What can one equation tell us about life, about ourselves? - Martin Hanczyc // Design for Life beyond Biontology? - Joana Meroz

What can one equation tell us about life, about ourselves? - Martin Hanczyc (Associate Professor, Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology (CIBIO)
University of Trento)

For many years I have been collaborating with artists and designers by contributing my experience in chemistry and biochemistry.   This has resulted in various exhibitions and articles, various creative outputs, and strange circumstances.  To find collaborative threads, I believe that we must learn to communicate across disciplines and experiences.  As a communication tool, I will present one equation and spend time discussing this one equation with the participants to discover truths, questions, and perspectives about life.   I look forward to our discussion.

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Design for Life beyond Biontology? - Joana Meroz (Lecturer at the Design Cultures MA and coordinator of the Design track of the Media, Kunst, Design en Architectuur (MKDA) BA, VU Amsterdam)

The concept of “design for life” has been rapidly picking up steam in the last few years. What purposes might life-centred design fulfil by differentiating between life/nonlife and favouring only the former? This talk explores how Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s magisterial Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (2016) can contribute to thinking through the ethical implications of life-centred design. I discuss how life-centred design tends to reproduce a modern Western belief in biontology (the equivalence of life with being) and as such risks reproducing (neo-)colonial practices of control. In conclusion, I consider some of the ethical implications of a hypothetical post-biontological life-centred design.