Conversations | Biohacking Creativity: What Does It Mean for Non-Humans to Make Art?

Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, December 9

Artists are increasingly incorporating bacteria, fungi, and viruses as collaborative agents, using their reproduction and dispersion to drive algorithms which result in complex, immersive artworks. In the context of post-humanism, what does this marriage of technology and biology mean for art and how should these artworks be evaluated?

Eduardo Kac, artist, Chicago
Xin Liu, artist, London
Moderator: Dr Jeni Fulton, Head of Editorial, Art Basel

Eduardo Kac is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in contemporary art and poetry. In the early 1980s, Kac created digital, holographic, and online works that anticipated the global culture we live in today, composed of ever-changing information in constant flux. Kac’s singular and highly influential career spans poetry, performance, drawing, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, early digital and online works, holography, telepresence, bio art, and space art.

Xin Liu is an artist and engineer. Xin is the Arts Curator at the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT Media Lab and an artist-in-residence at SETI Institute. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include ‘Seedlings and Offsprings’ at Pioneer Works, New York, and ‘At the End of Everything’ at Artpace, San Antonio. She is an advisor for LACMA Art + Technology Lab and a researcher on the Antikythera program at the Berggren Institute, Los Angeles. Her work has been shown at the Shanghai Biennale; the Thailand Biennale; M+, Hong Kong; Yuz Museum Shanghai, MoMA PS1, New York; MAXXI, Rome; the Sundance Film Festival; Ars Electronica; and Onassis Foundation, New York, among others.

The Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 Conversations program was curated by Emily Butler.