The Body, Art and Bioethics
Friday 6 August 2010
A symposium exploring the culture and ethics of the use and ownership of living material, from the cell to the whole body, in art, science, law and philosophy.

The body is increasingly being transformed into commodity and media, put on display, fragmented, manipulated, preserved and rearranged. Scientists, artists, lawyers, historians and social scientists will come together to trace the radical shifts in our understanding of the body –  and life itself – and investigate how these emergent realities influence our notion of being human while simultaneously challenging the relationship to the ‘Other’ that is living or semi-living. Speakers include:
Dr Catherine Waldby, University of Sydney, whose research includes the Feminist-Marxist critique of the distribution and use of parts of bodies whether classified as “gift” or “waste”
Dr Luigi Palombi, Australian National University, an expert on biotechnology patents in Australia, the European Union and the United States of America. Elizabeth Costello,writer, who discusses the hypocrisy of complex relations between the treatment of  animals, Dr Ethan Blue, UWA – a historian whose research involves the prison system and relations between medicos and inmates; Kathy High, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: an artist who explores the Other animal and interspecies intimate relations Dr Ionat Zurr, UWA – the Semi-Living point of view. Dr Stuart Hodgetts, UWA – a research scientist’s experience working with animals and artists in the labs  Dr Darren Jorgensen, UWA – surveys the use of the body within art history.Oron Catts SymbioticA Director will investigate the bioethics inherent within a number of biological art projects researched and developed within SymbioticA.
To register interest email: sym@symbiotica.uwa.edu.au
Website to come:  http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/activities/conferences <https://mail.anhb.uwa.edu.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/activities/conferences>
Symposium Graphic Design by Paul Rayment