Biomedicine in museums

Tomorrow, Tuesday 13 March, John Pickstone from CHSTM, Manchester University is giving a seminar at Medical Museion. The title is “Ways of Knowing and of Working with the Artefacts of STM” — i.e., John is going to apply some of the ideas from his book Ways of Knowing to the material artefact world of science, technology and medicine museums. We start at 2pm, and turn over to the wine-and-popcorn postseminar around 4pm. Everyone is welcome. If you write to Sniff Nexø (s.nexoe@mm.ku.dk) you can get a predistributed paper for the seminar.

The Bio-Genica company website is worth an extended visit:

It’s brilliant, hilarious — and somewhat scary. Artist Adam Brandejs has constructed the perfect biotech company website look-alike, complete with product catalogue, service & support pages, etc.

The company’s major product is the Genpet, a “pre-packaged, bioengineered pet”, not a toy or a robot, but a “living, breathing” genetically engineered animal with “fully functional heart rate monitor and Fresh Strip to better gauge the state of each pet while it lies in its hibernation state”. It has in-built feelings, of course.

The FAQs-page tells prospective customers that the little creatures breathe and shit and form strong personal bonds with their care-taker. They surely feel pain, but “have limited vocal chords so they will not create a large amount of noise when disturbed”. A Genpet will normally not bite, but if it does, one can buy a extra Tooth Remover Kit.

Adam Brandejs Genpet raises lots of disturbing questions about the future of biotechnology. It’s one of the most humorous and intelligent artistic comments to postgenomics I’ve seen for a long time — neither naïvely endorsing biotech development, nor against its future possibilites.

By the way, Genpets come in two basic versions, one with a one-year life span, the other with a three-year life span (with different price tags, of course) — an oblique commentary to the Nexus 6 generation of replicants in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (who had a four-year life span).

If you happen to pass by the gallery at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass., don’t miss their new exhibit “It’s Alive! A Laboratory of Biotech Art” which runs another three weeks, until 7 April 2007.

Biotech art is an emerging and diverse field that is still in the process of defining itself. This exhibit is an investigation of the current intersections of biology, technology, and art. In a world rapidly transformed by science and technology, it is proving difficult to keep up with current developments. With news of genetic engineering regularly making headlines, a growing number of artists have perceived the cultural and aesthetic significance of biotechnology. Artists play an important role in our understanding of the biotechnological world, making it emotionally and intellectually accessible enough for discussion or debate. Participating artists are Adam Brandejs (Toronto, ONT), Shawn Bailey (Montreal, QC), Brian Burkhardt (Boston), Jennifer Hall (Boston), Blyth Hazen (Boston), Steve Hollinger (Boston), Kevin Jones (New Orleans), Brian Knep (Boston), Hunter O’Reilly (Chicago), Tanit Sakakini (Boston), Jennifer Willet (Montreal, QC).

See also the review of the exhibition in The Scientist’s on-line issue, March 8.

Medical Museion is arranging a cross-disciplinary workshop on ‘Biomedicine and Aesthetics in a Museum Context’, Copenhagen, 30 August – 1 September, 2007.

The conjuncture of biomedicine and aesthetics is a rapidly growing field of artistic practice and academic reflection, dealing with an array of issues, from the public engagement with current biomedicine to methodological overlaps between the practices of artists and laboratory researchers. Museums are key institutions for this hybrid field of inquiry.

The aim of this closed workshop is to help forge new strategies of making sense of and presenting recent biomedicine in museums, especially taking into account the unique difficulties of rendering visible material biomedical practices in their social, cultural, political, aesthetic and scientific complexity.

The workshop will bring together key practitioners from a range of methodological approaches, including artists with a firm understanding of biomedical practice, museologists and material culture scholars, historians of science, art historians and aestheticians, biomedical practitioners with a knowledge of contemporary bioart, and visualisation specialists.

