Diversity Stories

How do artists engage living bodies as creative material? How do they engage our ideas and assumptions of what we consider a body to be and what a body can do? How do they challenge the principles of what life is and the relations we take for granted?    For this podcast, we invited philosopher, researcher and labour organizer Mijke van der Drift to engage with Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko, lecturer and researcher teaching contemporary philosophy and art-science at AKI Academy of Art and Design ArtEZ. Thinking through the lens of contamination, Agnieszka’s recently published book Affect as Contamination: Embodiment in Bioart and Biotechnology uses bioart projects as provocative case studies to rethink affect and bodily practices. Departing from her book, they reflect upon the desire for transformation and the need for its control in our daily infrastructures, ranging from biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries to food production and healthcare.    What ethical frameworks are needed to organize and guide our a