[Leonardo/ISAST Network] Biological arts discussion on YASMIN

[Leonardo/ISAST]

TO: Leonardo Network
From: Roger Malina

Leonardo/OLATS, co sponsor of the YASMIN Mediterranean art-science 
network, would like to bring to your attention the ten day moderated
discussion about exhibiting biological arts. You can register for the
YASMIN list by going to:

YASMIN website: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin/

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Dear Yasminers,

I would like to welcome Monica Bello from Barcelona who will discuss 
with you and nine invited respondents the issue of exhibiting biological 
art to a non-specialist audience. Our respondents are invited curators, 
philosophers, art critics, and artists. I would like to welcome Annick 
Bureaud (Paris), Pier Luigi Capucci (Bolonga), Nina Czegledy (Montreal), 
Pau David Alsina Gonzalez (Barcelona), Jens Hauser (Paris), Anna 
Hatziyiannaki (Athens), Beral Marda (Istanbul), Tomislav Medak (Zagreb) 
and Polona Tratnik (Ljubljana). We have different ongoing exhibitions 
about bioart around the MedRim, so the theme is more than actual! The 
discussion is intented to last 10 days until March, 8. Please find below 
the biographies of Monica Bello and the different invited respondents.

I wish you all a very interesting time on Yasmin !

Very best wishes,

Julien Knebusch

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Monica Bello (Barcelona)

Monica Bello is a freelance curator based in Barcelona with a special 
interest in the junctions between art, science and technology. She has 
worked regularly with Art Futura http://www.artfutura.org in a PR role, 
has been assistant project manager for hostprods on international 
projects and represented the Mexican video art collective TechMex 
http://www.tech-mex.org at the Off Loop video festival 
http://www.loop-barcelona.com

She has curated her own exhibition OEOrganismos¹, the first bio-art 
exhibition in Spain, which was shown in 2004 at La Casa Encendida, 
Madrid, and in 2005 at Espai Cultural de Caja Madrid, Barcelona. 
Currently Monica is establishing the CAPSULA project, a framework for 
conferences, exhibitions and workshops on various aspects of science, 
art, technology and nature, beginning with a OEbio-art¹ related event, 
'Días de Bioarte06',in Centre d¹Art Santa Monica in Barcelona in 
February 2006. She is a researcher on the Res-qualia portal, a web 
project focussed on art, science and consciousness due to be launched 
early 2006 and has lectured on the history of digital art at 9zeros 
school of animation in Barcelona.


RESPONDENTS :

Annick Bureaud (Paris)

Annick Bureaud is a new media art critic and researcher. She works and 
lives in Paris, France. She is the director of Leonardo/Olats, the 
French branch of Leonardo/Isast which is primarily doing online 
publishing (http://www.olats.org). As an art critic she runs a regular 
column on electronic art in the French contemporary art magazine Art 
Press. She teaches at the Art School of Aix-en-Provence and at Ecole 
Centrale Paris (engineers school). She has been guest lecturer at the 
School of the Art Institute Chicago/SAIC in 1999 and at the University 
of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) in 2001.

In 2002, she co-edited the book Connexions : art, réseaux, media 
published by the Press of Ensba ; she co-organized the International 
Symposium "Artmedia VIII: From the Aesthetics of Communication to Net 
art", in Paris and edited the online proceedings published by 
Leonardo/Olats. The article "Typologie des interfaces artistiques", has 
been published in the collective book Interfaces et sensorialité, edited 
by Louise Poissant, Sainte-Foy, Presses de l'Université du Québec, 2003.
In 2003, she organised the Symposium "Visibility - Legibility of Space 
Art. Art and Zero G.: the Experience of Parabolic Flight" within the 
'@'rts Outsider Festival in Paris.

She is the co-editor of "SpaceartS, the space and the arts database", a 
joint project of Leonardo/Olats and the Ours Foundation 
(http://www.spacearts.info).


