerichteten biomedialen Kunstpraxis als älteste, kleinste, strukturell einfachste, aber ubiquitäre Organismen mit lebenswichtiger Funktion für andere Lebensformen wiederentdeckt und erhalten eine herausgehobene Rolle sowohl im künstlerischen Diskurs als auch in ästhetischen Settings. Waren Bakterien in der früheren Biomedienkunst noch ontologische blinde Flecken – Zellen, Gewebe und Gensequenzen galten als geeignetere biologische Entitäten für die mikroskopische ›Verkörperung‹ oder ›Codierung‹ der Einzelorganismen, für die sie pars pro toto standen –, so dienen Bakterien und die zugehörigen Metaphern derzeit als erkenntnistheoretische Indikatoren.

Online version of the whole journal:
https://www.universi.uni-siegen.de/katalog/zeitschriften/navigationen/940027.html

ORLAN. A Hybrid Body of Artworks, 2010

ORLAN: A Hybrid Body of Artworks is an in-depth academic account of ORLAN's pioneering art in its... more ORLAN: A Hybrid Body of Artworks is an in-depth academic account of ORLAN's pioneering art in its entirety. The book covers her career in performance and a range of other art forms. This single accessible overview of ORLAN's practices describes and analyses her various innovative uses of the body as artistic material. This chapter focuses on ORLAN's first biotechnological art project, the Harlequin Coat:

Hauser, Jens & Hallensleben, Markus: Performing the Transfacial Body: ORLAN’s Harlequin Coat. In: Donger, Simon; Shephard, Simon and Orlan (ed.): ORLAN. A Hybrid Body of Artworks. Oxon: Routledge, 2010, p. 138-153.

See direct link: https://www.routledge.com/ORLAN-A-Hybrid-Body-of-Artworks/Donger-Shepherd/p/book/9780415562348

TechnoLogos, 2019

ENGLISH: In their technical nature, humans tend to culturally hyper-compensate for what they feel... more ENGLISH: In their technical nature, humans tend to culturally hyper-compensate for what they feel they have lost. This media archaeological paper discusses two case studies. The first concerns contemporary art forms that employ biotechnologies in actual practice. Paradoxically, they emphasize both their ‘aliveness’ and authenticity on the one hand, and their explicit technicity and artificiality on the other. This article aims at performing a parallel deconstruction of two positively connoted tropes in cultural history and in the arts: aliveness and greenness, terms both putatively non-technological, and often uncritically associated with the idea of naturalness. The first concept, aliveness, can be analyzed against the background of the trans-historical pattern of ‘enlivenment’ in artistic practice. With the advent of software, hardware and wetware in the late 20th century, artistic practices have demonstrated that the concepts of ‘life’ and ‘nature’ need to be uncoupled. First, art employing soft and hardware has dealt with the animation of the technological; later, art that is employing wetware implies the technologization of that which is already animate. Both trends together imply that ‘alive- ness’ cannot stand in for ‘naturalness’ any more. We encounter a similar problem with the culturally pervasive greenness trope: Aliveness and greenness are linked through ‘biofacticity’, the idea of biological artifacts that at the same time grow and indeed are technically constructed from the beginning – the concepts ‘green’ and ‘nature’ need to be uncoupled as well. ‘Green’, symbolically often associated with the ‘natural’, will be addressed as the most anthropocentric of all colours, crucial in human self-understanding beyond colour, as percept, medium, material biological agency, semantic construct and ideology.

RUSSIAN: Люди по своей технической природе склонны посредством культуры гиперкомпенси- ровать то, что, по их мнению, они утратили. В нашей медиаархеологической дискуссии мы обсуждаем два случая. Первый связан с теми формами современного искусства, в которых биотехнологии используются как реальная практика. Как ни парадоксально, они подчеркивают, с одной стороны, свою «жизненность» и аутентичность, а с другой – свою явную технологичность и искусственность.
Цель данной работы – провести параллельный анализ тропов «живое» и «зеле- ное», имеющих положительные коннотации как в истории культуры, так и в искусстве. Считается, что эти термины могут быть противопоставлены технологическому, при этом предполагается их связь с понятием «природного». Анализ первого тропа может быть проведен на основе представления в произведениях искусства идеи «оживле- ния», проходящей красной нитью через все историю искусств. С появлением в конце XX века программного обеспечения и компьютеров, новых профессий в сфере инфор- мационных технологий возникла необходимость провести границу между понятиями «жизнь» и «природа». Посредством использования в искусстве программного обеспе- чения и компьютеров происходит «оживление» технологических процессов, а затем специалисты осуществляют технологизацию того, чему уже был дал импульс «жиз- ни». Это означает, что «живое» не может больше быть синонимом «природного».
Та же проблема возникает и в отношении столь популярного в нашей культуре опре- деления «зелёный», то есть «экологичный»: «жизненность» и «экологичность» соединя- ются понятием «биофактичности», идеей создания биологических артефактов, которые одновременно способны развиваться и в то же время изначально сконструированы по- средством технологий. Понятия «экологичности» и «природы» мы также обязаны разде- лить. «Экологичность», которую часто ассоциируют с «природностью» и «естественно- стью», будет представлена как предельно антропоцентрическое явление, краеугольный камень человеческого самосознания, как воспринимаемый образ, медиум, материальный биологический объект, семантический конструкт и идеология.

WETWARE: Art - Agency - Animation, 2016

Not only the question What is Life? but its logical extension What is Artificial Life? has been a... more Not only the question What is Life? but its logical extension What is Artificial Life? has been a recurrent inquiry in cultural history in our attempt to understand-philosophically, scientifically, and artistically-and to recreate what actually constitutes aliveness. In our efforts to comprehend the intrinsic features that make living things essentially alive, reconstruction and recreation, synthesis out of analysis, appear to be a consistent human drive.

Stream 04, 2018

Faced with an obsessive questioning about the nature of life, art has tried to understand and rec... more Faced with an obsessive questioning about the nature of life, art has tried to understand and recreate the living, developing the myth of “vivification” and a fascination with the staging of the living. Having always sought to imagine, represent, imitate, and then simulate the living, it now manages to manipulate it directly via wetware. If information technology provided art with a new direction in the seventies, favoring dynamic processes rather than objects, the convergence of synthetic biology and technologies of the living now allows us to explore this wetware, “wet machines” which blur the borders between organisms and machines. The creation of “artificial life” goes beyond computer simulations and robotics, giving birth to hybrid and semi-living systems that challenge the boundaries between the living and the non-living, between synthetic and organic life. For Artificial Life art, organic simulation and re-materialization are no longer distinct but rather operations that are compatible with wetware, shifting concepts of art, agency, and animation.

