If you happen to be in Berlin next week, you are welcome to take part in the session ‘Rethinking Representational Practices in Contemporary Art and Modern Life Sciences’ at the 5th Biannual European Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA). The session takes place in the Kaiserin-Friederich-Haus (Robert-Koch-Platz 7) on Friday 6 June, 11-13 and has papers by Suzanne Anker, Rob Zwijnenberg, Thomas Söderqvist and Ingeborg Reichle.

First Suzanne Anker (New York), will present a paper about “Semaphores and Surrogates: Stand-ins and Body Doubles”. In 2004 she published (with Dorothy Nelkin) The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2004; see http://www.geneculture.org/

Then art historian Robert Zwijnenberg (Leiden) will talk about “Bio-Art: Concepts and Matter”. Rob is head of The Arts & Genomics Centre at the University of Leiden, see http://www.artsgenomics.org/

As the third speaker, I will talk about “Five (Good and Bad) Reasons why a Medical Museum Director wants to Bring Art and Science together”.

Finally Ingeborg Reichle, who organizes the session will talk about ”Art in the Age of Technoscience” and will present some issues she is dealing with in her forthcoming book “Art in the Age of Technoscience. Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art ” (Springer, New York 2009; see: http://www.kunstgeschichte.de/reichle/pub_technoscience_EN.html

For an updated program for the whole SLSA meeting, see here: http://www.zfl.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/bilder/Projekte/slsa/update_20080529.pdf