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Duelling Epistemologies. How Artists Hack Laboratories and Alter the Futures of Science
Abstract
Donna Haraway's 'Situated Knowledge' can be understood as feminist critique of scientific 'objectivity,' but there are additional factors to critically challenge knowledge production – from the perspectives of race, gender and class, as well as contemporary economic ideologies. Looking specifically at the interaction of Hybrid Arts and the life sciences in the late 20th and early 21st century science we would like to formulate two lines of critical approach: 1) How can Hybrid Art, and specifically artistic research - in lab – critique the effect that the market has on determining what is researched and what is not. Funding can also be seen as a means of directing and disciplining scientific research and knowledge, to make sure it follows the desires of the market. Can cross-disciplinary exchange between scientist sand artists be a catalyst for liberation? 2) What are the effects of 'engineering' as ideology on both science and Hybrid Art? Especially in the case of the life sciences, where the money and the attention are focussed on bioengineering, the ideal of efficiency creates an obstacle in the pursuit of knowledge. Efficiency, mandated by the market plays a major role in engineering. But this is in contradiction to nature and life, where complexity and redundancy play a very important role in evolutionary success. Additionally, we live in an era where 'hype' of biotechnology, creates a platonic mirage of the actual state of science. We propose, for example, that CRISPR is not going to radically change nature as we know it and sustainable biomaterials are unlikely to replace plastics. Are both artists and scientists capable of sifting the hype from their research and practice, and if so, how?
We see a small group of (mostly women and nonbinary) hybrid artists challenging the epistemology of natural sciences, without breaking from scientific method or ‘doctoring’ the results of their inquiry. As opposed to the artist as visionary, here is the artist as deep critic: Špela Petriè, Kat Austen, Mary Maggic, Tarsh Bates to name only a few. They bring in questions of epistemology, ontology, ethics and politics, yet remain true to the science. Instead of a 'pure research' which, despite its pretension for purity, in reality exists to provide marketable products, their hybrid artistic research seeks to place both knowledge and our species, back within a planetary ecology. In a long-term sense (as opposed to market economy short-term profit goals) the approach of these artists asks questions about the survival of Homo sapiens. Also, their engagement with a diverse public, through their work but also new forms of media such as DIY science workshops, talks and inter-species performance broadens both knowledge and debate, as well as offering lay persons tools and knowledge for scientific literacy, within a broader ethical, ontological, epistemological and political framework.
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