AAANZ IMPACT Conference, Sydney, AU

WhiteFeather will be co-convening a panel for the upcoming IMPACT conference (The University of Sydney), from 8-10 December, 2021.

The 2021 AAANZ Conference is being convened by The Power Institute and the University of Sydney Department of Art History.

Feminist Collaborations Across Arts and Bioscience Technologies

WhiteFeather Hunter (University of Western Australia) & Molly McKinney (American Nurses Association)

Online Panel

This panel means to explore some of the impacts of feminist collaboration across the fields of art and science, with a particular focus on the use and/or critique of new biotechnologies. Inter-, cross- and trans-disciplinary collaborations provide fertile ground for expanding necessary dialogue around technological tools and their broad social applicability in the arts and sciences. We are especially interested in how the collaborative, subversive use of (bio)technologies can intersect or interrupt capitalist and/or colonial agendas that impact women’s, queer and other non-normative bodies. Tissue engineering and prosthetic implants, reproductive technologies and femtech, hormone therapies, stem cell uses, genetic modification, microbiome transplants, or any other technologies concerned with the body as a nexus of tinkering and transformation are welcome as case studies, art projects or points of critical debate. Biotechnologies can also include so-called low-tech approaches, including lay/folk medicine or biohacking, grassroots pharmacology and creative revivals of ancestral herbalism, and medico-spiritual techniques of community care. Feminist concerns such as the instrumentalization of women’s bodies and the exploitation of women as subjects for high tech development, body colonization/ de-colonization, as well as the differences in ethical approaches in the arts and the sciences, are some of the core issues we hope to raise. We are particularly interested in intersectional approaches that focus on how technological instrumentalization/ exploitation most impacts and relies on certain marginalized groups.