Pier Luigi Capucci (Bologna)

I am concerned with systems and idioms of communications and with new 
art forms, and since the early '80 I have been involved in new media and 
technology applications in communications and art. I have been a teacher 
at the universities of Rome "La Sapienza", Bologna and Florence. 
Currently I am professor of Mass Communications and of Multimedia 
Languages at the University of Bologna, of New Media at the University 
of Urbino and of Phenomenology of Art and Communications at the Fine Art 
Academy of Urbino.I have published the books "Realtà del virtuale" 
(1993), on virtual technologies and the relationships between culture 
and sensorial representations; "Il corpo tecnologico" (1994), on the 
impact of technologies on the human body; and "Arte e tecnologie" 
(1996), about arts, sciences and technologies. I have published over 200 
texts in books, magazines and conference papers. I am director of a new 
book series <mediaversi> (http://www.mediaversi.it), which aims at 
reflecting in an interdisciplinary way on the relations among the media, 
the emergent technologies and the society in its fundamental 
expressions: culture, representations, communications, arts. I have 
organized art exhibitions and have been working in european projects on 
cultural network communications (like, in 2000, Cafe9, 
ttp://framework.v2.nl/archive/archive/node/work/default.xslt/ 
nodenr-129865, as a content manager).

In 1994 I founded and directed (until 1997) the first italian online 
magazine, on the relations between arts and technologies. In 2000 I 
started the “Noema” project (http://www.noemalab.org), a online magazine 
devoted to culture-new technologies interrelations and influences, which 
I currently am director of.


Nina Czegledy (Montreal)

Nina Czegledy, media artist, curator and writer, has collaborated on 
international projects, produced time based and digital works, and 
participated in workshops, forums and festivals worldwide. She has 
exhibited her work as part of the ICOLS group at ISEA2004, and venues in 
Australia and the US. Her work toured with the Girls&Guns collective in 
Europe (2004). Czegledy's latest Aurora Feast Public Art Collaborative 
Project has been presented at Heureka the Finnish Science Centre, 
Finland (2006). Resonance, the Electromagnetic Bodies Project, Digitized 
Bodies Virtual Spectacles and the Aurora Projects reflect her 
art&science&technology interest. These projects focus on the changing 
perception of the environment and the human body and are presented via 
on-line and on-site events in Canada and internationally. Resonance 
co-curated with Louise Provencher is currently on tour showing the work 
of 10 Canadian media artists in five European capitals. Czegledy curated 
Sara Diamond's Code Zebra, Sifting Time, Shifting Space, for the Women 
Arts Resource Center, Toronto (2005) and Reconnaissance, a Finnish media 
art exhibition for InterAcces,Toronto (2006). Czegledy curated over 35 
digital art/video programs presented in more than 25 countries and 
initiated Points of Entry, the first Canadian/Australian/New Zealand 
digital arts collaboration. In 2005 Czegledy presented at the
2nd New Media Symposium in Beijing, at ARCO2005, Madrid, the Impact of 
Space on Society Conference, Budapest, Altered States CaiiA conference, 
Plymouth, UK, UNESCO Digiart Network African workshop, Linz and the 
Refresh Forum in Banff. Her presentations in 2004 included Cyber at arts 
Bilbao; Dakar Biennale, Senegal; ISEA2004, the 7th Workshop on the 
Space, the Arts, 55th International Astronautical Congress, Vancouver, 
Newforms Festival, Vancouver and QI and Complexity Conference in 
Beijing. Her academic lectures lead to numerous publications in books 
and journals in Europe, North and South America and Asia.

Czegledy is the president of Critical Media, a Canadian based Knowledge 
Institute. She is a member of the LEAuthors as well as the Leonardo 
SpaceArt Network. She has been appointed by the UNESCO DigiArts Portal 
as a Key Advisor to the African Network and is member of UNESCO's Arab 
States DigiArts group as well as the Yasmin group. Nina Czegledy is a 
Senior Fellow at KMDI, University of Toronto, Adjunct Associate 
Professor at Concordia University, Montreal and the current Chair of the 
Inter Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA).


Pau David Alsina Gonzalez (Barcelona)

Pau Alsina lives in Barcelona where he teaches at the Humanities 
Department of the Open University of Catalonia (Universitat Oberta de 
Catalunya). He does research in Media Aesthetics at the Internet 
Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) a research institute that focuses its 
R+D+i activity in a specific thematic area: “Information and Knowledge 
Society”. He is director of Artnodes (http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes) a 
space for the study of art, science and technology (AST) interrelations.
He has lectured in places as the Runme Cenference, the World Summit 
Conference on ICT and Creativity, Ciberarts Festival, Interaction 
Conference, Art Futura Festival, Sonar Festival etc.. and has been 
involved in the organization of several events on AST as recently the 
“Randonnee: XXIst century Landscapes” conference with the Sonar 
Festival, the “Hybrids” exhibition and workshop around nature, art and 
technology at the Catalan Architecture Collegium and Fundació Espais 
d’Art, and the “Open Access Era” lecture series at the Barcelona Science 
Museum. He has published several essays on the intersections of AST, 
contemporary thougth and Interdisciplinary research methodologies. He is 
involved in projects as the Leonardo LABS project, a database of PhD’s 
Thesis abstracts of AST, the YASMIN network, the Catalan Government ICAC 
Council or the Barcelona Culture Plan at the City's Council. He recently 
finished a comparative report on Medialab Models around the world and 
also the Spanish Report on AST for the Spanish Foundation of Science and 
Technology.

