Art and Science I
Dmitry Bulatov - Senses Alert

Opening: 28 March, 2008, 8PM
29.03.2008 - 05.04.2008
Artist's talk and workshop: 29.03.2008, 5PM
Open Friday 27 April from 8PM
Tour of the exhibition: 27.04.2008, 3PM

Contemporary Art already long ago turned away from a solely anthropocentric point of view. Currently in Science Art, it is concerned, among other things, with ecological phenomena and is investigating the existence of newly emerging life forms; Art and Science have been combined. The Kaliningrad based artist Dmitry Bulatov views the contemporary art scene as a kind of petri dish of living material for his investigations. Coming from his own artistic experience he has investigated this sphere and explored its dynamics and spatial vectors. In connection with his scientific research and artistic practice, Bulatov has staged an active evolutionary dramatisation of ‘post-biological’ forms whose paradoxical development may completely change our idea of the surrounding world.

Bulatov’s three part project Senses Alert, 2004-2007 is devoted to a critical reflection of the newest technologies, their development and use in contemporary society and art. Biology is no longer concerned with just the decoding of (genetic) information about human and animal life forms, but also, in a further step, with manipulating these codes. What use and value does genetic experimentation have when mankind begins to alter and form itself and its environment, purely bounded by its own short-sighted conceptions? In an
attempt to deal with these complex questions, Bulatov, together with scientists from the Moscow Academy of Science, initiated an experiment in genetic technology from which emerged life forms on the borderline between the animal and plant kingdoms. The interdisciplinary conflict between the scientific-technological and the ethical-aesthetic viewpoints provides an opportunity to define a field of discussion in which Art and Science can interact.

Dmitry Bulatov

article at nurart.org