From aesthetics to ethics. Thinking and creating with nature in the era of biosciences

Abstract

Since the emergence of the bio-art movement in the 1990s, art has become a field that show the general public what biosciences are capable of. The living on its microscopic or macroscopic scale seems to become, for bio-artistic surveys, a new space to conquer. From now on, to reveal and to give to see the mysteries of the living is not enough anymore. Helped by the new possibilities of the biosciences, the artist seeks to appropriate it. What does it mean to think and create with nature in this context? By relying on a few examples of current artistic approaches in interaction with the biosciences, we will examine the new aesthetics dictated by the conquest of life and their resonances with state of ethics. It will be necessary to glimpse what to extent the relation to aesthetics is revealing a relation to the world.