He studied Philosophy and complemented it with Modern Music, Engineering 
and Theatre and Performance studies. His actual research is focused on 
the development of an ontology of present through the study of the 
artistic practices involved with science and technology within the 
context of the Knowledge Society. He is specially interested in Life 
within the nature,art,technology and society interrelationship.


Anna Hatziyiannaki (Athens)

She studied in Paris and received her honors degree in Art Methodology. 
She completed her postgraduate studies in Aesthetics and Anthropology of 
Art and attended cinema and theater classes at the Paris I and Paris 
VIII Universities.

She has worked as editor and art critic for Greek newspapers and 
magazines since 1982. She is involved with new technology applications 
in art and the internet, in particular since 1994, she has given a 
series of lectures on these issues and organizes exhibitions as a New 
Media Curator. She is co-founder and manager of the non-profit Art & 
Technology Society ART TOPOS and its website (http://www.artopos.org), 
which operates on the internet since 1996.

Since 1997 until 2003, she worked for the creation and the organization 
of the New Media Departement of the Journalist’s Union of the Athens 
Daily Newspapers. In 2001, she was in charge of the visual arts 
programme of the international Festival “Art for Human Rights” organized 
by the non-governmental organisation “Open Horizons” under the auspices 
of the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Council of Europe and the European 
Cultural Foundation.

In 2002, together with Dimitris Skoufis anf Nikos Giannopoulos, 
co-organised “e-Magic”, the 1st International Festival of Cyber Events 
in the frame of the International Cinematographic Festival of 
Thessaloniki. In 2003, she organised at Athens, the first Bio Art 
presentation and she was invited as New Media Curator in RRF 
(Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting), the experimental New Media art 
project in form of an online festival, created, programmed and realized 
by Wielfried Agricola de Cologne. This global collaborative project was 
presented in InteractivA ’03 – Biennale for New Media Art at Museum of 
Contemporary Art Merida (Yucatan/Mexico)- where RRF was invited. The 
same year, she participated as new media curator at the global 
collaborative project “Gates” organised by Caterina Davignio (Italy)
In 2005, she co-organised with Dimitris Fotiou the Greek collaborative 
project for the 2nd Web Biennale (Istambul) at Hellenic American Union 
(Athens).

In 2006 she was the curator of the first major Bio Art Event at Greece, 
the “In Vivo-In Vitro” project, that included a group international 
show, a meeting with the artists and a symposium titled “Bio-ethics, 
Bioterrorism and Media”.

She is a member of the Editors’ Association of Athens Daily Newspapers 
(ESIEA), and of AICA (International Association of Art Critics).


Beral Marda (Istanbul)

Beral Madra, a critic and curator, directed Gallery BM (1984-1990) and 
directing BM Contemporary Art Center (since 1990) : http://www.btmadra.com
She coordinated the 1st (1987) and the 2nd (1989) Istanbul Biennale, 
curated exhibitions of Turkish artists in 43rd, 45th, 49th , 50th and 
51st Venice Biennale, co-curated the exhibition Modernities and 
Memories-Recent Works from the Islamic World in 47th Venice Biennale.
Since 1984 she has organized solo exhibitions of 50 local and 
international artists in her art centre and in other official art spaces 
in Istanbul.

She has curated and co-curated over 20 international group shows 
including Sanat, Texhn (Istanbul 1992), Treffen-Kunst ( Istanbul 1993), 
Iskele-Türkische Kunst Heute (Berlin-Stuttgart) 1994), Orient Express 
(Berlin 1994), Xample (1995), Concrete Visions (Istanbul 1995), 
Gold-X-Change (1997), Kerteriz (1998), Berlin in Istanbul (Berlin 1998), 
Reise durch das Labyrinth (Berlin, 1998) and Memories and Modernities 
(Istanbul 1998), Veritas Omnia Vincit (Istanbul 2000), "In Image We 
trust" (2001), "Sheshow" (2002). Curated 5 international exhibitions in 
WestLB, Istanbul building, (1999-2002) Curated 3 exhibitions in 
Diyarbakır Art Centre (Southeast Turkey- 2002), “Registering the 
Distance- Istanbul/Los Angeles”, Crazyspace, Santa Monica (2003); “The 
Sphinx Will Devour You”, KarşıSanat (2004), Bizhan Bassiri, 
“Evoporations”, Tophane-I Amire (2004). April-June 2005 she curated 
three major shows in Istanbul: “A Balance-Retrospective of the Art of 
the 80’s şn Turkey”, karşı Sanat Gallery, Istanbul; “Registering the 
Distance II- Istanbul/ Los Angeles” borusan Art Gallery, Istanbul; “A 
Consumption of Justice- A Meeting and Exhibitons of artists from Turkey, 
South Caucasus, Middle East and the Balkans” Diyarbakır Art center, 
Diyarbakır.