Stream 04, 2018

Face à l’interrogation obsessionnelle sur la nature de la vie, l’art a tenté de comprendre et rec... more Face à l’interrogation obsessionnelle sur la nature de la vie, l’art a tenté de comprendre et recréer le vivant, développant le mythe de la « vivification » et une fascination pour la mise en scène du vivant. Ayant toujours cherché à imaginer, représenter, imiter puis simuler le vivant, il en arrive désormais à la manipulation directe par le wetware. Si les technologies de l’information avaient donné dans les années 1970 une nouvelle direction à l’art, au profit des processus dynamiques plutôt que les objets, la convergence de la biologie de synthèse et des technologies du vivant permet désormais d’explorer ce wetware, des « machines humides » qui estompent les frontières entre organismes et machines. La création de « vie artificielle » dépasse la simulation informatique et la robotique, donnant naissance à des systèmes hybrides et semi-vivants qui remettent en cause les frontières entre le vivant et le non-vivant, la vie synthétique et la vie organique. Pour l’artificial life art, la simulation et la re-matérialisation organique ne sont plus distinctes mais des opérations compatibles avec le wetware, déplaçant les concepts d’art, d’agentivité et d’animation.

Le Palais, 2017

En s'emparant des biotechnologies en tant que médium à partir des années 1990, des artistes ont b... more En s'emparant des biotechnologies en tant que médium à partir des années 1990, des artistes ont bouleversé les relations entre l'art et le vivant. Au-delà de la représentation et du simulacre, ils se sont lancés dans des manipulations de systèmes vivants. La tendance artistique résolument expérimentale qui émerge depuis les années 1990 et prend pour support matériel les biotechnologies les plus diverses pose toute une série de défis à l'histoire de l'art, à la théorie esthétique, à la philosophie et à l'épistémologie canoniques. Les artistes contemporains qui pénètrent dans les laboratoires ou créent les leurs viennent actualiser les paradigmes de « création » issus de l'histoire de l'art tout en étant particulièrement-et littéralement-« proches de la vie ». / The resolutely experimental trend of art, which has emerged since the 1990s, and which uses the most diverse biotech- nologies as its material medium, poses a large scope of challenges to canonical art history, aesthetic theory, philosophy and episte- mology. Contemporary artists who enter labs, or create their own, seem to upgrade art historical paradigms of “creation” while being particularly—and literally—“close to life.”

BIOS: Konzepte des Lebens in der zeitgenössischen Skulptur - Concepts of Life in Contemporary Sculpture, 2012

BIOS – CONCEPTS OF LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE brings international artists together in terms ... more BIOS – CONCEPTS OF LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE brings international artists together in terms of their involvement with the living, in particular concerning the upheavals in modern life sciences by the progressive developments in microbiology and genetic engineering. As an artistic genre, sculpture is intertwined with concepts of vitality since time immemorial, as expressed in one of its origin myths. Ovid’s story of the sculptor Pygmalion tells the tale of the divine transformation of an ivory statue that he created into a living woman. At the symbolic level, this text refers to the summoning of matter through the sculptural act, marking a peculiar perimeter between the artificial and the living at least since antiquity. In the hands of the sculptor, raw material is transformed to a form that does not claim the place of the living from the outset, but does indeed raise the suspicion of wanting to compete with divine creation. The crossing of this line under the influence of scientific hubris became part of our collective memory, among others, with Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein The understanding of life and the plasticity of the living has fundamentally changed in the last twenty years, due to the ground-breaking discoveries in genetic engineering and microbiology. In the exhibition, the view is directed at plants and the organic as a field already deformed and scientifically permeated by mankind, which has lost its strangeness and autonomy, but has become all the more puzzling in the process.

Participating artists:
Brandon Ballengée (USA *1974)
Peter Buggenhout (Belgium *1963)
Lee Bul (South Korea *1964)
Mark Dion (USA *1961)
Brad Downey (USA *1980)
Thomas Feuerstein (Austria *1968)
Eli Gur Arie (Israel *1964)
Tue Greenfort (Denmark *1973)
Patricia Piccinini (Australia *1965)
Donato Piccolo (Italy *1976)
Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger (Switzerland *1967, *1964)
Günter Weseler (Germany *1930)
David Zink Yi (Peru *1973)

Relive: Media Art Histories, 2013

The Aesthetics of Necropolitics, 2018

The printed book and the e-book are available via:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786606853/The-Aesthetics-of-Necropolitics

Recomposing Art and Science, 2016

Dead or Alive! Tracing the Animation of Matter in Art and Visual Culture, 2020

Co-Corporeality of Humans, Machines, & Microbes, 2022

Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art , 2022

KUNSTFORUM International , 2021

https://www.kunstforum.de/band/2021-277-leonardo-im-labor-kunst-und-wissenschaft/

https://www.kunstforum.de/artikel/kuenstliche-lebendigkeit/

Performance Research, 2020

Direct access to the full digital version of the publication: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/25/3?nav=tocList

Link for purchasing physical copies from the Centre for Performance Research Bookshop: https://thecpr.org.uk/product/25-3-on-microperformativity/

Performance Research, 2020

Tierstudien, 2020

Published in: Tiere und / als Medien
ed. by Jessica Ullrich & Stefan Rieger, Tierstudien 18, 2020.

https://neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/zeitschriften/tierstudien/1014/tiere-und/als-medien

ISBN(Print): 978-3-95808-315-8
ISBN(PDF): 978-3-95808-366-0

Shifting Interfaces: An Anthology of Presence, Empathy, and Agency in 21st-Century Media Arts, 2020

In: Aldouby, Hava (ed.): Shifting Interfaces: Presence and Relationality in New Media Arts of the Early 21st Century. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020, p. 193-210.

