Bio art before bio art. The living as cultural expression

25th and 26th February 2021

please ask for the Zoom link at anmeldung@cmb.hu-berlin.de)

Organisation by:

                  Olga Kisseleva, University of Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris (France);

                  Klaus Weber, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder (Germany);

                  Julio Velasco, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin (Germany).

Bio Art appears as a major artistic expression of our time. Climate change, the destruction of biodiversity or genetic experimentation make this art form the one that is most directly confronted with the major current problems, to the point that it is becoming, probably, the most emblematic visual manifestation of our society.

Yet the use of the living in art is far from being new. Both in the history of “the West” and in the history of many other societies, we find artistic forms that include living beings in their productions. The meeting focuses on these creations and seeks to bring together some research concerning these art forms existing before Bio art both in “the West” and elsewhere and to open a space for dialogue between them. This is the first meeting on this very broad topic. Our aim is to bring together various studies and art works, in an attempt to understand how in other eras and in other societies the living has been used for artistic creation, through comparisons between these artistic expressions, but also by relating them to the other art forms produced by the social group in which each of them appeared. We try thus to establish what these expressions have in common, but also what are their specifics.

---

---