Transformative Encounters and Uncanny Intimacies: Biotechnology and Contemporary Art – A Practitioner's Approach and Perspective

Presented from an ArtScience practitioner's perspective, this paper provides an overview of Svenja Kratz's experience working as an artist within the area of cell and tissue culture at QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI). Using The Absence of Alice, a multi-medium exhibition based on the experience of culturing cells, as a case study, the paper gives insight into the artist's approach to working across art and science and how ideas, processes, and languages from each discipline can intermesh and extend the possibilities of each system. The paper also provides an overview of her most recent artwork, The Human Skin Equivalent/Experience Project, which involves the creation of personal jewellery items incorporating human skin equivalent models grown from the artist's skin and participant cells. Referencing this project, and other contemporary bioart works, the value of ArtScience is discussed, focusing in particular on the way in which cross-art-science projects enable an alternative voice to enter into scientific dialogues and have the potential to yield outcomes valuable to both disciplines.