[acc-cca-l] Invitation to ArtSci Salon: Classifying the New? ...on the future of life forms part2 - Thu. Nov 21 6:00-8:00 @Fields

[roberta buiani]

Dear Colleagues,
I would like to invite you to part 2 of this ArtSci Salon mini-series on life forms in the anthropocene.
apologies for multiple postings

RB


roberta buiani
atomarborea.net <http://atomarborea.net/>
artscisalon.com <http://artscisalon.com/>

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Classifying the new?

Thursday, November 21, 
6:00-8:00 pm 
The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
222 College Street

please, RSVP here  https://bit.ly/2AH1Pe8 <https://bit.ly/2AH1Pe8> 




Introduction
Why do we classify things? what is it for in a time of deep transformations? what is the limit of taxonomy and classification in a the anthropocene?
in a 1942 essay Jorge Luis Borges spoke of a "..certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into a. belonging to the Emperor; b. embalmed c. trained; d. piglets; e. sirens; f. fabulous; g. stray dogs; h. included in this classification; i. trembling like crazy; j. innumerables; k. drawn with a very fine camelhair brush; l.et cetera; m. just broke the vase; n. from a distance look like flies." As silly as they sound, these categories describe specific items according to the place they occupy in our culture and society. They sound somehow comforting because they fit defined boxes. But what if these boxes dissolve, or become empty, or are no longer able to capture one species? 
With the disappearance and re-appearance of species, and the recent mutations and transformation brought us by climate change and other anthropogenic phenomena, or through in-lab manipulation and digital imaging, the work of the taxonomist has become more challenging: with all these transformations, have traditional categories and taxonomies become obsolete? is classifying still worth it? why do we still do it? 

Part 1 of the series ended with the image of a mythical animal: the unicorn. The unicorn is not just a fictional character. it speaks to socio-cultural desires and insecurity, it evokes reflections on power relations and conventional wisdom, it questions the ethics of embracing the future or of longing for the past etc... 

Whether searching for new species before they disappear for good or mapping new species emerging from labs and studio experiments, the artists and scientists involved in part 2 of this series are representative of quite a variety of interpretations of what it means to classify, as well as to question, disrupt, update today's taxonomies. 

join us to greet our special guests:

Richard Pell - Centre for PostNatural History, Pittsburgh, PA https://www.postnatural.org/ <https://www.postnatural.org/>

Laurence Packer - Mellitologist, Professor of biology and environmental studies, York University https://www.yorku.ca/bugsrus/PCYU/DrLaurencePacker <https://www.yorku.ca/bugsrus/PCYU/DrLaurencePacker>

Stefan Herda - earth science artist https://www.stefanherda.com/ <https://www.stefanherda.com/>

Cole Swanson - artist and educator (Art Foundation and Visual and Digital Arts, Humber college) http://www.coleswanson.org/ <http://www.coleswanson.org/>

Anna Marie O'Brien - Frederickson, Rochman, and Sinton labs, University of Toronto https://annamobrien.wordpress.com/ <https://annamobrien.wordpress.com/>

Richard Pell works at the intersections of science, engineering, and culture. He has worked in a variety of electronic media from documentary video to robotics to bioart to museum exhibition. He is the founder and director of the Center for PostNatural History (CPNH), an organization dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally and heritably altered through domestication, selective breeding, tissue culture or genetic engineering. The CPNH operates a permanent museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and produces traveling exhibitions that have appeared in science and art museums throughout Europe and the United States, including being the subject of a major exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London.

Laurence Packer is a mellitologist, ie a scholar whose main subject of study is wild bees. his research primarily involves the systematics of the bee subfamily Xeromelissinae - an obscure, but fascinating group of bees, restricted to the New World south of central Mexico. he has also expended considerable energy leading the global campaign to barcode the bees of the world. his work is concerned with  promulgating the importance of bees: for genetic reasons, it seems that bees are more extinction prone than are almost all other organisms

Stefan Herda's practice explores our troubling relationship to the natural world through drawing, sculpture and video. Inspired by the earth sciences, Herda's work navigates the space between truth and fiction. His material and process-based investigations fuse elements of authenticity, façade, the natural and the manufactured together. He received his BAH from the University of Guelph in 2010. His work in both sculpture and video has been included in exhibitions nationally and has been featured by CBC Arts and Daily VICE. Recently, Stefan has held solo shows at Patel Projects (Toronto) and Wil Kucey Gallery (Toronto), participated in group shows such as Cultivars: Possible Worlds at InterAccess (Toronto) and was featured as one of 12 artists in the Cabinet Project at the University of Toronto 

Cole Swanson is an artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and throughout international venues in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. At the heart of recent work is a cross-disciplinary exploration of materials and their sociocultural and biological histories. Embedded within art media and commonplace resources are complex relations between nature and culture, humans and other agents, consumers and the consumed. Swanson has engaged in a broad material practice using sound, installation, painting, and sculpture to explore interspecies relationships.

Anna Marie O'Brien  is a post doc in the Frederickson, Rochman, and Sinton labs at University of Toronto, working on duckweeds, microbes, urban contaminants, and phenotypes.
her PhD work was at Davis, with thesis advisors Dr. Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Dr. Sharon Strauss. she also collaborated closely with Dr. Ruairidh Sawers at LANGEBIO-CINVESTAV in Guanajuato, Mexico.


thanks to the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and to the Social Science and the Humanities Research Council of Canada for their support
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and on twitter: @ArtSci_Salon





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