Navigationen, 2021

Online version of the whole journal:
https://www.universi.uni-siegen.de/katalog/zeitschriften/navigationen/940027.html

ORLAN. A Hybrid Body of Artworks, 2010

See direct link: https://www.routledge.com/ORLAN-A-Hybrid-Body-of-Artworks/Donger-Shepherd/p/book/9780415562348

TechnoLogos, 2019

WETWARE: Art - Agency - Animation, 2016

Stream 04, 2018

Le Palais, 2017

BIOS: Konzepte des Lebens in der zeitgenössischen Skulptur - Concepts of Life in Contemporary Sculpture, 2012

Relive: Media Art Histories, 2013

$Research paper thumbnail of OU\ VERT Symposium and Events Programme$

OU\ VERT Symposium , 2019

OU\ /ERT Symposium: Phytophilia - Chlorophobia – Situated Knowledges; Bourges, November 14, 15 & ... more OU\ /ERT Symposium: Phytophilia - Chlorophobia – Situated Knowledges; Bourges, November 14, 15 & 16.

This international and interdisciplinary conference brings together botanists, biologists, philosophers and artists to question the plant as both a figure of thought and a collaborating agent, and emphasizes the importance of material, epistemological and political commitment in the arts at a time of environmental crisis. The conference will deconstruct the superficial use of ‘green’ as a masquerade, supposedly synonymous with ecology and plant life, while highlighting the sensory modalities of plants and traditional knowledge about pharmacopoeia, in order to increase our perception of the environment and the current climate conditions.

UN/GREEN, COM/POST/HUMAN, N/AI The 4th International Art-Science Conference In the framework of... more UN/GREEN, COM/POST/HUMAN, N/AI
The 4th International Art-Science Conference
In the framework of the RIXC Festival:
UN/GREEN ― Naturally Artificial Intelligences Riga, July 4―6, 2019
Venues: The Latvian National Museum of Art and The Art Academy of Latvia

GREEN, 2018

We have chosen to center the SLSAeu Conference 2018 on the theme of GREEN, providing a resolutely... more We have chosen to center the SLSAeu Conference 2018 on the theme of GREEN, providing a resolutely cross-disciplinary platform to explore one of the most pervasive and broadest tropes of our times. How to define and understand greenness is an urgent political, societal, philosophical and economic question far beyond academia – yet there is much confusion about its meanings. The conference program reveals how much green has become pervasive across a broad range of disciplines. But far from having universal meaning, it marks a dramatic knowledge gap prone to systematic misunderstandings. The submitted proposals demonstrate a large spectral field of provocatively un-green and prismatic contributions from the most diverse academic disciplines and professional fields. Engineers may brand ‘green technologies’ as ecologically benign, but climate researchers point to the ‘greening of the earth’ itself as the alarming effect of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. ‘Green growth’ aims to reconcile economic and ecologically sustainable development, while in philosophy ‘prismatic ecology’ rebukes the use of green to represent binary ideas of the other-than-human world as an idealized nature. More concept than color, green is often being reduced to a mere metaphor stripped of its material, epistemological and historical referents. This confusion increasingly obstructs an interdisciplinary dialogue between the humanities and the natural sciences – a dialogue which is urgently required considering anthropogenic effects on climate and biodiversity. The umbrella term ‘green’ opens up perspectives to interdisciplinary approaches that entangle fields such as philosophy, art theory & history, literature & poetry, political & social sciences, environmental & medical humanities, color theory, per- ception and cognition, anthropology & ethnography, biology, biodiversity management and landscape architecture.

MATTER(S) matter(s), 2018

Opening Conference of the MSU Broad exhibition MATTER(S) matter(s): Bridging Research in the Arts... more Opening Conference of the MSU Broad exhibition MATTER(S) matter(s): Bridging Research in the Arts and Sciences. The events are made possible through collaborations between the MSU Broad, MSU BRIDGE Artist-in-Residence Program, and Science Gallery Lab Detroit.

UNGREENING GREEN, 2017

Un-Greening Green: Materials - Metaphors - Media - Misunderstanding. This first interdisciplinary... more Un-Greening Green: Materials - Metaphors - Media - Misunderstanding. This first interdisciplinary (OU)VERT symposium at the Medical Museion/University of Copenhagen on 19 May 2017 invited philosophers, artists, art historians, science and technology scholars, as well as researchers from the natural and the medical sciences to confront positions inherent in the pervasive greenness trope, and to debate contradictions emerging with its migration across different cultures of knowledge.

UNGREENING GREEN, 2017

Un-Greening Green: Materials – Metaphors – Media – Misunderstandings. The first interdisciplinary... more Un-Greening Green: Materials – Metaphors – Media – Misunderstandings. The first interdisciplinary (OU)VERT symposium in Copenhagen brought together philosophers, artists, art historians, science and technology scholars, and researchers from the natural and the medical sciences to confront positions inherent in the pervasive greenness trope and to debate contradictions emerging with its migration across different knowledge cultures. A collaboration between the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Medical Museion / Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences of the University of Copenhagen, Kulturværftet / The Culture Yard Helsingør & Click Festival, the event has been supported by Goethe-Institut Dänemark, Institut Français, the Section for Science Communication of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic research, and OU/VERT Association 1901 Paris. The event was extended by a special performance by the artist group HeHe at the Click Festival as part of the festival’s theme 'Quirky Ecologies 'in Helsingør. Organizer: Jens Hauser, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies/Medical Museion.

$Research paper thumbnail of OU\ /ERT Exhibition Catalogue (English/French)$

OU\ /ERT Catalogue, 2019

OU\ /ERT: Phytophilia - Chlorophobia - Situated Knowledges / Phytophilie – Chlorophobie – Savoirs... more OU\ /ERT: Phytophilia - Chlorophobia - Situated Knowledges / Phytophilie – Chlorophobie – Savoirs Situés

Exhibition/Exposition 18.10.2019 - 18.1.2020,
Emmetrop - Antre Peaux, Bourges/France
Commissariat: Jens Hauser & Aniara Rodado Production

Project supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme GREEN (Green Revisited: Encountering Emerging Naturecultures) in collaboration with Bandits-Mages and ENSA Bourges / Projet soutenu par le programme Europe Créative de l’Union Européenne, GREEN (Green Revisited: Encountering Emerging Naturecultures), Avec la collaboration de l’association Bandits-Mages et l’ENSA de Bourges.

