Close Encounters ScienceLiteratureArts The 4th European Conference of the Society for Science, Literature, and the Arts Amsterdam, June 13-16, 2006 Contents General 3 Welcome 4 Keynotes 5 Performances 7 Transdisciplinarity and Re/Search 8 Reading with Ruth Ozeki 9 Speakers and moderators 10 Sessions 19 SLSA-Europe: a proposal for action 169 Theater Adhoc 176 Poets 178 Loop 181 List of Participants 185 2 General Host The 4th European meeting is hosted by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analy- sis (ASCA) of the University of Amsterdam. Streams The conference is organised around 11 thematic streams. There will be more than 250 paper presentations and various panel discussions in about 80 parallel ses- sions spred over three days. For an overview see "Programme", for the paper ab- stracts see "Sessions". Plenary speakers Gillian Beer + Evelyn Fox Keller Andrew Carnie + Richard Wingate Joseph McElroy Programme Chair Manuela Rossini Local Programme Committee José van Dijck (UvA), Sher Doruff (Waag Society/Multimedian), renée c. hoogland (Radboud U, Nijmegen), Manuela Rossini (UvA/U of Basel), Cor van der Weele (U Wageningen), Willem Weststeijn (Director of ASCA), and Robert Zwijnenberg (U Maastricht/U Leiden/The Arts and Genomics Centre, UvA). With the organisational support of: Eloe Kingma (Managing Director of ASCA) and Jantine van Gogh (Office Manager of ASCA), and students Stephan Besser, Sean de Koekkoek, Ivet Reyes Maturano, Laura Schuster, Eliza Steinbock, Gözde Ona- ran. 3 Welcome! Welcome to Close Encounters: ScienceLiteratureArts, the 4th European Biannual Conference of the SLSA (Society for Science, Literature, and the Arts). Like encounters between individuals of different genders, ethnicities, cultures or species, encounters between members of different academic disciplines and pro- fessional groups can take many forms, ranging from hostility and indifference to curiosity and intimacy. When a musician enters into conversation with a neurolo- gist on the topic of cognition or when a literary scholar talks to a biologist about metaphors, the experience of that close encounter may well be of “the third kind”, in a double sense: either utterly alien with no mutual understanding at all, leaving what C.P. Snow described almost 50 years ago as a “gulf of mutual incomprehen- sion” wide open or, on the contrary, producing a new discourse that communi- cates across disciplines and thus manages to bridge the two-cultures divide. In the latter case, the encounter leads to new insights and to the revision of one’s own assumptions and premises. In other words: no participant remains the same after the encounter. On behalf of ASCA and the programme committee, I wish all of us many pleasant and interesting encounters over the next few days. Yours, Manuela Rossini (Programme Chair) 4 Keynotes CLOSE ENCOUNTER 1 Gillian Beer & Evelyn Fox Keller ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN MODES OF EXPLANATION: NATURE, MAGIC AND THE NATURAL Evelyn Fox Keller: As part of my interest in the enduring unproductivity of the nature-nurture debate, I focus here on the problematic relation between nature and the natural. For if the definition of nature is problematic, its semantic relation to 'natural' is even more so. I explore some of the problems that arise from slip- page between substantitive and normative conceptions of 'natural' (inviting collat- eral slippage between is and ought), from the bifurcatory structure of its negation, and from changing assumptions about nature’s domain. Gillian Beer: How to fill the explanatory gap between what is manifest and what has brought it about?: that question of how to knit up causes and effects preoccu- pies both science and literature. In this paper I look at Darwin's encounters with indigenous systems of explanation when on the Beagle journeys and how he re- sisted and learnt from them. My other examples, from Helmholtz, Thomas Mann, and Thomas Hardy, also raise questions of what is 'magical' or 'natural' in expla- nation. The talk is moderated by Cor van der Weele. CLOSE ENCOUNTER 2 Andrew Carnie + Richard Wingate CLOSE COLLABORATION BETWEEN ART AND NEUROSCIENCE Andrew Carnie and Richard Wingate have worked together on and off over a period of five years. Their collaboration as artist and scientist and their ongoing process of dialogue has resulted in two art works: Magic Forest in 2002, shown at the Science Museum London, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam and in the Design Museum Zurich and Complex Brain, first shown in 2005 at the British Association Science