Eye of the Storm

An Arts Catalyst / Tate Britain Conference, in association with Leonardo/Olats

Eye of the Storm
An interdisciplinary conference on scientific controversy
19 / 20 June 2009
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1, UK

Interested in how artists are responding to today's hot issues in science and society? Join artists, scientists and social scientists at this conference exploring belief and experiment, dissent and discord, big science, high finance,
geopolitics and the legislation of uncertainty around subjects including climate change, biotechnology, genetics and astrophysics. From esoteric arguments over the structure of the universe to highly charged public controversies around the use of stem cells, Eye of the Storm brings together an extraordinary international group of artists whose work playfully and provocatively intervenes in science, scientists at the heart of these controversies, and other experts to spark two days of dynamic conversations about our changing world.

Speakers include artist Eduardo Kac, whose artworks creating transgenic animals have generated controversy since he first persuaded French geneticists to produce a rabbit that glows in the dark, Sheila Jasanoff, one of the major voices in
science and technology studies who has called for a new humility in technology, artist Rod Dickinson whose re-enactments of scientific experiments form part of his
ongoing exploration into the mechanisms underpinning systems of belief and social control, Oron Catts, pioneer in the use of bioscience as a medium for artistic expression, Helen and Newton Mayer Harrison, pioneers of environmental art, who
have worked for over thirty years with biologists, ecologists and urban planners to to uncover ideas and solutions to complex ecological problems, astronomer Roger
Malina who will discuss the current crisis in astronomy with dark energy, and sociologist Harry Collins who for many years has studied the human dynamics of controversies raging between astronomers in the search for gravity waves.

Organised by The Arts Catalyst and Tate Britain, in association with Leonardo/Olats