Communicating with plants, updating their rela- tionship with and knowledge of witchcraft, invent- ing eco-technical systems where humans become superfluous, dancing with phytoplankton, planting herbicide-resistant gardens or planting virtual trees to offset the CO2 footprint of our digital life, performing the sick body with organ or molecu- lar transplants, or synthesizing hyper-toxic green pigments, far from the images of the idealised pastoral nature... The OU\ /ERT artists open up debates around the pervasive greenness trope, get physically involved and bring plants and other symbiotic creatures into the limelight. Trans-species alliances that challenge anthropocentric claims in the age of ubiquitous greenwashing. Distrustful of green and superficial metaphors, they insist on the importance of situat- ed knowledges related to our chlorophyllous fellow organisms, essential for all other forms of life. / Communiquer avec le végétal, actualiser sa filiation avec les savoirs sorciers, inventer des systèmes éco-techniques où l’humain devient superflu, danser avec du phytoplancton, planter des jardins de résistance aux herbicides ou planter des arbres virtuels pour compenser l’empreinte du CO2 de notre vie numérique, engager le corps malade dans des per- formances avec des transplants d’organes ou moléculaires, ou encore synthétiser des pigments de cou- leur verte hyper-toxique, loin des images de la nature pastorale idéalisée... Les artistes de l’exposition OU\ /ERT s’engagent physiquement et mettent en scène les plantes et autres créatures symbiotiques. Des alliances trans-espèces qui défient les prétentions anthro- pocentriques à l’heure du greenwashing omnipré- sent. Méfiants à l’égard des métaphores vertes et superficielles, elles.ils insistent sur l’importance des savoirs situés en lien avec des organismes chlorophylliens, essentiels pour toutes les autres formes de la vie.

$Research paper thumbnail of OU\ /ERT: Phytophilia - Chlorophobia - Situated Knowledges (English Press Release)$

Exhibition, Performances, Conference, Cinema & Workshops at Transpalette Art Center Bourges/Franc... more Exhibition, Performances, Conference, Cinema & Workshops at Transpalette Art Center Bourges/France, from October 18, 2019 to January 18, 2020:

Communicating with plants, updating their relationship with and knowledge of witchcraft, inventing eco- technical systems where humans become superfluous, dancing with phytoplankton, planting herbicide- resistant gardens or planting virtual trees to offset the CO2 footprint of our digital life, performing the sick body with organ or molecular transplants, or synthesizing hyper-toxic green pigments, far from the images of the idealised pastoral nature... The OU\ /ERT artists open up debates around the pervasive greenness trope, get physically involved and bring plants and other symbiotic creatures into the limelight. Trans-species alliances that challenge anthropocentric claims in the age of ubiquitous greenwashing. Distrustful of green and superficial metaphors, they insist on the importance of situated knowledges related to our chlorophyllous fellow organisms, essential for all other forms of life.

Gilberto Esparza (Mexico)
Špela Petrič (Slovenia)
Quimera Rosa (France/Argentina)
Adam Brown (United States)
Agnes Meyer-Brandis (Germany)
Eva-Maria Lopez (Germany)
Joana Moll (Spain)
Francisco López (Spain)
Baggenstos & Rudolf (Switzerland)
Karine Bonneval (France)
Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot (France)
Jean Marc Chomaz, with Giancarlo Rizza & Vincenzo Giannini (France)
José Le Piez & Patricia Chatelain (France)
La Bruja de Texcoco (Mexico)
Lechedevirgen Trimegisto (Mexico)
Dance for Plants (France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium)
Tina Tarpgaard (Denmark)
Roger Rabbitch (Spain)
Pedro Soler (Ecuador)
Tiziano Derme & Daniela Mitterberger (Italy/Austria)

$Research paper thumbnail of OU\ /ERT: Phytophilie - Chlorophobie - Savoirs Situés (French Press Release)$

Exhibition, Performances, Conference, Cinema & Workshops et Transpalette Art Center Bourges/Franc... more Exhibition, Performances, Conference, Cinema & Workshops et Transpalette Art Center Bourges/France 18.10.2019 - 18..1.2020:

Communiquer avec le végétal, actualiser sa filiation avec les savoirs sorciers, inventer des systèmes éco- techniques où l’humain devient superflu, danser avec du phytoplancton, planter des jardins de résistance aux herbicides ou planter des arbres virtuels pour compenser l’empreinte du CO2 de notre vie numérique, performer le corps malade avec des transplants d’organes ou moléculaires, ou encore matérialiser des pigments de couleur verte hyper-toxique, loin des images de la nature pastorale idéalisée... Les artistes de l’exposition OU\ /ERT s’engagent physiquement et mettent en scène les plantes et autres créatures symbiotiques. Des alliances trans-espèces qui défient les prétentions anthropocentriques à l’heure du greenwashing omniprésent. Méfiants à l’égard des métaphores vertes et superficielles, elles.ils insistent sur l’importance des savoirs situés en lien avec des organismes chlorophiliens, essentiels pour toutes les autres formes de la vie.

Artistes:
Gilberto Esparza (Mexique)
Špela Petrič (Slovénie)
Quimera Rosa (France/Argentine)
Adam Brown (États-Unis)
Agnes Meyer-Brandis (Allemagne)
Eva-Maria Lopez (Allemagne)
Joana Moll (Espagne)
Francisco López (Espagne)
Baggenstos & Rudolf (Suisse)
Karine Bonneval (France)
Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot (France)
Jean Marc Chomaz (France)
José Le Piez et Patricia Chatelain (France)
La Bruja de Texcoco (Mexique)
Lechedevirgen Trimegisto (Mexique)
Dance for Plants (France, Allemagne, Danemark, Belgique)
Tina Tarpgaard (Danemark)
Roger Rabbitch (Espagne)
Pedro Soler (Équateur)
Tiziano Derme & Daniela Mitterberger (Italie/Autriche)

Exhibition and Conference organised at the Latvian National Museum of Art and at the Art Academy ... more Exhibition and Conference organised at the Latvian National Museum of Art and at the Art Academy of Latvia, July 4-6, 2019 in Riga: The event complicates the pervasively employed notion of “green” and provides a resolutely interdisciplinary platform for the discussions and artistic interventions exploring one of the most paradoxical and broadest topics of our times. 'Green’, symbolically associated with the ‘natural’ and employed to hyper-compensate for what humans have lost, is being addressed as the indeed most anthropocentric of all colours, in its inherent ambiguity between alleged naturalness and artificiality. Are we in control of ‘green’? Despite its broadly positive connotations ‘green’ incrementally serves the uncritical desire of fetishistic and techno-romantic naturalization in order to metaphorically hyper-compensate for material systemic biopolitics consisting of the increasing technical manipulation and exploitation of living systems, ecologies, and the biosphere at large.

