CRISPR-Cas9 GIVE ME A GENE

This presentation will address issues pertaining to the uses, ethics, and representations of CRISPR-cas9 genome editing system. Much has been said about the possibilities of the application of CRISPR-Cas9—some discreetly realistic while some seemingly delusional. One thing is certain: It cannot be ignored. The presenters, BioArtist Marta de Menezes and Media Scholar Dalila Honorato, invite us to consider and discuss the potentials, concerns and limitations of mutation technologies in everyday life experience and an effort to go beyond stereotyped evaluations and come to terms with the broad implications of CRISPR-Cas9.

Marta de Menezes is a Portuguese artist with a degree in Fine Arts by the University in Lisbon, a MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture by the University of Oxford, and a PhD candidate at the University of Leiden. She has been exploring the intersection between Art and Biology, working in research laboratories demonstrating that new biological technologies can be used as new art medium for two decades. She is currently the artistic director of Ectopia, an experimental art laboratory in Lisbon, and Director of Cultivamos Cultura in Southern Portugal.

Dalila Honorato, is an Assistant Professor in Media Aesthetics and Semiotics at the Department of Audio and Visual Arts of the Ionian University in Greece where she is one of the founding members of the Interactive Arts Lab. She is the head of the organizing committee of the conference Taboo-Transgression-Transcendence in Art & Science and developer of the studies program concept of the Corfu Summer School in Hybrid Arts. Her research focus is on embodiment in the intersection of performing arts and new media.