Syndicate: _FLESHMACHINE_ by Critical Art Ensemble 21 - 22 Nov 97

[Marie Ringler <marie@t0.or.at> (by way of Andreas Broeckmann)]

FLESH MACHINE: A Genexploitation Project
by Critical Art Ensemble (Chicago/USA), Public Netbase t0 Media~Space!
21 and 22 November 1997


Friday   November 21, 1997
19:00 - 24:00   Lecture/Performance/Event and interactive
BioTech-Installation

Saturday  November 22,  1997
14:00 - 19:00   interactive BioTech-Installation


IF YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT THE FUTURE OF REPRODUCTION WILL BE, OR WHAT IS
HAPPENING NOW IN THE EXPERIMENTAL STAGES OF NEW GENETIC ENGINEERING, YOU DO
NOT WANT TO MISS THIS EVENT!
In order to bring the situation of genetic engineering into sites for
public discourse, CAE has designed an event that not only reveals the
traces of Social Darwinism that are reasserting themselves within genetics
and reproductive medical centers, but also allows people to participate in
the actual lab processes.


THEORY/PERFORMANCE
The program begins on Friday 21.11. 19:00  with a theory/performance that
contextualizes the event that follows later that evening and on Saturday
22.11.

THE CLONING PROJECT - Are your genes "fit" enough?
In the event that follows the performance, participants will be able to
take actual donor screening tests and find out if they have marketable
reproductive materials (i.e., find out if they are fit for reproduction in
pancapitalist society).
Certificates of fitness will be awarded to those who successfully pass the
test. In addition, those who have marketable DNA will have the opportunity
to donate materials for cryo-preservation, and potential sale. Samples of
"successful" DNA will be displayed for public view and genetic profiles
will be put into a DNA database.

VIRTUAL TERMINATION - Let's kill Baby?
Participants will also have the opportunity to save embryos that are about
to be evicted from their cryocontainers. Participants can decide whether
the embryos should be saved for future market possibilities, or terminated
to make room for more "fit" embryos.

LET'S MAKE BABY! - Sex Education for the Third Millenium
There will be a CD-ROM display for the children on new In Vitro
Fertilization Technology--so families are welcome.



INTRODUCTION:

When it comes to technology, the focus and the hype is on new information
and communication technologies. From a marketer's perspective, this only
makes sense, because these new technologies seem to offer the public a new
utopian frontier; however, those who work with new complex technology on an
everyday basis know that its primary function is to increase the velocity
of market place dynamics, which in turn increases the intensity of labor.
The organic systems - the humans - in our technocracy can no longer
maintain themselves at such speeds: physiological and psychological
pathologies abound in the new techno-environment. Unfortunately, it's too
late to slow the economic engines of technoculture, and so the problem of
collapsing organic platforms can only be solved by drastic flesh
reconfigurations.

This new social tendency has arrived at the right time. One of the leading
genetic engineers of the 1930s, Frederick Osborn, believed that in the
future genetic engineering would be a part of everyday life consciousness
(as opposed to being a policy imposed on populations). According to Osborn,
in the time of what we know now as the economy of surplus and the nuclear
family, people would not only volunteer to engage in genetic engineering
practices, but would pay to do so. Because market competition would reach
such an intense state in late capital, and wealth and prestige would be the
only measure of quality of life in society, people would be forced by
circumstance to acquire *whatever* would help to make them more "fit" for
success in the marketplace.

That future is now the present, and the first experiments in developing a
voluntary genetic engineering apparatus are underway in clinics for
reproductive services. However, unlike its technological sibling,
telecommunications, reproductive technology remains largely outside of
everyday life.
It's not something that we experience as mundane technology (like the
telephone or TV) nor as a potential social problem (like industrial
pollution); it is something we only hear after it has been filtered through
the legitimating discourses of science and medicine. Consequently, the
genetic engineering practices that occur on a daily basis in the labs and
the clinics have no reality for those outside specific scientific and
medical specializations. Such practices are a silent subversion of everyday
life that will not reveal themselves until they are fully deployed and the
damage has already been done.


BIOGRAPHY, BIBLIOGRAPHY

Critical Art Ensemble

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of five new genre artists
(Steve Kurtz, Hope Kurtz, Dorian Burr, Steven Barnes, Beverly Schlee) of
various specializations including computer art, film/video, photography,
text art, book art, and performance. Formed in 1987, CAE's focus has been
on the exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory,
technology, and political activism. The collective is committed to a
nomadic drift along the cultural spectrum. Along the way, CAE has done
projects in broad variety of cultural situations including bars and clubs,
community centers, "public" spaces, universities, galleries and museums,
radio and television, and the internet. The projects themselves range from
guerrilla street actions, to installations, videos, book art, and
performances, to hypertexts for electronic environments.