UN/GREEN, 2019

Exhibition Catalogue from the National Museum of Art, 6.7.-22.9.2019, Latvian National Museum of ... more Exhibition Catalogue from the National Museum of Art, 6.7.-22.9.2019, Latvian National Museum of Art. Curators: Jens Hauser, Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits.

Applied Microperformativity, 2018

How does the agency of genes or cell fragments, proteins or enzymes, bacteria and fungi relate to... more How does the agency of genes or cell fragments, proteins or enzymes, bacteria and fungi relate to macroscopic dynamics of power in contemporary biopolitics? How can performance art and discourse inform these processes? What are the artistic methods to engage critically with technologies that exploit life on a micro- scopic and molecular level to merge bio- and digital media for global capitalization? International artists, scientists and experts will come together to exchange artistic and theoretical approaches that dissociate causal relations inherent to capitalism by considering a specifically post-anthro- pocentric notion of performativity – one that includes material and discursive, affec- tive and scientific, human and nonhuman, and natural and cultural elements. They highlight how biotechnologies produce scales that are exclusive while influencing economic, ethical and artistic values; a microperformative approach enables us to encounter value as a critical experience, as a force rather than a norm. Looking
at the microdynamics between living matter, technology and capital is inspired by the quest to grasp the scales of space but also of time, where life is transformed to code and furthermore into a tradable commodity. The format of the symposium seeks to experimentally apply critical performance, counter biotactics, research and theory.
It invites the discovery of microperformati vity not solely as a tool to describe complex interstices, but as a force that reconciles the dystopia of the economy with the utopia of ecology — with the capacity to visualize an intra-action between living matter, human economic behavior and technology.

Curated by Lucie Strecker, Klaus Spiess and Jens Hauser

Further informationt: appliedmicroperformativity.net

![Research paper thumbnail of {un]split}: Micro Performance & Macro Matters

{un][split}, 2018

Performance-Kunst heute inszeniert im Zeitalter von biotechnischer Manipulation und Klimawandel n... more Performance-Kunst heute inszeniert im Zeitalter von biotechnischer Manipulation und Klimawandel nicht nur den menschlichen Körper, sondern erweitert das Spektrum unserer Handlungen um die Aktionspotentiale von Materie, Molekülen, Bakterien, Zellen des Tierischen und des Pflanzlichen. Mikro-Performance zeigt Makro-Effekte auf und fordert ökologisches Bewusstsein jenseits des verheerend grassierenden Anthropozentrismus – dem übertrieben Drang des Menschen, sich selbst stets als den Mittelpunkt der weltlichen Realität zu sehen. Transformationen in vivo und in vitro auf der mikroskopischen Kleinstebene lassen neue Hybride entstehen, bei denen der mensch- liche Körper nur einer von vielen ist. Bei {un][split} ist der Mensch nicht das Maß aller Dinge. Es zeigt künstlerische Positionen des Digitalen und des Analogen, vom Virtuellen zum Materiellen, als Prozess des fortwährenden Spaltens und Zusammenfügens meist übersehener Akteure: tanzende Mehlwürmer gegen die Plastik-Pest, Eukalyptus-Moleküle auf globalem Eroberungszug, Biobricks als lebende Währung und Spekulationsobjekt, Gensequenzen als nationale Identität, kollektive Intelligenz von Ameisen, Photonen, Blasen und exoplanetarische Phänomene, Organismen als Schlachtfeld digitaler Steuerung, und soziale Verantwortung inszeniert als sensibles Zusammen- spiel von unmerklicher Muskelspannung, maschineller Abstraktion und kollektivem Austarieren von pro und contra.

QUIRKY ECOLOGIES - CLICK FESTIVAL, 2017

The 6th edition of Elsinore’s CLICK Festival investigates these Quirky Ecologies that we are, and... more The 6th edition of Elsinore’s CLICK Festival investigates these Quirky Ecologies that we are, and that we are only slowly becoming aware of: Rather than taking human’s allegedly exceptional ‘nature’ and its cultural-technical superiority for granted, CLICK humbly stages human nature itself as an interspecies relationship while scientific discoveries grant more and more agency to bacteria, plants, non-human animals, phytoplankton and further tiny companions as significant others. How to come to grips with anthropocentrism? Art challenges the notion of the environment as considered beneficial milieu for humans only and reconsiders concepts such as ‘body’, ‘identity’ and ‘species’ to promote ‘plantamorphizations’, multi-species entanglements and microbial selves. In times where ‘we’ are endangering both our internal and our external ecologies, Quirky Ecologies explore the relationship between environments and ‘invironments’, questioning the interplay between ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ which are becoming meaningless in today’s worldwide inside-out laboratories. They shape our gaze for human-plant communication, plastiglomerates, DIY gyn-ecology, and re-enacts molecular animals, re-greens trees, and suggests swarming ants and autonomous plastic collecting drones as intelligent alternatives to ‘us’.

Organized and moderated by Jens Hauser, with the participation of Judith van der Elst, Åsa Ståhl & Kristina Lindström, Klaus Spiess & Lucie Strecker,
Aniara Rodado, Klau Kinki, Paula Pin & Oscar Martin, Timothy Morton,
Špela Petrič and Jacob Wamberg.

MATTER(S) matter(s): Bridging Research in the Arts and Sciences, 2018

Exhibition at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, October 2018 - Ma... more Exhibition at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, October 2018 - March 2019, showcasing the work of MSU BRIDGE Artists-in-Residence.

