Performance, bioscience, care: exploring interspecies alterity

Abstract

in vitero was an artistic research project investigating the relationships between human and non-human organisms used in technoscientific research. Nine species commonly used in scientific research were cared for over a period of seven months within a scientific laboratory and an art gallery. This article discusses the aesthetic experiences of this prolonged interspecies care through the lens of alterity, a phenomenological mode of negotiating relationships between self and other. It extends this concept from solely human associations to those between human and non-human organisms. Ambiguities and contradictions that arise through caring for organisms that do not ‘look back’ are explored. The technoscientific use of these organisms is recontextualised within an artistic context in order to undertake the new category work necessary in defining human/non-human relationalities.

Keywords:

• performance
• bioscience
• aesthetics
• interspecies
• alterity
• estrangement

Acknowledgements

in vitero was an Art/Science research project enabled by SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in Biological Art, University of Western Australia. The project was made possible through an art residency at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art and received generous support from the Tea Tree Oil Research Group, Microbiology & Immunology, University of Western Australia; the School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University; the Aquatic Ecology & Ecosystem Studies Group, SESE, University of Western Australia; Plant Energy Biology, University of Western Australia; the SABC, Murdoch University; and the School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia. in vitero would not have been possible without project curator Megan Schlipalius.

Notes on contributors

Tarsh Bates completed a Master of Science (Biological Arts) in 2012. She has worked variously as a pizza delivery driver, a fruit and vegetable stacker, a toilet-paper packer, a researcher in compost science and waste management, a honeybee ejaculator, an art gallery invigilator, a bookkeeper, a car detailer and a life-drawing model. Tarsh is currently a candidate for a PhD (Biological Arts) at SymbioticA, The University of Western Australia where her current research is concerned with gentleness, evolutionary aesthetics and the aesthetics of interspecies relationships. She is particularly enamoured with Candida albicans.

Research materials

The underlying research materials for this article can be accessed at the project website http://invitero.tumblr.com/.

Notes

1. The term in vitero is an amalgam of in vitro (experimentation within glass) and in utero (in the womb). I coined it to refer to the care and reproduction of experimental life by humans.

2. Significant contributors to these discussions include Donna Haraway – begun in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991) and more recently in The Companion Species Manifesto (2003) and When Species Meet (2008) – Jacques Derrida in ‘The Animal That Therefore I am (More to Follow)’ (Derrida and Wills 2002) and The Animal That Therefore I am (2008), and Giorgio Agamben in The Open: Man and Animal (2004). Zoontologies (Wolfe 2003) is a particularly interesting and succinct anthology of philosophy in the area and Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human–Animal Relations (Freeman, Leane, and Watt 2011) provides a discussion of the relationships between humans and animals in contemporary and popular culture. Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich (2010) introduce an interesting methodology for exploring these relationships in ‘The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography’. Eva Hayward eloquently describes the sensuality of aquatic encounters in ‘More Lessons from a Starfish: Prefixial Flesh and Transspeciated Selves’ (2008), ‘FINGERYEYES: Impressions of Cup Corals’ (2010), and ‘Sensational Jellyfish: Aquarium Affects and the Matter of Immersion’ (2012). Karen Barad insists on the inextricably entangled intra-actions between the human and non-human world in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) and ‘Nature's Queer Performativity’ (2012).

3. Refer to Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (Haraway 1991), Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience (Haraway 1997) and When Species Meet (Haraway 2008)

4. Refer to the journal Antennae and Steve Baker for interesting discussions of animals in art. Erica Fudge (2004) provides a particularly interesting cultural analysis of the subject in Animal, and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck has a longstanding interest in the role of animals in theatre and performance. Lourdes Orozsco's 2013 text Theatre & Animals ‘addresses the implications of involving animals in performance’. Parker-Starbuck's and Orozsco's forthcoming anthology Performing Animality: Animals in Performance Practices promises to be an important contribution to the field.

5. I use the term spacetime here according to Karen Barad's (2010) understanding in ‘Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come’.

6. However, they were at eye height for older children, creating a whole different set of challenges and viewing experiences that are unfortunately not within the scope of this discussion.