Fair, Exeter. The nature of the collaboration has changed as they have moved on. The first was very much an exchange with Andrew taking forward the ideas and making the work, the second involved greater interchange and a blending of the ideas. In the air is a third project, a chance to work together anew. How would they take on a new project in relation to the experience of the first two projects? Andrew Carnie and Richard Wingate will talk about their own 5 work as individuals, their shared experience of working on their two 'collabora- tions', and how they might move onto their next venture together. The talk is moderated by Robert Zwijnenberg. CLOSE ENCOUNTER 3 Joseph Mc Elroy in Coversation The distinguished American novelist Joseph McElroy will read from his current fictional and theoretical projects, concentrating on the topic of “conceptual fields accessible to and conditioning or enlarging the possibilities of prose fiction”. The reading will be followed by a panel on McElroy's work (Session 6E-2), to which the novelist will also contribute. Chair: Yves Abrioux Respondents: Noëlle Batt and Joseph Tabbi. 6 Performances 1: Poetry reading Location: Stichting/Theater Perdu, Kloveniersburgwal 86, 20:30-open ended Organiser and moderator: Annemarie Estor With sci/technopoems by: Roberta Lynn Dostal (Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA): “Geologic Vegetable Beef Stew”, “Quiet Time”, “Tiny Critters”, “Dam! Dam! Dam the Door” and “Confusion”. Annemarie Estor (University of Antwerp, Belgium) Seven poems about the brain: “Mum”, “The Purkinje Cell”, “People in the Night”, “Todopoderoso”, “Fantastic Anatomy”, “Regeneration” and “The Neurobiology of the Nightmare” Liana Christensen (Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia) Seven Ecofeminist Poems: “Arachnead”, “Cohabitation 11”, Cohabitation 111”, “Crunching the Numbers”, “Eve Encounters the Internet”, “Taxonomic Dreaming”, and “Verisimilitude” Nat Hardy (Rogers State University, Oklahoma, USA) and Julian Grater (Lon- don, UK) “Biomarkers”, an art/poetry collaboration 2: Two bio-multimedia performances Location: Universiteitstheater, 20:00-22:00 Performances by: Natasha Myers/Clemetine Cummer (MIT): Cellular Practices and Mimetic Transduction (length: 20 minutes) This multi-media production explores the performance of life science research. Building on ethnographic and movement studies of biological laboratories, it ex- amines the affective entanglements between biologists, their substances and me- diating machines in the production and performance of biological images and models. Through movement, video projection, text and sound, we transduce the gestures and body-work of lively substances and their researchers. Trace Reddell/Timothy Weaver (U of Denver, USA): microMacroCosm (length: 1hr) This new multimedia-based work of live cinema uses video and sound to explore information patterns that span cellular, neurological, global and stellar registers. Drawing on a variety of data gathered from DNA sequences, real-time biofeed- back, biomolecular navigation, and interstellar radiowave activity, the perform- ance provides an intersection for the diverse data streams that continually, largely 7 invisibly, inform our existence. The collaborating artists mediate this connectivity as a form of improvisational influence spread across a range of data-scales. Transdisciplinarity and Art as Re/Search “Art as Research”, a modest proposal by Florian Dombois, followed by responses from Bergit Arends & Mieke Bal & François-Joseph Lapointe Moderator: Manuela Rossini Florian Dombois (Berne University of the Arts, CH) Art as Research: An attempt to draft some instructions In many European countries, and elsewhere, a vivid discussion on how to do re- search in the arts (including the fine arts, music, theatre, etc.) is currently taking place. There are good reasons to think about alternative forms of research to chal- lenge the (natural-)scientific claim on knowledge. In the following I propose 10 paragraphs that should be fullfilled in order for a piece of art to be placed on the same footing as a research result from the technosciences: § 1. 'Art as research' presupposes an epistemic interest! § 2. The epistemic interest is clearly stated! § 3. Knowledge is formulated within the respective art form! § 4. Meeting at the join: thematic grouping and organisation by form of represen- tation § 5. Research is done by many people, and not by one person only! § 6. The evaluation of the research results is done by experts! § 7. The results are made accessible to the general public via publications! § 8. Agreed criteria exist for the discussion of results! § 9. 