MATTER(S) matter(s), 2018

The world today is increasingly determined, physically and mentally, by the rapid development and... more The world today is increasingly determined, physically and mentally, by the rapid development and expansion of the techno-sciences. It is also well established that knowledge derived from scientific study is not "pure"; it is deeply entangled with its technological tools and sociopolitical contexts. In response to the deceivingly seamless influence of the techno-sciences, this exhibition presents artists who privilege experimental, hands-on work with media, materials, and matter-the tools and methodologies of the "lab"-to scrutinize the different forces at play and ask new, radical questions about how the world works and our place therein.

All the artists in this exhibition were invited through Michigan State University's BRIDGE Residency and Lecture Program, which aims to create a platform for intermedia art that goes beyond the creation of forms and narratives, and engages in alternative forms-equally poetic and political-to produce knowledge. The exhibition thus reveals an "epistemological turn" in the arts and sciences-a focus on how knowledge is produced, and how that process of production inflects meaning and interpretation. The chosen artists have interacted with faculty members and students in different fields across the university's many colleges. These partnerships involved hands-on learning experiences and use of the university's many technical fabrication facilities.

sk-interfaces: Exploding Borders in Art, Technology and Society (Luxembourg), 2009

Exhibition brochure from Casino Forum d'Art Contemporain Luxembourg, in French, German and Englis... more Exhibition brochure from Casino Forum d'Art Contemporain Luxembourg, in French, German and English. An exhibition of contemporary works at the intersection of art, science, philosophy and social culture.

Skin is our natural ‘interface’ with the world – more and more, however, technological extensions are taking over its role; ‘interfaces‘ create both new freedoms and new constraints. In the cross-disciplinary exhibition sk-interfaces, twenty international artists reflect on how modern techno-sciences have altered our relationship with the world: telepresence, digital technology, speculative architectures, bio-prostheses, tissue culture or transgenics – for the artists they are not mere topics but tools, methods and media to appropriate. They test the permeability of the borders between disciplines, art and science. Their interfaces connect us with other species, put satellite bodies up for debate, destabilize our conception of what it means to be human today, and create evolutionary scenarios confronting the technological pressure to adapt and the sociopolitical implications.

sk-interfaces: Exploding Borders in Art, Technology and Society (Liverpool), 2008

Exhibition brochure from FACT Liverpool. An exhibition of contemporary work at the intersection o... more Exhibition brochure from FACT Liverpool. An exhibition of contemporary work at the intersection of art, science, philosophy and social culture.

Skin represents a place where art, science, biopolitics, philosophy and social culture inter-face. sk-interfaces presents the work of 17 international artists reflecting on the way current technologies are changing our lives, with an emphasis on the transformation process itself. The artworks in sk-interfaces deal with the concept of liminality - a period of transition between two states of being - and the fluctuating ‘in-betweeness’ of our current socio-cultural climate. Curator Jens Hauser has devised an exhibition in which skin becomes a symbol: skin is the largest organ in the human body making up 16% of our body weight; it is a semi-permeable membrane demarcating the outside world from the internal spaces of the body. As technology becomes more sophisticated, so our notion of what is organic or ‘natural’ and what is man-made becomes blurred. In this exhibition the idea of an interface - the point of connection, the place in between one thing and another - is challenged.

Devenir immobile: Rétrospective Yann Marussich au Lieu Unique de Nantes; commissariat Jens Hauser, 2018

Une rétrospective de Yann Marussich au Lieu Unique, scène nationale de Nantes, du 20 au 28 janvie... more Une rétrospective de Yann Marussich au Lieu Unique, scène nationale de Nantes, du 20 au 28 janvier 2018, sur une proposition de Jens Hauser, à travers différents axes : des performances, la découverte de l’univers de Yann Marussich à travers une installation de l’ensemble des éléments constituants ses performances, ainsi que différentes œuvres dont Rideau ! et quelques vidéos. Une proposition a été faite aux compagnons de route de Yann Marussich, Denis Rollet et JMO de donner des concerts durant cette période.

DEVENIR IMMOBILE, 2018

Cette série rétrospective de performances inédite en France retrace 30 ans d’engagement radical d... more Cette série rétrospective de performances inédite en France retrace 30 ans d’engagement radical du performeur suisse Yann Marussich qui, grâce à une immobilité maîtrisée, donne corps par contraste à des gestes minimes émanant de l’intérieur. En devenant immobile, Yann Marussich condamne la grandiloquence d’un activisme aveugle et nous engage plutôt dans une insurrection politique et poétique. Sur une proposition du commissaire d’exposition Jens Hauser, dont le lieu unique a présenté l’exposition L’Art Biotech en 2003.

Semaine 22.15, Revue hebdomadaire pour l’art contemporain, 2015

Exhibition brochure of the bio media art show "S☉3 / SO3 Three tender significant others - Troi... more Exhibition brochure of the bio media art show "S☉3 / SO3
Three tender significant others - Trois tendres moitiés significatives" at the Espace multimédia gantner, Bourogne (France) in 2015.

Three tender significant others:

Between art, biology and (al)chem(istr)y, this triptych
of infectious works encourages affectionate experiences with our gentle but usually despised biological better halves: viruses, bacteria and plasmids appear as our significant others (SO), as today’s science focuses on the benefits of bacteriophages, microbiome studies, or decontamina- ting bacteria. Three artists, three experimental formulas, to stage these agents of aliveness: Tagny Duff performs literally viral tattoos on skin samples. Paul Vanouse enacts bacterial plasmids to subvert DNA portraits that reveal other identities. And Adam Brown produces gold with the help of extremophile bacteria – may the Philosopher’s Stone have been found?

Trois tendres moitiés significatives:

Entre art, biologie et (al)chimie, ce triptyque d’œuvres infectieuses encourage des expériences affectueuses avec nos douces moitiés biologiques habituellement méprisées : des virus, bactéries et plasmides deviennent des significant others (SO), comme l’anglais désigne nos compagnons de vie, à la lumière de la science actuelle qui s’intéresse de plus en plus au microbiote, aux bienfaits des virus bactériophages, ou encore aux bactéries décontaminantes. Trois artistes, trois formules expérimentales, pour mettre en scène ces acteurs du vivant : Tagny Duff réalise des tatouages littéralement viraux sur des échantillons de peau. Paul Vanouse a recours à des plasmides bactériens pour traficoter des portraits d’ADN qui laissent apparaître d’autres identités. Et Adam Brown produit de l’or grâce à des bactéries extrêmophiles – la pierre philosophale serait-elle trouvée ?

