Curating Life In the last decade we have seen a number of artists questioning our concept of life while moving beyond the boundaries of art and science. Debates about changing the face of our planet through geo-engineering or debates about assembling life artificially in a petri dish through synthetic biology challenge what it means for our understanding of ourselves and our future that nature is increasingly human-made. Theorist Donna Haraway argumented already in the 1980 about the reivention of nature. In her argument, Haraway returned frequently to the possibility of manipulating natural organisms using genetic engineering to articulate a fundamental critique of a socially forming power that leads to the construction of certain specific organisms and environments and the exclusion of others. By referring to the construction of nature as a technical artifact Haraway alluded to the analysis of naturalizing discourses, which will result in a new ideologizing of nature. For many people transgenic transgressions of boundaries of the assembling of life artificially represent a serious threat to the integrity of life. The differentiation between nature and culture has always been one of the most important narratives in Western thinking and philosophy; it forms the nucleus of many narratives of salvation/mission and their transmutations the sagas of Western progress. In my presentation I want to offer some insights regarding the concept and realization of an exhibition I curated in 2010 for the Medical History Museum of the Charité in Berlin. The exhibition jenseits des menschen beyond humans presented new artworks by the Berlin-based bio artist Reiner Maria Matysik as part of the Interventions series, which was initiated in 2009 by the museum to offer contemporary artists a space for experiments and to promote the dialog between the arts and the sciences. jenseits des menschen beyond humans was the result of the productive collaboration of two Berlin science institutions: the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Charité s Medical History Museum. The pathological specimens collection of the renowned physician Rudolf Virchow and the ruin of his lecture hall were the points of departure for this artistic interrogation of medical science s image of the human body, which the museum s permanent exhibition On the Trace of Life charts in the history of medicine from the eighteenth century to the present day. In contrast to the museum s historical view of the human body, the intervention by the artist turned toward future evolutionary designs for humans in a human-made biotechnological future. With the design of a semi-living sculpture the exhibition focused on raising ethical considerations about use of human tissue in art as well as for the purpose of research in science. Research involving human tissue is challenged and confronted by the moral status of human tissue, on access to and the use of data from the tissue, and, consequently, on the standards that define precisely how those involved in research relate to one another. The pathological specimens collection of the renowned physician Rudolf Virchow provided the environment for this artistic interrogation. In contrast to the museum s historical view of the human body, the subject of the intervention by the artist was future evolutionary designs for our human species in a human-made biotechnological future. The artists motivation for modeling biological bodies and creating prototypes of future organisms stems from his conviction that the rapid advances in modern life sciences will have dramatic consequences for the process of biological evolution, as well as for art. By exposing the materiality of the topic addressed, bio art has the potential to give rise to ethical reflections that differ from traditional ethical thinking, by dealing hands on with ethical claims and aesthetic experiences.
The exhibition brought together three aspects of Reiner Maria Matysik s multi-layered oeuvre in a new synthesis: in the museum s lecture hall ruins three large-scale models of post-evolutionary organisms were suspended from the roof of the building on steel cables to hover above the heads of visitors (Fig. 1, 2).
The second part of the exhibition focused on the future of human evolution, exhibiting 36 wax models as prototypes of semi-living sculptures within the exhibition space of the historical collection of Rudolf Virchow s pathological specimens (Fig. 3). The third section of the exhibition broke new ground: with the support of the German Institute for Cell and Tissue Replacement, a nonprofit organization, the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, and Navena Widulin, preparator of the Pathology Department of the Charité, the artist created for the first time in his oeuvre a sculpture grown out of cells from his own body, his own flesh, using the techniques of tissue engineering. In collaboration with scientists his skin cells were transformed into a medium of artistic expression to create a semi-living sculpture (Fig. 5).
By designing and exhibiting a semi-living sculpture the artist sought to break down the boundary between the laboratory and the public sphere of the museum. The techniques of tissue culture enabled the artist to grow living cells outside his own body in a laboratory using his own cells to grow an extracorporeal, living, macroscopic entity and gave him the opportunity to shape and manipulate natural biological material artistically. During the last decade, the term bio art has been the subject of vital discussions as a description of the intersecting domains of the biological sciences and their incorporation into the arts. The utilization of biological material as an artistic medium goes hand in hand with the debate about the ethical consequences of such issues as tissue culture, plant breeding, and above all genetic engineering. The adoption of bioscientific techniques and methods in the arts, however, not only broached a highly controversial subject, it also opened up new possibilities for art in the shape of new materials and new ways of artistic expression. Tissue culture, bacteria, cells, and even genetically engineered organisms have become objects of art, raising awareness of how these cutting edge sciences are altering social, ethical, and cultural values in our society. CV Dr. Ingeborg Reichle, born 1970, studied art history, archaeology, sociology, and philosophy in Freiburg i. Br., London, and Hamburg. 2004 Ph.D. dissertation on Kunst aus dem Labor. Zum Verhältnis von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter der Technoscience. 1998 2005 research position at the Art History Department, Humboldt University Berlin and the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik. 2005 2008 research position at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in the interdisciplinary working group Die Welt als Bild, 2008 2011 scientific project leader of the interdisciplinary working group Bildkulturen. Since 2012 she lectures at the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Humboldt University Berlin. Since 2000 guest lectures at various international institutions including the School of Visual Arts, New York, the Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, and the Life-Science Lab, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Heidelberg, Timbusu College National University of Singapore, SymbioticA
University of Western Australia; 2007 guest professor at the Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. Publications (selection): Kunst aus dem Labor. Zum Verhältnis von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter der Technoscience (2005), Verwandte Bilder. Die Fragen der Bildwissenschaft (2007, ed. with S. Siegel and A. Spelten), Visuelle Modelle (2008, ed. with S. Siegel and A. Spelten), Maßlose Bilder. Visuelle Ästhetik der Transgression (2009, ed. with S. Siegel), Art in the Age of Technoscience. Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art (2009), Reiner Maria Matysik: jenseits des menschen/beyond humans (2010 ed. with A. Hermannstädter and Th. Schnalke), Atlas der Weltbilder (2011, ed. with Chr. Markschies, P. Deuflhard, and J. Brüning), IMAGE MATCH. Visueller Transfer, Imagescapes und Intervisualität in globalen Bildkulturen (2012 ed. with M. Baleva and O. L. Schultz). 2010 she curated the exhibition jenseits des menschen beyond humans for the Berlin Medical History Museum of the Charité.