'Art as Research' takes into account the 'State of the Art'! § 10. 'Art as Research' takes the solutions provided by scientific research and bats them back as questions! Now the discussion has to start. The fulltext-version of these paragraphs can be found on the internet, www.hkb.bfh.ch/hkb2006inhalt.html, and also a public exchange in Kunst-Bulletin (April 2006), www.kunstbulletin.ch/router.cfm?a=060315151830PAX-2). Both texts are in German. An English translation will be provided upon request. E-mail: [email protected] 8 Reading with Ruth Ozeki SATURDAY, 17 June, 20:00-22:00 Location: Treehouse of the American Book Centre, Voetboogstraat 11 Ruth Ozeki will read from her latest novel, All Over Creation. Introduction by Susan Squier. (Ozeki will be presenting a new short story in Session 8I also.) Ruth Ozeki is an award-winning filmmaker and author of the muckraking classic, My Year of Meats. Her books, which have been translated into 14 languages and published in as many countries, are humorous, harrowing, and heartfelt explora- tions of the areas where the political and the personal intersect. Ozeki will talk about her work and answer questions after the reading. Book signing will follow. All Over Creation is the story of Yumi Fuller, a prodigal daughter who returns home to her family farm in Idaho and finds herself caught in the middle of a battle over the future of food and farming. Agribusiness forces, hell bent on introducing a genetically engineered potato to the farmers of Idaho, are at war with a posse of activists, the Seeds of Resistance, who travel the country in a camping car called The Spudnik, fueled by french-fry oil. In the midst of this volatile fray, Yumi re- turns to confront her dying parents, her estranged friend, an abusive lover and a conflicted past. All Over Creation tells a celebratory tale of the beauty of seeds and growing things, and the capacity for renewal that resides within us all. 9 Speakers and moderators OPENING Willem Weststeijn is Professor of Slavic Literature at the University of Amster- dam and Director of ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis). He is editor in chief of the international journal Russian Literature and the Dutch journal Tijdschrift voor Slavische Literatuur, editor of Avant Garde Critical Studies and the book series Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics. Among his book publications are Velimir Chlebnikov and the Development of Poetical Language in Russian Symbolism and Futurism (1983), Inleiding in de Algemene Literatuurwetenschap (Introduction into Literary Theory, 1981) en Over literatuur (On Literature, 1987), both together with Mieke Bal and Jan van Luxemburg, and Russische literatuur (Russian Literature, 2004). He wrote some 500 articles and reviews on Slavic lit- erature and literary and comparative theory and is preparing a new book on mod- ern Russian literature. He is currently on the Board of the Humanities Council of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the jury of the Martinus Nijhoff Award for translations. Robbert Dijkgraaf is since 2005 University Professor at the University of Am- sterdam, where from 1992 he held the chair of Mathematical Physics. He studied theoretical physics and mathematics in Utrecht, where (after an interlude studying painting at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie) he obtained in 1989 his Ph.D. cum laude under supervision of Nobel Prize laureate Gerard 't Hooft. Subsequently he held positions at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. His re- search group works in string theory, quantum gravity, and the interface of mathematics and particle physics. Dijkgraaf is also interested in creating more public awareness of mathematics and science, and bridging the gap with the arts and humanities. He is a columnist for the national newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Dijkgraaf is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen. He was the recipi- ent of the 2001 Physica Prize of the Dutch Physical Society and the 2003 NWO Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. Frits van Oostrom is President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since May 2005 and Professor of Dutch at Utrecht University. From 1998- 2001, he was Dean and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Arts as well as Professor of Pre-Romantic Dutch Literature at the University of Leiden. van Oostrom was a Visiting Distinguished Professor (Erasmus Chair) at Harvard University in 1999. 10