ISSN 1766-6465

synth-ethic, 2011

Exhibition Catalogue from the Museum of Natural History Vienna (14.5.-26.6.2011). Curator: Jens H... more Exhibition Catalogue from the Museum of Natural History Vienna (14.5.-26.6.2011). Curator: Jens Hauser; Producer and scientific concept: Dr. Markus Schmidt.
Exhibition Website: https://www.biofaction.com/portfolio/synth-ethic-art-exhibition/

Still, Living, 2007

Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP) - Curatorial Statement: "Let's step back a moment and tr... more Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP) - Curatorial Statement: "Let's step back a moment and try a transhistorical thought experiment: What if we considered nowadays art that deals with biological systems as a contemporary vanitas version of yesteryears tradition of Still Life?"

Call for Proposals Performance Research Vol. 25, No. 3: ‘On Microperformativity’ (April/May 2020... more Call for Proposals Performance Research Vol. 25, No. 3:
‘On Microperformativity’ (April/May 2020)
Issue Editors:
Jens Hauser, Medical Museion—University of Copenhagen
Lucie Strecker, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Proposal deadline: Monday 2nd September 2019

The aim of this issue is to scrutinize both the epistemological and aesthetic potential of the notion of 'microperformativity' (Hauser 2006, 2014). The concept denotes a current trend in theories of performativity and performative artistic practices to destabilize human scales (both spatial and temporal) as the dominant plane of reference, and to emphasize biological and technological micro-agencies that, beyond the mesoscopic human body, relate the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic. Investigations into microperformativity redefine what art, philosophy and the technosciences actually consider a 'body' today, in times when performance art shifts towards generalized and pervasive performativity in art. Agencies of genetic sequences, cellular 'machineries', bacteria, fungi, enzymes and other proteins and so forth are no longer conceived of as mere functions, but staged as aestheticized actions, employed to either act as identity proxies, or to stage non-human agencies in relation to performative techno-scientific systems, thus addressing contemporary dynamics linking the machinic and the organic (Salter 2010). This tendency to include 'aliveness' at all levels completes the scope of the previously ambiguous term 'live arts' (Heathfield 2004). Microperformative positions enquire how artistic methods can engage critically with technologies that exploit life on a microscopic and molecular level to merge bio-and digital media, including for global capitalization (Spiess and Strecker 2016, 2017). In parallel to algorithmic finance and high-frequency trading, the instrumentalization of sequential micro-transformations in bioindustrial production lines marks society's shift from human and machine labour to increasingly pervasive forms of microbial manufacturing and computerized bio-optimization. Meanwhile the anthropocentrism of 'artificial intelligence' in its preference of computational approaches to model human-like capacities and consciousness has come under critical scrutiny, microperformative postures may search for 'natural intelligence' in an eco-systemic logic within a larger bio-semiotic web. Such postures insist on the production of meaning and mutual interpretation between organisms in their environments, thus bringing the field of biosemiotics into play as a new modality for contemporary performance studies.

Call for papers for the COLORS AND CULTURES conference organized by the UHA Mulhouse (France), th... more Call for papers for the COLORS AND CULTURES conference organized by the UHA Mulhouse (France), the University of Basel (Switzerland), and the University of California, Berkeley (U.S.A.) in Mulhouse and Basel, 13-15 of April 2021.

Seeing colors is a sensory experience that goes beyond ocular perception. Color, in short, shapes our understanding of reality. Color can provoke unexpected behavior.Color directly affects our mood, our communication, and our well-being. While color has a profound influence on our lives, it has all kinds of cultural variations, which may go back to specific geographical origins based on regional vegetation, different qualities of light, environmental experience, etc. Even the mimetic principle of colors as a way to represent reality, while universal, differs from culture to culture. At some point, these differences may even be- come direct cultural contradictions—as we find, for example, in the symbolism of the color white as purity for European cultures, but as mourning for Chinese and other Asian cultures.

KEYNOTES:
• Jens HAUSER, University of Copenhagen
• Michel MENU, Palais du Louvre, Paris
• Jaycee NAHOHAI, potter & painter, Zuni Nation
• Frédérique TOUDOIRE-SURLAPIERRE, PU Lettres, Université de Limoges
• Hertha Sweet WONG, English Department, University of California, Berkeley

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 30th November 2020

gREen De/Growth, 2022

gREen: De/Growth is a publication that documents the living Installations by Rasa Smite & Raitis ... more gREen: De/Growth is a publication that documents the living Installations by Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, Disnovation.org, Spela Petric, Pei-Ying Lin, Dimitris Stamatis & Jasmina Weiss, curated by Jens Hauser at Muffatwerk Munich (16.-20.11.2022)

Not everything that grows is green, and the human imprint sometimes makes good ‘green' intentions fade away: With experimental bio(techno)logical performances and media art installations, Muffathalle's second gREen festival questions which aspects remain underexposed in the talk of ‘green growth’. In the eld of tension between art, nature and science, the artistic positions at gREen get to the bottom of the increasingly uncritically accepted symbolism of ‘green’ beyond the rampant ‘greenwashing’ - as a RE-mix and RE-evaluation of contradictions and paradoxes. Is economic growth really as unlimited as the plant metaphor suggests? What would a kilogram of wheat cost if the ‘ecosystem services’ assumed to be natural and self-evident were really accounted for? And what are the implications on biodiversity when the complexity of the plant world is reduced to its oxygen production and CO2 absorption?

gREen, 2021

gREen: Sampling Color – Farbe Vermessen is a book that documents the living Installations by Agne... more gREen: Sampling Color – Farbe Vermessen is a book that documents the living Installations by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Thomas Feuerstein, Adam Brown, curated by Jens Hauser at Muffatwerk Munich (7.-16.9.2021)

What is ‘green’? Are we ‘green’? And is it the vegetative world at all? Do algae count as ‘superfoods’, environmental pests, or both? Is biofuel green? Through monumental biotechnical installations, artistic olfactory portraits of trees, and the chemical re-enactment of historical toxic pigments, Muffathalle initiates a series of events dubbed gREen that fosters debates in climate politics in the field of tension between art, nature and science.

