This lab based research program focuses on art and science relations and practices of living matter manipulations in a manner that hands-on practice is never separated from instant processes of thinking. Students are to experience and discuss what is actually happening in the labs within wider Do IT Yourself biology, bioart and biodesign scene and what are the ethical, political and cultural chall
enges of living matter manipulations. In other words, rather than representing the reality, students of BIO MATTERs will invent a reality. The aim of AKI BIO MATTERs is to create spaces of thinking while doing, and doing while thinking with the living matters. The use of living matter in art is nothing new. Artists have been working with living bodies already since the beginning of the last century. However, art’s experimentation with life and living matter has gained a new significance and unexpected roles. Known as bioartists and biodesigners, artists have been entering bioscientific institutions and laboratories in order to collaborate with scientists and learn to use their tools and protocols in the artistic practice. The unique non-goal/profit oriented attitude toward experimentation, questioning and invention makes artist to gain a new role. Bioartists became a biophilosophers, bioeducators, bioactivists and biostorytellers of the new brave world where biology, technology and philosophy are not separate from each other. However, with the new medium and possibilities, the old worries came. If art creates life, is it also responsible for it? If bioart is not a simple representation of scientific findings, but an actual generation of realities, what becomes the role of art? These questions concern thus not only the status of art with regard to science and philosophy but also methods, tools and implications of art’s present and future practices with living matter. AKI BIO MATTERs is to exercise within lectures, workshops and hands-on engagement the capacities and agencies of art working with living matters. Lecturer and coordinator: Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko
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