Please join the Department of Art and Coalesce: Center for Biological Arts for a special convening in Buffalo of FEMeeting Sister Labs: Women in Art, Science and Technology. This 3-day event of local and international artists, scholars, students and community members features a day-long symposium, exhibition, BioArt workshop and performance at Torn Space Theater.
FEMeeting Sister Labs: Women in Art, Science and Technology is part of a larger network of women and women-identifying folks working at the intersection of art, science and technology. FEMeeting is driven by the desire to develop and promote more direct collaborations. The goal is to disseminate projects being undertaken by women worldwide and, as a result, to contribute to the development of art-science research methodologies and to the growth of cooperation strategies that can increase knowledge sharing and bring communities closer.
Launched in 2017, the conference “FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science and Technology” was driven by the desire to develop and promote more direct collaboration between individuals who identify themselves as Women, independently of their sex. The idea behind FEMeeting was orchestrated by the Portuguese artist Marta de Menezes and scholar Dalila Honorato, after realizing that women in the field of Art and Science have an unquestionable presence worldwide.
In 2021, FEMeeting Sister Labs launched as an hybrid model of interaction between local and global, between digital and physical: where FEMeeting members address to the community of women in art, science and technology an invitation to their lab spaces.
FEMeeting is a conference bringing together women in art, science and technology, for two days of speakers, workshops, and community activities. NATURE Lab is hosting and bringing in local and international artists, scholars, students and community members.
Saturday’s program focused on workshops and the women who are doing work locally.
NATURE Lab Workshop: “Community Science in N. Central Troy,” with speakers:
Kathy High
Sarah Cadieux: Microplastics in our water
Abby Kinchy: Our Soil project
Ellie Irons: Water Justice Lab
A’Livija Mullins-Richard: Air Justice Lab
Emilly Obuya: STEM / STEAM Learning.
Plus an L Lot tour “AILANTHUSxYUCCA: Clearing, Weaving, Opening” with Azuré Keahi and Ellie Irons.
A series of public dialogues, workshops, and performances addressing interdisciplinary and decolonial approaches at the intersection between art, science, and technology featuring:
Cecillia Ochalan Vilca — Peruvian transartist, feminist chola techno-witch, and language activist; Praba Pilar — diasporic Colombian interdisciplinary artist disrupting the overwhelmingly passive participation in the contemporary cult of the techno-logic; Nathalie Dubois — bioartist and plant science researcher based in Montreal, engaging in feminist acts of reconciliation with her non/human components.
This program is the culmination of a term-long pedagogical effort to foster, connect, and consolidate interdisciplinary dialogues across the 5 courses at the NewONE Program (New College, University of Toronto). It is also part of a short-term mobile residency, based on the sustainable principles of sharing knowledge and resources, and the goal to foster interdisciplinary dialogues and new pedagogy across 4 institutions in Canada and in the US. Finally, the initiative is part of the FEMeeting SisterLabs series designed to support and lead to the FEMeeting, a women and women-identified conference taking place on June 23-29 2024 at the University of Windsor.
March 21, 1:00-3:00 pm SisterLab #1 Panel Discussion Interdisciplinary and decolonial practices in art, science and technology Cecilia Vilca Ocharan Transartist, Lima, Perú Praba Pilar, Interdisciplinary Artist, US/Colombia Nathalie Dubois-Calero, Bioartist and Plant Scientist, Montreal Melanie Jeffrey, Indigenous Studies and Human Biology, University of Toronto
March 25, 2:00-5:00 pm Workshop #1 Data Visceral (Forensic Love) A DIY/DIWO/DIT epigenetics workshop By Cecilia Vilca Ocharan Description: In this workshop, participants will hack personal data (imaging tests, biochemical analysis, pathological studies, chromatography research, neurological exams, etc.) to extract and reappropriate “visceral” data, that is data as undervalued sensitive knowledge: history and personal (internal/external) territory, instinct, non-linear times, and the different scales we inhabit. Visceral data is the chronicle of our own bodies.
March 27, 6:00-8:30 pm SisterLab #2 Artist Talks and performances Cecilia Vilca Ocharan Praba Pilar BacterHuman. A performance and talk by Nathalie Dubois Calero
March 28, 4:00-7:00 pm Workshop #2 Mater Virus Ontological Workshop-Game for Post-Pandemic Reconciliation by Cecilia Vilca Ocharan and Nathalie Dubois-Calero Description: Mater Virus (Mother virus) is an ontological workshop-game where the public finds their more intimate specificities – baldness, communication ability, and disease susceptibilities – what makes us unique is being an inheritance from viruses at a different time in our history. Participants will not only learn about sequencing, SNPs, retroviruses, and evolution, but they will also “be ” viruses and be conscious that our body is also territory and identity. They will connect to the performativity of biology. The information is brought to bodies to generate reflection through play, acquiring knowledge, and scientific awareness.
