Syndicate: Wiretap 6.09: ART in the Age of Technological Procreation

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

Wiretap 6.09: ART in the Age of Technological Procreation

Date
Friday 1 September 2000, 20.00 h (Doors open 19.00)

Location
V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam

Presentations by:
Allucquere Rosanne (Sandy) Stone (USA), Elisabeth Schimana (A)

Entrance fee
Fl. 7.50


ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies), such as in vitro fertilisation,
artificial insemination, artificial wombs and clones, have for long sparked
our imagination.  They have been a source of scientific marvel and cultural
panic from Frankenstein's monster to the first test tube baby Louise Brown
(1978) and the cloning of sheep Dolly (1997).  Reproductive technologies are
heavily suffused with ideologies of maternity, (medical) normalcy, kinship,
gender, race, and mortality.  Whether they have sparked heated debates on
lesbian moms or pregnant men, or whether they have formed the genetic
playground for eugenic practitioners; ART seems to touch the heart of our
existence.

Reproductive technologies have been strongly intertwined with developments
in informational and visual technologies.  Reproduction is increasingly
becoming a matter of bodily surveillance and management where the foetus is
subjected to 'quality control' through ultra-sound, amniocentesis, and
genetic testing.  However, different reproductive techniques also beg a
revision of fundamental questions.  Cloning for example, challenges the
idea of a unique body and the singularity of birth.  Other
bio-technologies, such as hormonal therapy and sex re-assignment surgery
for transsexuals/genderists, offer alternative strategies for reproducing
one's body and experience 'rebirth' in the gender of choice.  Hence the
body is continuously (re)produced by technology.

Wiretap 6.09 presents two artistic viewpoints which explore the cross-overs
between culture and technology.
Cyber-diva and author of the renowned 'Posttranssexual Manifesto' AllucquÃ?re
Rosanne Stone is well-known for her 'theory performances' in which she
uncovers the interactions between art, technology, virtual systems, and
gender.
The Austrian sound artist Elisabeth Schimana will adapt her piece
'OBDUKTION' for this Wiretap.  She recorded audio in morgues during
autopsies, and consequently performed her own dissection on the recorded
material through digital manipulation.  The decoupling of sound, body and
action is continuously reproduced during her live-performance.


Speakers

Allucquere Rosanne(Sandy) Stone (USA)
Is Associate Professor and Director of the Advanced Communication
Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) in the department of Radio-TV-Film at the
University of Texas (Austin).  During 1998 she was Resident Senior Artist at
the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), and Resident Fellow at the
Humanities Research Institute, UC Irvine. She has over twenty years'
experience in film, sound, performance, and installation work, though for a
time she masqueraded as a theoretician; and has had several bizarre careers
as neurologist, rock and roll engineer, musician, computer programmer,
filmmaker, author, and scientist.  She has played a pivotal role in
organising and directing the International Conferences on Cyberspace and is
the author of numerous publications including ""The War of Desire and
Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age" (MIT, 1995).  She is
currently Professor of New Media and Performance Studies at the European
Graduate School Saas-Fee (Switzerland) where she conducts an intensive
summer work shop: "Simulation of Body and Desire". Her favourite saying is
"I'm not a professor, but I play one on TV."


Elisabeth Schimana (A)
Was born in Innsbruck and has since 1983 been working as a performer,
free-lance composer and radio artist.  She studied electro-acoustics and
experimental music at the Hochschule f¸r Musik und darstellende Kunst
(Vienna), was visiting scholar at York University's Music Department, and
studied musicology and ethnology at the University of Vienna.  Elisabeth
Schimana has often collaborated with Austria's prestigious ORF Kunstradio,
for which amongst others she created radio plays children (1992-1997), and
initiated several projects such as "Touchless I and II", where the
sensuality of instruments played without touching - such as the termen-vox -
is emphasised.  Her most recent pieces include "Obduktion"; "The Fugue",
"Brainers" for the similarly named dance production, "Narratives I, II, III"
and "Drachenzeit", which was a sound installation for the 1999 total eclipse
of the sun.  Since 1994 Elisabeth Schimana is involved with the educational
music project "Klangnetze" and is a member of the Austrian Society for
Electro-acoustic Music.  She is currently artistic director of the
OST.SÃ?D.OST festival, a festival dedicated to Eastern Europe where
contemporary electronic music intersects with folk music.


Bookmarks

Sandy Stone
http://sandystone.com/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.05/stone_pr.html
http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/_SPEED_/1.2/stone.html
http://www.crac.org/contextmapp/sandy.htm
http://www.auschron.com/issues/vol17/issue36/screens.stone.html

Elisabeth Schimana
http://www.thing.at/orfkunstradio/BIOS/schimanabio.html
http://thing.at/orfkunstradio/PROJECTS/TOUCHLESS
http://www.thing.at/orfkunstradio/1996A/25_1_96.html#1
http://klangnetze.at
http://oso.at

Reproductive Technologies
http://www.aec.at/nextsex
http://www.malepregnancy.com
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/rt21/


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