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We installed Google Analytics tracking code last Sunday to follow the traffic on this blog. Here the “executive overview” of the last four days (~100 visits and ~250 pageviews):

Most visitors are from Europe and Eastern US — but there are also IP-numbers from Madras, India; Muscat, Oman; and Federal, Argentina. 35% of the visits are returnings, but only 11% are in-house. 56% are visiting via Google. We’ll be back with more self-indulgent observations later!

(Semi-internal discussion in Danish:)

Jeg synes diskussionen om Sørens plan for indsamlingsprocedurer på seminaret i går var meget interessant, og Ion og jeg snakkede lidt opfølgende om det her i formiddags.

Som flere var inde på, så kredsede diskussionen mere eller mindre direkte omkring integrationen af forskning, indsamling og samlinger.

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In co-operation with BioCampus, University of Copenhagen and the Schools of Visual Arts, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Medical Museion is arranging a free public conference “Art and Biomedicine: Beyond the Body”, Monday 3 September, 2007.

Confirmed speakers include:

Ingeborg Reichle, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (www.kunstgeschichte.de/reichle)

Ben Fry, MIT Media Lab (http://benfry.com)

Wolfgang Knapp, Art in Context, University of the Arts, Berlin (www.kunstimkontext.udk-berlin.de/lehrende/knapp/knapp.html)

Steve Kurtz, Critical Arts Ensemble (www.critical-art.net)

Richard Wingate, UK Medical Research Council Centre, King’s College, London (www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/biomedical/mrc/index.php?page=http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/biomedical/mrc/Researcher.php?PersonID=19)

Ken Arnold, Wellcome Trust, London (www.wellcome.ac.uk/node6510.html)

James Elkins, Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism of the Art Institute of Chicago (www.jameselkins.com).

A detailed program has been posted, see www.ku.dk/satsning/biocampus/artandbiomedicine

 For inquiries, contact Monica Lambert, mbl@mm.ku.dk

See also the workshop ‘Biomedicine and Aesthetics in a Museum Context’, Copenhagen 30 August – 1 September, 2007.

Apropos the earlier discussion of MRI scanners on this blog – here’s the manuscript for a short talk I gave to the Danish Radiological Society’s annual meeting in Copenhagen, Wednesday 24 January 2007.The full title of the talk was “MRI scanners and Madeleine cakes: Contemporary radiological heritage and professional identity”.

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The fourth Swiss STS meeting (“ScienceFutures”, 6-9 February 2008) will focus on future scenarios of sci-med-tech in society. Here’s the brief (which is also a good summary of some of the main issues in the field):

ScienceFutures is a provocative reaction to the notion that with the millennium, utopian thinking has come to an end. While in early modern thought utopia was the site of happiness removed in space, it increasingly became a good place in the future in nineteenth-century progressionism. Subjected to différance in space and time, utopias acquired a technical and scientific makeup. Trust in the calculability of the future was also a necessary condition for the rise of the modern welfare state, leading to a heyday of social planning. However, in high modernism the future lost its character of being a ‘storehouse of possibilities’. Rather, confronted with risks and uncertainties, the futurology of the 1960s tried to ‘colonize’ the time ahead and reduce its openness, now conceived not as a chance but as a potential danger. The result was a ‘defuturizing’ of the present, and a technocratic stance towards social change. In the aftermath of the traumatic outgrowths of totalitarianism, the utility of prospective thinking remained fundamentally questionable, and the dynamics of scientific and technological innovation made it difficult to anticipate future developments with plausible certainty.

Where do we stand today? Read More

The research group “Creating Science: Crafting Stem Cells in a Moral Landskape” are inviting to a seminar + reception to launch their new book (in Danish) Håbets teknologi. Samfundsvidenskabelige perspektiver på stamcelleforskning (Technology of Hope: Social Science Perspectives on Stem Cell Research). Join them Monday 12 March, 3-5pm at Center for Sundhed og Samfund, Øster Farimagsgade 5, Building 5, room 5.1.28.

• Lene Koch, Velkomst
• Maja Horst: Stamceller, offentlighed og formidling
• Mette Nordahl Svendsen: Patient eller donor?
• Henriette Langstrup: Hvem er brugeren?