InterAccess
Whose Body is it, Anyway?
May 25 - June 16, 2007
InterAcess Electronic Media Arts Centre
9 Ossington Avenue
Toronto, Canada
Opening Event Saturday May 26, 8PM
Monir Moniruzzaman: Rough Cut
Jack Butler: Fatemaps: Would You Like To Know What Will Happen? and Genital Embryogenesis
Curated by Camille Turner
Whose Body is it Anyway? is an exhibition that explores the cultural impact of medicine on the body, in particular, the politics of power and issues of commodification and ownership of the body. It explores advancements in medical technology fueling a growing divide where fresh body parts can be purchased straight from the living bodies of the poor and bodies considered “deviant” can be surgically “corrected”. The exhibition contributes to emerging discourses within the growing field of new media art where culture intersects with science and medicine to challenge and critique the technological evolution of humanity.
Biographies
Jack Butler
Interdisciplinary artist Jack Butler’s works bridge between the visual pleasure of art and the rational demands of science. He has exhibited installations, video projections, computer animations and performance works internationally. His work is in public and private collections including the National Gallery of Canada. Butler has thirty years experience as a medical model builder and published researcher in human development. In addition to his hybrid art/medicine research practice Butler is a founding member of the Sanavik Cooperative, Baker Lake, Nunavut and has been working collaboratively with Inuit artists since 1969. He has taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Banff Centre for the Arts, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario and most recently, as adjunct faculty in the Healthcare Technology and Place (HCTP) program at the University of Toronto.
Monir Moniruzzaman
Monir Moniruzzaman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto. He received his MA from the University of Western Ontario of Canada and MSS and BSS (Hon’s) from Jahangirnagar
University of Bangladesh. Monir was full time faculty at Shahjalal University in Bangladesh in the Department of Anthropology. His major research interests include: new biomedical technologies, kidney commodification, healthcare services in post-tsunami Thailand, perception of poverty, and educational curricula in Bangladesh. Monir’s doctoral research analyzes the contexts and conditions of human organ commodification in Bangladesh. Specifically, investigating how Bangladeshis participate in the illegal marketing of organs and how sellers experience the lived realities of kidney commodification.
Camille Turner
Camille Turner is a Toronto-based artist, curator and cultural producer whose practice explores the social dimensions of technology. She is a founding member of Year Zero One, a collective operating as a network for the dissemination of digital culture. She curates for the Subtle Technologies Festival that blurs the boundaries between art and science and has presented her work in socially engaged media nationally and internationally at conferences including: Dak’Art_Lab at La biennal de l’art Africain Contemporain, Dakar, Senegal, Skinning our Tools: Designing for Context and Culture at the Banff New Media Institute, Alberta and Coding Cultures in Campbelltown, Australia.
InterAccess is a registered, charitable artist-run centre that enables artists and the public to explore the intersections of art and technology. Our mission is to expand the cultural space of technology.
Monir Moniruzzaman’s Rough Cut installation was created with the assistance of:
advisors: Shelley Wall, Jack Butler and Jim Ruxton
curator: Camille Turner
art director: Philippa Pires
production coordinator: Day Milman
installation designer: Veronica Verkley
video designer: Brahm Rosensweig
photographer and sound recorder: Molla Sagar
programmer: Michael Corrin
sound editor: Jes Singer
set constructors: Mohammad Anvari, Adrienne Baker
voiceover artists: Paramita Nath, Jack Butler, Scott Remborg, Brahm Rosensweig
Rough Cut was supported with seed funding from “Health Care, Technology, and Place: An Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement Team” (Institute of Health Services and Policy Research – Canadian Institutes of Health Research).
This exhibition is co-presented by InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre and Year Zero One in collaboration with The Subtle Technologies Festival.