aesthetics of biomedicine, museum and knowledge politics
Alter-realism — dispense with the sci- and bioart gallery and make scientific reality our experimentation lab
In the early morning — just before Johanna began to make the usual noices to indicate she wanted to be transferred to our bed for a last cosy hour of sleep — my eyes fell on this sentence in a piece by Douglas Haddow in Adbusters (‘The coming barbarism’):
Rather than Bourriaud’s altermodernism, we should pursue an alter-realism: dispense with the art gallery altogether and make reality our experimentation lab.
I admit it’s taken out of context. Nevertheless, try to translate the sentence into the domain of science/medical museums and sci- and bioart, as represented by, for example, the Wellcome Collection:
Dispense with the sci- and bioart gallery and make scientific reality our experimentation lab.
In other words, don’t move the aesthetic out of the laboratory into galleries and museum exhibitions (this is what all sci- and bioartists so far have been doing). Go to the lab instead, do some real experiments and re-frame this practice into an aesthetic experiment within the walls of the lab itself. The lab is your art gallery.
05 Mar 2010 Thomas
I couldn’t agree more. Often artists TAKE from the lab rather than SHARE or GIVE. Elements taken are frequently superficial aethetics and artworks produced by artists inspired by outcomes of biological imaging etc. may shift meaning, change value and become interesting images that relate little to the original artefact or concept. Over the last ten years my work has been created in the lab or dissection room rather than in the traditional setting of the artists’ studio. I have used drawing as a way of bringing the lab into the gallery and as a system for communicating the role of drawing as a participatory way to reveal insights into objects. Continuing this within the context of the collections in the Museion adds another equally important space to the list. The public are not usually privy to the lab and the dissection rooms but can see medical sciences within the museum. This space welcomes visitors and gives them the opportunity to see medical artefacts and learn about medical concepts within an historical setting. Drawing allows visitors time to look at objects and find deeper understanding of them. It also benefits the artefacts as their importance as objects is highlighted and they are appreciated more fully. Rather than the final artwork being the main focus, it is the origin, the object originally observed and the insights revealed that become the most important aspect.
I’m in total agreement here, Thomas, but there also seems to a another angle on this issue. In your rewriting of the quote from Haddow, you suggest (rightly) that we should take our experimentation into ‘scientific reality’ (i.e. the lab). But from another perspective ‘scientific reality’ is not just the lab, but all of reality itself. ‘Scientific reality’ might be akin to a term like ‘like itself’ – science, in this case biomedicine, gets more and more capable of changing reality as such. Thus one could change your last lines to read:
“Go to reality instead, do some real experiments and re-frame this practice into an aesthetic experiment unfolding in ‘life itself’. Reality is your art gallery.”
This message was brought to you by the Committee for Random Associations from Materialist Philosophy (CRAMP).
What a surprise to see “alterrealism” term on your site! Please check my alterrealism facebook, or my blog – I have been working on that subject for 4 years now. We are going to lunch an alterrealism.org in a fall, and a call for members…. it is an interdisciplinary movement. I would love to get comments from you.
Uba
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alterrealism/216933505403
http://www.ubaowl.com/blog/
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