A near-future ‘post-corporeal’ connection between body, instrument, space and time is now possible - where creative production tools cease to be divorced from the biological body, instead creator and creation are one in the same. The complexities and nuances that these ‘prepared’ living entities can embody will give rise to a new kind of performative entity, an entity physically removed from the human but linked through lab-based processes in which biopsied material grown outside of the donor’s body (in vitro) control a creative, hybridised entity or specifically, a Surrogate Performer. This talk covers some of the engineering and ethical challenges with producing and exhibiting living artworks.

Nathan Thompson is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring the possibilities of man-machine interaction and the hidden corners that arise from this relationship. Currently, he’s an Artist in Residence at SymbioticA, an artistic research laboratory at the University of Western Australia. Nathan builds machines and dissipative systems, both electromechanical and biochemical; and through the process, he manipulates life to question and problematise humanity’s position in the contemporary environment, to build a greater understanding of the inhabited space we share. His long-term enquiry surrounds the political and ethical issues encountered when we allow technology open access to our lives.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMZHDixhmBD/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

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Talk Language: English Q&A: English & Japanese This talk is a collaboration between BioClub Tokyo and metaPhorest (Hideo Iwasaki Lab, Waseda TWIns). Organiser: Georg Tremmel & Hideo Iwasaki