The realities of our future: Robotics, biotechnology and Patricia Piccinini

Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / The Struggle 2017 / Fibreglass, automotive paint, leather, steel, cycle parts; ed. 1/3 + 1 AP / 200 × 240 × 120cm / Purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2018 / Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney / © The artist

Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / The Struggle 2017 / Fibreglass, automotive paint, leather, steel, cycle parts; ed. 1/3 + 1 AP / 200 × 240 × 120cm / Purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2018 / Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney / © The artist / View full image

Known for her imaginative, yet strangely familiar, lifelike hybrid creatures, Patricia Piccinini invites us to think about our place in a world where advances in biotechnology and digital technologies are challenging the boundaries of humanity. Piccinini’s fantastic hybrid beings invite us to find beauty in a world not ruled by notions of perfection.

The Gallery’s evening discussion program GOMA Talks returned during ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘. Across two evenings, ABC Radio National hosts Scott Stephens (The Minefield) and Cathy Van Extel (Big Ideas) with guest panellists explored humankind’s complicated relationship with the future we are creating.

RISE OF THE MACHINES

As we confront with the prospect of a future in which artificial technology, robotics, and advances in biotechnology are commonplace, what are our ethical obligations, both to our fellow humans, and also to our creations?

Explore the theme of relationship with the GOMA Talks panel – the nature of relationship, and the binding obligations that relationships exert upon us. Relation is at the centre of Patricia Piccinini’s work, the intermingling of human and non-human animals; the relationship of the animal to the machine; and even the animal and the machine’s relationship towards another creature.

Hosted by Scott Stephens, presenter of ABC Radio National’s The Minefield / With guests Hussein Abbass, Professor in the School of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of New South Wales Canberra / Christy Dena, writer-designer-director, Universe Creation 101 and QUT Digital Writing Residency recipient / Anita Pisch, author and Visiting Fellow, School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Australian National University / Robert Sparrow, Professor in the Philosophy Program, a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, and an adjunct Professor in the Monash Bioethics Centre, Monash University, Melbourne.

IN OUR IMAGE

Art and culture has long been a means to grapple with humankind’s complicated emotional relationship with artificial intelligence and biotechnology. What is our fascination with creatures that are built in our own image, and how far away are we really from the creatures that we have imagined?

It’s been two decades since Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell using the process of nuclear transfer; the first isolation of human embryonic stem cells; and more recently genetic editing through CRISPR has opened up a new world of possibilities. Biotechnology is pushing the boundaries, while artificial intelligence and robotics are playing a greater role in our lives. Listen to the GOMA Talks panel as they respond to the questions: What does it mean to be human; how should we relate to our ‘creatures’; and should they have rights?

Hosted by Cathy Van Extel, presenter of ABC Radio National’s Big Ideas / With guests Elizabeth Finkel, Australian science journalist, editor-in-Chief of COSMOS magazine / Upulie Divisekera, molecular biologist, science communicator and writer / Jonathan Parsons, Artistic Director, curator and creative producer / Catherine S. McMullen, screenwriter for film, television and VR.

‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘ is exclusive to Brisbane at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) until 5 August 2018.

Read more on our blog / Watch exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes footage on YouTube / Listen on Spotify / Visit our website

The exhibition is supported by Principal Benefactor, the Neilson Foundation, and Major Partner, Tourism and Events Queensland.

Feature image: Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / The Struggle 2017 / Fibreglass, automotive paint, leather, steel, cycle parts; ed. 1/3 + 1 AP / 200 × 240 × 120cm / Purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2018 / Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney / © The artist

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    Looking at Patricia Piccinini’s monsters looking at us

