In order to strengthen our understanding of what and where a development in biotechnology and genetic engineering leads us as an individual and as a society, we invite you into a conversation of social, philosophical and environmental issues. An evening that will trigger us to think about how we use technology and what it means to us as culture and individual?
 
Kunsthall 3.14 has a tradition of inviting leading people from various disciplines to converse around the topics of our exhibitions. This time we have invited Norway's first research blogger Jill Walker Rettberg, a researcher on digital media to talk about face recognition and identity. Furthermore, we have invited Carte Blanche dancer Daniel Mariblanca, a transgender with a fluent gender identity to perform an extract from his new work "71 Bodies 1 Dance". Together we shall take part in the dialogue of the projects Probably Chelsea, A Becoming Resemblance and 2.6g 329m/s - Bulletproof Skin.

 

If you don´t have information about the backdrop for this invitation, below we have also written a brief introduction about the two BioArt project we are showing at the moment. We refer to our website and to art critic review (kunstkritikk.no). Furthermore, art analyst Mona Pahle Bjerke will talk about the exhibition on P2 (Studio 2) Tuesday 18th of September between 16.00 and 18.00. We will post the link on Facebook when it is public.
 
Jill Walker Rettberg: A professor in digital culture at the University of Bergen in Norway. Her main research topic has been storytelling and self-representation in social media, building upon a foundation of digital art, electronic literature, and digital humanities. Her recent work has made use of digital methods to visualize network relationships in electronic literature and the digital humanities. Rettberg is currently focusing on visual technologies and machine vision and our relationship with them and has received a €2 million ERC Consolidator grant for her project MACHINE VISION: Machine Vision in Everyday Life: Playful Interactions with Visual Technologies in Digital Art, Games, Narratives and Social Media.
 
Daniel Mariblanca: Carte Blanche dancer and choreographer of 71BODIES 1DANCE Daniel Mariblanca a transgender person. He has a belief that along with his role as an artist comes responsibilities. Through his work, he constructs new perspectives and makes visible the invisible. In many ways, he develops new languages and new ways to communicate. Talking about minorities as well as social issues and challenge the oppressive systems. And he is him selves an example of one that lives life different. Believing that the body can be an instrument of expression, a gun in the fight and the means of persisting in the battle. The body is the site of resistance. It is the testimony of experience. He is particularly interested in gender and opposes our strict society where the gender roles are narrow. Everything is concerned with the body, yet control lies with the state. What is normal and normative? What is legal? And desirable. Daniel will only perform for two days during Oktoberdans before he goes on tour around Europa with his exhibition, performance, and installation.
 
Probably Chelsea, A Becoming Resemblance by artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg came about as the result of a collaboration with the American whistle-blower Chelsea E. Manning. Manning was imprisoned for transmitting 750 000 classified sensitive documents about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. During this time, Manning also underwent Hormone Replacement Therapy in order to transition from her male identity to her female one. No images of her reached the public during the period of imprisonment. In 2015 Manning sent Dewey-Hagborg a buccal swab and strains of her hair from military prison. The artist analysed the DNA and used algorithmic DNA phenotyping to realize thirty different face models, thirty different digital sketches of Manning’s physiognomy, which were then 3D-printed and are now on view in the exhibition.
 
Jalila Essaïdi´s work 2.6g 329m/s - Bulletproof Skin, responds to the ever-increasing exposure to violence through news and other sources of (social) media. With this work, Essaïdi wants to show that safety in its broadest sense is a relative concept, and hence the term bulletproof. The work did stop some bullets, but not those at full speed. With a “bulletproof skin” pierced by bullets, the experiment leads to the conversation about how which forms of safety would benefit society. The viewer is left to reflect upon relativity and dual nature of safety.


Relevant links to the event:

https://www.kunsthall314.art/current

http://www.kunstkritikk.no/kritikk/det-finnes-ingen-genetisk-determinisme/?d=no

https://radio.nrk.no/serie/studio-2-p2/MKRV20018618/18-09-2018#t=30m48.4s