| dc.description | Biography:
Treva Michelle Pullen is a PhD student, interdisciplinary researcher, curator and artist from Toronto currently based in Montreal. Her research explores the playful and agentic capacities of media art through the lens of ‘whimsical bodies’; a term she uses as an evocative metaphor for the lively, humorous and often reciprocally engaging nature of media art objects. Her doctoral studies merge critical theory and curatorial practice based research to explore methods of display for the whimsical bodies presented through bio art; facilitating human nonhuman ‘interfacing’ in museum settings.
Pullen is a research member of the Speculative Life Cluster at Milieux, FluxMedia and Obx: Laboratory for Experimental Media. Her writing has been published in The Senses & Society, InterARTive, JAWS and AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. She has also curated new media based exhibitions such as #NATURE (2016) and Influenc(Ed.) Machines at OCAD University. Pullen holds an MA from OCAD University in Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories, and a BFA from OCAD University majoring in Criticism and Curatorial Practice with a studio minor. Her recently published Master’s Thesis “Whimsical Bodies: Agency and Playfulness in Robotic Art” won OCAD University’s Outstanding Thesis Award in 2016. Pullen is currently a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at Concordia University. | |
| dc.description.abstract | In the science lab objectivity is key. Protocols are set in place to ensure that experiments go on without interference, without subjectivity, unnecessary inquiry, emotion or caring. These do not seem to be sites of experimentation or creativity.
What can artists do for scientific practice? How can they make messy the sterile space of the lab, breakdown the barriers imposed upon it, open up the walls that conceal the lab from the public eye and create feminist interventions that make these spaces safe and accessible? What does a feminist lab look like?
Exploring practices of care and maintenance conducted by bioartists my paper will address and celebrate the intimate and meaningful interactions occurring between artists and their semi-living subjects/muses/collaborators. Caring for semi-living entities (the term semi-living as defined by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr to describe transgenic beings that occupy an in-between status as living creatures that rely upon outside forces to stay alive) requires an excess of emotional, physical and intellectual labour on the part of the artist. The regimented masculine lab protocols are broken and reframed through the eyes of artists, such as Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, WhiteFeather Hunter, Nicole Clouston, KathyHigh, and Tarsh Bates, who allow themselves to celebrate their maintenance activities, engage with nonhuman bodies and feel empathy towards their specimens. In the laboratory, during the works production, and, through the maintenance and pedagogical practices of public display, feminist bioartists impart their knowledge of scientific processes and their caring empathy for nonhuman life. | |
