With Body of Matter, MU zooms in on the body and the possibilities biotechnology has to offer to change, enhance, investigate and replace it, now and in the near future. In the thought-provoking essay presented with this exhibition, publicist and co-curator William Myers, author of two reference books about Bio Design (2012) and Bio Art (2015), wonders if the body actually still matters. The answer is a rather equivocal ‘yes and no’. Of course the body continues to matter for the foreseeable time, if only as an external vehicle for us to move around in, and as a carrier of our organs that, by the way, might individually be replaced as we see fit, by either ‘artificial’ or ‘living’ donor material that might just as well come from pigs.

But both the way our mind and identity is connected to the body and the way our minds and identities relate to each other and the world around us seems to become less and less dependent on flesh, blood and cells.

What if anything can be recreated and thus manipulated and multiplied, from cancer cells to entire organic systems and from the microbiome to the neural impulses that
constitute our deepest desires?

During the Body of Matter / BAD Award Special Weekend on January 22 and 23, artists and scientists, designers and thinkers will pursue this question and many other ones that they encounter, or provoke, in their work.

Programme Friday 22 January

17.00                Introduction and booklaunch Bio Art by William Myers

17.30                Lecture Maarten vanden Eynde

18.00 – 18.30   Lecture and performance Špela Petrič

18.30 – 19.30    Break with sandwiches and soup

19.30 – 20.00   Lecture and MSA demonstration Emma Dorothy Conley

20.00 - 20.30  Introduction Orion Maxted

15 min Pauze

20.45 – 21.15    Performance THE MACHINE by Orion Maxted

21.15                  Drinks and aftertalks

See full program of Saturday January 23 here!


Where MU
When Friday January 22 from 17.00 - 22.00h
Sign up & tickets via Eventbrite