CAE has also produced a substantial amount of cultural criticism that has
appeared in numerous anthologies, catalogues, and journals. The
collective's first book, The Electronic Disturbance, was published by
Autonomedia in the Spring of 1994, and was followed by Electronic Civil
Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas (also from Autonomedia). The
collective's forthcoming book, Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies and
New Eugenic Consciousness will be available in winter 1997-98. Most of
CAE's writings are available on its web-site:
<http://mailer.fsu.edu/~sbarnes> CAE's work is anti-copyright-always and
forever in the public domain.

Recent Activities

Selected Screenings, Performances, and Exhibitions:
1997
"True Crime." Museum Do It. The Cranbrook Museum. Bloomfield Hills,
MI. (This exhibition was also realized at Notre Dame University and Palo
Alto Cultural Center).
"Workspace On-line." Hybrid Workspce, Documenta X, Kassel.
(performance, CD-ROM demonstration, and web site tour)
Mirrored Rituals. Documenta Video Library. Documenta X. (group screening)
"Nettime Radio." Radio Frei Kassel (88.9). (performance for radio).
Do It. Tallinna Kunstihoones, Edenev Muuseum. Tallinna, Estonia.
(group show)
"Flesh Frontiers." Transmedia Festival. Berlin, Germany. (performance)
"Flesh Frontiers." Ljubljana Digital Media Lab. Ljubljana, Slovenia.

1996
"Flesh Frontiers." VIPER Festival. Lucerne, Switzerland.
"Machineworld." Telepolis. Munich, Germany. (web project)
"Shareholders' Briefing," Radical Images. Museum for Contemporary Art,
Szombathely, Hungary. (installation)
"Machine News." Der Standard. Museum in Progress, Vienna .
(interventionist action)
"Image Transfer," E~Scape. Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna.
(telepresent  action)
"Shareholders' Briefing," Austrian Triennial of Photography, Graz, Austria.
(installation and performance)
"Diseases of Consciousness," NetWork. Banff Center for the Arts,
Banff, Canada. (web project)
"The Cyborg Project," The Next Five Minutes.
Rotterdam/Amsterdam, the  Netherlands. (performance)

Articles:

 1997
"Biotechnologische Schnittstellen." Springer. October-November.
"The Technology of Uselessness." Digital Delirium. New York: St.
Martins Press. (reprint)
"The Coming of Age of the Flesh Machine." Electronic Culture. New
York: Aperture.
"Eugenic Visions." Coil. No. 4.
"Uneasy Flirtations: The Critical Reaction to Warhol's Concepts of the
Celebrity and of Glamour." The Critical Reaction to Andy Warhol. Alan
Pratt, ed.  Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.
"As Above, So Below." Left Curve.  No. 21
"Posthuman Development in the Age of Pancapitalism." Muae. No. 2.
"Utopian Promises-Net Realities." Interface 3 Proceedings. Hamburg:
Hans-Bredow-Institut. Also published in ZKP. 3.2.1
1996
"Tactical Media." Radical Images. Catalogue essay for the Austrian
Triennial of Photography. Graz, Austria.
 "Nine Theses Against Monumentalism." Random Access: Ambient
Fears. London: Rivers Oram Press.

Lectures, Panels, and Presentations:

1997
"The Art of Cloning." Panel, The Warhol Museum of Art. Pittsburgh, PA.
"Art and Crime." Lecture, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
"Nettime." Panel, ZKPK. Public Netbase, Vienna, Austria.
"The Politics of Biotechnology." Backspace Gallery, London.
1996
"Flesh Machine." Lecture, Carlow College, Pittsburgh, PA.
"Nomadic Tactics." Public seminar, CUNY Graduate Center, NYC.
"Painting and Pessimism." Lecture, Cooper Union School of Art, NYC.
"Posthuman Development in the Age of Pancapitalism." Lecture, VIPER
Festival. Lucerne, Switzerland.
"Tactical Media." Lecture, Austrian Triennial of Photography, Graz, Austria.
"The Bureaucratization of Street Action." Alternative: Not a
Destination. Panel discussion, The Drawing Center, NYC.
"The Desire to be Wired" and "Net Criticism." Panel discussions, The
Next Five Minutes, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.





Contacts:
Konrad Becker 	                        Marie Ringler
Public Netbase t0	            Public Netbase t0
Fon: 43/01/522 18 34 	            Fon: 43/01/522 18 34
Fax: 43/01/522 50 58 	            Fax: 43/01/522 50 58
Email: office@t0.or.at                 Email: office@t0.or.at