    Our culture — its art, music, theology and techno-science — is filled with the promises of monsters, that is to say, the irreverent energy of those who deviate from prescriptive normality. Known for her imaginative lifelike creatures, visit ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘ at GOMA until 5 August 2018, and ponder our place in a world where advances in technology are challenging the boundaries between human and monstrous hybrid creatures. The connotations of that very term — monsters — however, tell a significant tale about our collective relationship to those who are otherwise embodied, both anthropomorphic — having human characteristics, and animal. Considered ‘other’, it is as if monstrous, non-human, animal and hybrid others inhabit a specific dimension that endows them with exceptional imaginary and metamorphic powers. They are both less-and-more than human, and other-than human at the same time. Connection and empathy are at the heart of my practice. My creatures are imaginary beings that are almost possible. They are not always traditionally beautiful, but they have a beauty and an honesty within them. They are more vulnerable than threatening. Patricia Piccinini Piccinini’s monstrous bodies blur the distinction between normal and pathological, self and other, human and non-human, and, in this capacity, they are a privileged site of phantasmic projection. Their influence on the cultural imagination is far-reaching: hybrid, monstrous bodies are cast in the mode of a familiar, yet threatening, otherness — a quasi-kin. They embody ontological impropriety. As objects of simultaneous wonder and fear, admiration and disgust, they cause a disturbance in the status quo, evoking a mixture of fascination and loathing. Whatever the response, they are culturally produced as sensational objects of visual display. There is also a paradoxically reassuring quality about them: their hybrid, monstrous bodies have already undergone a catastrophic mutation and have survived. Most people go through life dreading that they will have to confront a traumatic experience, but monsters already have. They embody both the trauma and the act of overcoming; having passed their test in life, they count as existential aristocrats. Their resilience grants them a cathartic function in relation to those — especially humans — who are still fearfully anticipating a blow. Patricia Piccinini highlights her favourite works The artist challenges us to review our preconceived ideas and socially enforced relationships with the otherwise embodied. This critical process starts by questioning the very cultural repertoire and mental habits that have structured our visual, cognitive and affective relationships with these others. Piccinini’s hybrid, monstrous creatures return our gaze, they look back at us and thus undo the consumeristic objectification of their otherness. They also look into us, with eyes full of compassion and understanding. Their intensity explodes the boundaries between human normality and its others. They stand in their plenitude, looking at our lack. Although it is tempting to take this remark as a humanisation of their gaze and their moral fibre, it would also be condescending to attribute human qualities, as if these traits were inherently superior. It is rather the case that Piccinini’s others transcend the binary divides altogether and come to exist in a continuum with a multitude of human and non-human others. In so doing, they challenge and shift boundaries. Their relational power induces a trans-species form of care, while their empathic force expresses a posthuman relational ethics. Read more on our blog / Subscribe to YouTube to watch behind-the-scenes footage and exclusive interviews / Buy the publication Patricia Piccinini, Australia b.1965 / Big Mother 2005 / Silicone, fibreglass, polyurethane, leather, human hair; ed. 2/3 + 1 AP / 175cm (high) / Gift of S Angelakis, John Ayers, Candy Bennett, Cherise Conrick, James Darling AM and Lesley Forwood, Rick Frolich, Frances Gerard, Patricia Grattan French, Stephanie Grose, Gryphon Partners Advisory, Janet Hayes, Klein Family Foundation, Edwina Lehmann, Ian Little, David and Pam McKee, Dr Peter McEvoy, Hugo and Brooke Michell, Jane Michell, Paul Taliangis, Michael and Tracey Whiting and anonymous donors through the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors 2010 / Collection: Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide / © The artist ‘Curious Affection’ tests all our received wisdom about nature and nurture, the real and the unreal, and what it means to be human. It explores the myriad of interactions involving humanity and the natural world, collapsing and confusing conventional boundaries. This results in extraordinary environments populated by compelling and startlingly realistic creatures. Delve into the artist’s world where the natural world pushes against the artificial, and vice versa, where the social, ethical and moral implications of genetic research are explored, and where creatures — intricately and lovingly created — visit us from a conceivable future. Professor Rosi Braidotti was born in Italy and grew up in Australia, where she received a First-Class Honours degree from the Australian National University in Canberra in 1977. She went on to receive a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1981. She has taught at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands since 1988, when she was appointed as the founding professor in women’s studies. In 1995, she became the founding Director of the Netherlands research school of Women’s Studies, a position she held until 2005. She was also founding director of the Centre for the Humanities from 2007 until 2016. Braidotti is a pioneer in European women’s studies and her fields of interest include social and political theory, cultural politics, gender, feminist theory and ethnicity studies. Feature image detail: Patricia Piccinini’s Big Mother 2005 Edited extract from ‘Affirmation and a passion for difference: Looking at Piccinini looking at us’. Read the full essay in Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection. #PiccininiGOMA
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    Patricia Piccinini’s paradox: The Carrier

    Patricia Piccinini’s The Carrier 2012 is both provocative and thoughtful, the artwork hints at what is possible from the creatures we may want to create in the not-too-distant future, making us focus our attention on what may lay ahead for us — is this relationship between humanoid and human how we will care for our ageing population? The carrier himself is a muscular male, strong and powerful with bright eyes and bear traits in his nose, tail and claws, he is balding, with age spots, yet his bear-like physique is able to lift the frail woman behind him with ease. It seems the carrier and woman are connected in some way, physically but also emotionally, therein lies the conflict. Perched up high, she looks comfortable and content to rely on his assistance, yet what is their relationship, why is he carrying her, is it an equal partnership, or is he just performing a service? We can wonder if the carrier is the next step in post-human technology, his life seems perfectly engineered to the task he performs, and it is feasible that he is happily self-employed. Listen to Patricia Piccinini Know Brisbane through the QAGOMA Collection / Delve into our Queensland Stories / Read more about Australian Art / Subscribe to QAGOMA YouTube to go behind-the-scenes Known for her imaginative, yet strangely familiar, lifelike hybrid creatures, Patricia Piccinini invites us to think about our place in a world where advances in biotechnology and digital technologies are challenging the boundaries of humanity. ‘Patricia Piccinini: Curious Affection‘ / Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / 24 March – 5 August 2018