Why are Women Like Chickens? Or Cows? Cyberfeminism Interrogates Biotechnology

Today, completely new biological bodies are being created through molecular genetic engineering, cloning, stem cell cultivation, and transgenics. Laboratory constructed human embryos, animals, plants and trans-species are proliferating in our environment. These are fleshed beings beyond any previously known category, transgressing boundaries in ways previously only imagined in myth and science fiction. An era of interspecies technologies introduces irrevocable changes in reproductive and generative processes, the raw materials of which are often (female) human and animal body parts. Many knowledge/power systems intersect and collide on this biotech frontier: from computing technologies, medicine, and genetics to religion, philosophy, and feminist theory. And yet there is very little public debate or critical analysis engaging the philosophical, ethical, and political issues of difference raised by the new bio sciences. This artist lecture takes a critical look at cultural meanings and representations of reproductive and recombinant biotechnologies, in which human and animal bodies are becoming distributed, patented bodies, part of a global exchange of property and value. 

Organized by: City of Women
In collaboration with: Škuc Gallery
With the support of: the Embassy of the United States of America in Ljubljana, Robert Morris University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago