CHAPTER 2: BIOTECHNOLOGICAL ART: AN ANTICIPATION OF A BEYOND THE HUMAN BEING

Abstract

Artists of the biotechnological art manipulate living matter in the laboratory and orient the evolutionary trajectories of organisms to produce new living entities in vivo and in vitro. These metacarnations, provided by contemporary biological techniques, reveal the worrying utopias of a living person in the making and heighten the fears and dangers of uncontrolled drift. From an ethical-political point of view, the question is whether such work can raise a possible critical awareness of biotechnologies or whether, on the contrary, these “bioartistic” behaviours reveal a moral inertia linked to artists’ fascination with the technical reprogramming of life. In other words, in the name of art and in a liberal society where artistic autonomy prevails, the question is to what extent should or can these artists create living entities that have until now been invisible and unthinkable without running the risk of losing reason and lucidity about our future living conditions?