Since 1980 her articles has been published in Gösteri, Arredamento 
Dekorasyon, Cumhuriyet, Istanbul, Kalýn, Anons, and in three books 
"Identity of Contemporary Art" (1987), "Postperipheral Flux-A Decade of 
Contemporary Art in Istanbul" (1996) and “İki Yılda Bir Sanat” (Art 
Every Two Years- Essays on Biennale), Norgunk Yayıncılık, 2003.
Beral Madra is representing Istanbul scholarship of Berlin Senate since 
1995. Curated international shows in Borusan Art Gallery, 1997-2000. 
Since 1990 she has participated in numerous international congresses and 
symposiums in Europe and USA. 1998-2002 she teached in the Art 
Management Department of the Faculty of Art and Design of Yildiz 
Technical University. She is founding member and art advisor of 
Diyarbakır Art Centre (established September 2002 
http://www.diyarbakirsanatmerkezi.org
founding member and president of AICA, Turkey (established 2003): 
http://www.aicaturkey.org

Recent Book: “Neighbours in Dialogue” Editors: Beral Madra/Ayşe Orhun 
Gültekin, Norgunk Publishers presented at the 51st Venice Biennale, by 
Wimbledon School of Art and Nuova Icona at the “Venice Agendas” 
meetings, 9-11 June 2005, together with a roundtable with the 
contributors of the book.


Tomislav Medak (Zagreb)

Tomislav Medak is a philosopher with primary field of interest in 
constellations of contemporary social, biopolitical and media theory. He 
is a free software and free culture advocate. He is co-ordinating theory 
and research program and publishing activities at the Multimedia 
Institute (http://www.mi2.hr/) in Zagreb. Every once in a while he's 
engaging into curatorial practices, focusing on critical reexamination 
of technologies as social constructs. He is active as performer and 
coreographer with the Zagreb based company BADco (http://www.badco.hr/).


Polona Tratnik (Ljubljana)

(1976, Slovenia) is a Ph.D. student of »Philosophy and Theory of Visual 
Culture« in the University of Primorska, Faculty for Humanities, Koper, 
Slovenia. She graduated from the Academy for Fine Arts in Ljubljana, 
Slovenia, in 1999 and received an M.A. in 2001. In 2005 she was the Art 
Director of the Ljubljana International Festival for Contemporary Art 
Break 2.3 New Species (http://www.break-festival.org). She is the 
Secretary of the Slovenian Society of Aesthetics 
(http://www.drustvo-za-estetiko.si). Since 1994 she has organized 
numerous art exhibitions, lectures and colloquia on aesthetics, 
contemporary art and culture. She has co-edited the book Spaces/Places 
of Art (Ljubljana 2001) and was an editor of the art magazine Art Words 
(Ljubljana). She founded Horizons (Ljubljana), a magazine for the 
philosophy and theory of art. In recent years Polona Tratnik carried out 
projects in biotechnological art, incorporating living elements such as 
human skin cells, micro-organisms, hair and the like, thereby creating 
complex installations related to the human body (Hair, In(threat)timity, 
In-Time, Micro Cosmos, Private Bowls, 37°C). She participated in some 
major exhibitions, such as L’Art Biotech (2003 Nantes, France), In Vivo 
in Vitro (2006, Athens), Biennale of Electronic Art (2004 Perth, 
Australia), Breakthrough (2004 Den Haag, the Netherlands), and The Seven 
Sins. Ljubljana–Moscow (2004 Ljubljana, Slovenia). Polona Tratnik also 
published essays and articles on theory of art, on her own artistic work 
(in Leonardo, April 2005), and fiction. She received some reputable 
awards (Prešern Award, 2000; Rotary Club Award, 2001; Moje Pero – Award 
for short prose). URL: http://www.ars-tratnik.si