Beyond the rampant ‘greenwashing’ of our times, the artistic positions get to the bottom of the increasingly uncritically accepted symbolism of ‘green’ - as a RE-mix and RE-evaluation of contradictions and paradoxes. Engineers praise ‘green’ chemistry or biotechnology as ecologically benign, while climate researchers bemoan the ‘greening of the earth’1 as an alarming sign of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and toxic algal blooms discredit the overused association of ‘green’ with sustainability. The economic and political sciences often use the greenness trope in a naively literal way, when ‘green growth’2 is supposed to reconcile ecologically sustainable development with market-based economic models:3 the fallacious symbolic connection between economic and vegetal growth is purposefully maintained to capitalise on the metaphor’s positive connotations. Is ‘green’ perhaps so important to us because of the oscillation of naturalness and artificiality, the healthy and the toxic, the hoped-for and the lost?

On Microperformativity, 2020

This issue aims to scrutinize both the epistemological and aesthetic potential of the notion of ‘... more This issue aims to scrutinize both the epistemological and aesthetic potential of the notion of ‘microperformativity’. The concept denotes a current trend in theories of performativity and performative artistic practices to destabilize human scales (both spatial and temporal) as the dominant plane of reference and to emphasize biological and technological micro-agencies that relate the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic. Investigations into microperformativity redefine what art, philosophy and the technosciences actually consider a ‘body’ today, in times when performance art shifts towards generalized and pervasive performativity in art. Microperformative positions enquire how artistic methods can engage critically with technologies that exploit life on a microscopic and molecular level to merge bio- and digital media, including for global capitalization. How can performative art and discourses inform these processes to think biopolitics and necropolitics in relation to the dystopia of economy and the utopia of ecology alike? This issue contains contributions on biotechnological performances, physiological processes and micro-gestures, traditional rituals and techniques of craft, on microperformativity seen through the lens of the natural sciences, as well as in economics in times of algorithmic finance and high frequency trading.

Performance Resarch (Routledge) Vol. 25, No. 3: ‘On Microperformativity’ (2020)

Issue Editors: Jens Hauser, Medical Museion—University of Copenhagen & Lucie Strecker, University of Applied Arts Vienna

Direct access to the full digital version of the publication:
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/25/3?nav=tocList

Link for purchasing physical copies from the Centre for Performance Research Bookshop:
https://thecpr.org.uk/product/25-3-on-microperformativity/

Stofsk(r)ifter - Metabolic Machines, 2020

This book, edited by Adam Bencard, Martin Grünfeld, Jens Hauser and Louise Whiteley, originates f... more This book, edited by Adam Bencard, Martin Grünfeld, Jens Hauser and Louise Whiteley, originates from an encounter between the works of the Austrian artist Thomas Feuerstein and Medical Museion at the occasion of the GREEN conference held by the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts in Copenhagen in 2018.

Medical Museion exhibited two series of Feuerstein’s works, which prompted discussions about the relationships between body, culture, metabolism and art. While the boundaries between art, science and public engagement have been increasingly dented in the past decades, Feuerstein’s work in the tension field between the arts, philosophy and the biosciences became ‘food for thought’ (and ‘thought for food’, as this volume will demonstrate).

Printed copies can be purchased here:
http://shop.medm.us/product/metabolic-machines-stofskrifter-english-catalogue-only/

https://www.museion.ku.dk/en/whats-on/future-exhibitions/stofskifter/

https://green-slsa2018.ku.dk

From the perspective of media studies and art theory this dissertation examines the technical-phi... more From the perspective of media studies and art theory this dissertation examines the technical-philosophical, aesthetic and social parameters of art, which uses in vivo or in vitro biotechnological methods as a means of design. Such biological artifacts realized in the context of art convey effects of authenticity in spite of their laboratory-technical constructedness and, viewed from an art historical point of view, continue desiderata of aesthetic aliveness. A general theory of biomediality is formulated, which includes life-enabling milieus (biological media), technical means (biomedia) and instances of measurement (media of biology). As a special form of loose coupling of entities of the organic, it makes plausible how the orientation of the concept of mediality in the humanities changes under the influence of scientific disciplines.

https://hss-opus.ub.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/opus4/frontdoor/index/index/docId/6071

Art Biotech - Italian Version, 2007

Augmented version (2007) of the initial book (in French, 2003) at the occasion of the first exhib... more Augmented version (2007) of the initial book (in French, 2003) at the occasion of the first exhibition staging exclusively biomedia art works at the national art center Le Lieu Unique in Nantes/France. Hauser Jens (ed.): L'Art Biotech. Nantes/Trézélan, including all works 'addded ast minute' to the show in 2003, including color plates and work descriptions. In fact, this publication is the only one to accurately portray the seminal exhibition in 2003!

The orginal publication in French has not been available anymore since 2008; this PDF is made accessible with the agreement and the kind support of the Filigranes publishing house, until an augmented new edition will be be available. Great thanks to Filigranes and Patrick Le Bescont! https://www.filigranes.com

L'Art Biotech, 2003

Book (in French) published in 2003 at the occasion of the first exhibition staging exclusively bi... more Book (in French) published in 2003 at the occasion of the first exhibition staging exclusively biomedia art works at the national art center Le Lieu Unique in Nantes/France. Hauser Jens (ed.): L'Art Biotech. Nantes/Trézélan, 2003.

The publication has not been available anymore since 2008; this PDF is made accessible with the agreement and the kind support of the Filigranes publishing house, until an augmented new edition will be be available. Great thanks to Filigranes and Patrick Le Bescont! https://www.filigranes.com

Hybrid Encounters in the arts and sciences. A dialogue., 2020

In an inspiring conversation four experts in cross-disciplinary collaborations (Bergit Arends, Ke... more In an inspiring conversation four experts in cross-disciplinary collaborations (Bergit Arends, Ken Arnold, Berit Greinke, Jens Hauser) give insights into the experiences that they have accumulated in the course of their work in cultural organisations, museums, universities and various research bodies. They discuss the pitfalls and opportunities that such exchanges provide, including the challenges of collaboration and the surprises that always occur when different fields and their representatives are brought together. This publication edited by Nina Horstmann and Christina Landbrecht is part of the Hybrid Encounters programme of the Hybrid Plattform and Schering Stiftung Berlin, Germany.