About the artists Cecilia Vilcahttps://ceciliavilca.com/ is a Peruvian media artist whose artistic work at the intersection of art and science applies a decolonial lens to gender, society, and nature by connecting ancient technologies with new ones. Her main goal and poetic is to encourage reflection through revelation using technology. Her projects are born from her personal crusades; therefore, they are micropolitical flesh.
Prada Pilarhttps://www.prabapilar.com/ is a diasporic Colombian interdisciplinary artist. The two artists will come to Toronto with their individual practices and their present collaboration on the “Techno Tamaladas” project, which draws on the practice & knowledge of cultivating corn/maíz across the Americas to sustain life. In recognizing the Indigenous technology of nixtamalization as a technology of life, the project reimagines technological futurity.
Nathalie Dubois-Calerohttps://www.nathalieduboiscalero.com/ is a “fully self-accepted BacterVirHuman”, a bioartist and plant science researcher based in Montreal. her works are feminist acts of reconciliation with her non (or too much?) human components. She uses microbes as her main medium in workshops, performances, videos, and object-making. Her recent project, BacterHuman, focuses on the cutaneous microbiota (all the microorganisms living on and inside the skin) and the multifaceted relationships we have with it.
Melanie Jeffrey is a settler of mixed Scottish English and Irish descent. She is a bridge-builder between Indigenous and western understandings of STEM. She enjoys learning with community partners and students in reciprocal relationships. Her research focus is on land stewardship and hematological and environmental engineering approaches to assessing the effects of industrial carcinogens in air, soil and water on atypical leukaemia oncogenesis in First Nations communities in Ontario.
This initiative has been possible thanks to the support of New College and is a collaboration with the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and York University’s Computational Arts Program. On Apr 2, the artists will travel to engage with two partner programs: the Coalesce Lab at the University at Buffalo and the Nature Lab at the in Troy.
From the Editorial: “The call for this Special Issue of Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research (TA) dedicated to ‘Women in Art and Science’ was launched in collaboration with the third FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science and Technology conference, which took place in September 2022 in Evora, Portugal. As a result, five of the eight contributions are by members of this active network (…)”. Congrats to Caterina Antonopoulou, Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Hussein Boon, Styliani Anna Klimatsaki and Dalila Honorato, Lucie Ketelsen, Louise Mackenzie and Kaajal Modi, Allie E.S. Wist, Lisa Schonberg, Érica Marinho Do Vale, Tainara V. Sobroza and Fabricio Beggiato Baccaro.
Call for Presentations, Exhibiting Artists and Filmmakers
FEMeeting, @CultivamosCultura in collaboration with @EctopiaLab and InArts Lab has the pleasure to announce the organization of the fifth conference FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science and Technology, co-hosted by INCUBATOR Art Lab @IncubatorartLab and IOTA Institute @iotaInstitute. FEMeeting 2024 is taking place, from 23 to 29 June 2024, in the School of Creative Arts at The University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada @uwinsoca.
FEMeeting is driven by the desire to develop and promote a more direct collaboration between women working at the intersection art, science, and technology. The conference aims to disseminate projects being undertaken by women worldwide and, as a result, to contribute to the development of art-science research methodologies and to the growth of cooperation strategies that can increase knowledge sharing and bring communities closer. We are particularly interested in hearing about the experiences of BIPOC, trans women, non-binary women, and gender queer women, and people living with disabilities.
We are inviting individuals and groups to provide abstracts for short conference presentations. Additionally, we are looking for submissions for a gallery exhibition, a multimedia and film screening event, and workshop presentations.
EXTENDED Deadline for submissions: December 15th 2023Submissions closed!
The conference will be held in English and in American Sign Language. Travel funds or compensation for presentations/workshops are not available at this time.
Submission / selection process: – Each form includes the submission of a conference presentation proposal, with the possibility (or not) of an additional Exhibiting and Screening or Workshop proposal. If you are submitting more than one conference presentation, please complete and submit the form a second time. – Proposals will be considered by the members of the scientific & artistic committee before the announcement of the program.
Organizers: FEMeeting @Cultivamos Cultura in collaboration with InArts Lab and Ectopia Lab; INCUBATOR Art Lab; IOTA Institute.
FEMeeting 