104th metaPhorest seminar
Friday, January 10th, 2025, 19:00-21:00
99th metaPhorest seminar by Takahiro Tsukamoto & Hanna Saito
This event will be primarily in Japanese, but questions and comments in English are also welcome.
For the January 10 metaPhorest Seminar, two metaPhorest members—anthropology of art researcher Takahiro Tsukamoto and artist Hanna Saito—will introduce their perspectives on the scope of bio(media) art and several issues that have recently attracted their attention.
Date and Time/Location
Friday, January 10th, 2025, 19:00-21:00
Waseda University Research Facility for Advanced Biomedical Sciences (TWIns), 3rd Floor, Seminar Room 3
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wy23SqPPMo3P7V8JA
ONLINE
This seminar can also be held online. Zoom Link
Takahiro Tsukamoto: The Aesthetics of Bio Art: How Is “Life” Defamiliarized? In recent years, many artists have developed practices that engage with “life” as their subject matter. Through an examination of selected works, this presentation will explore how life is perceived and represented within these practices, and what kinds of new questions and possibilities emerge from such engagements.
Hanna Saito: The Aporia of “Post-Anthropocentrism”
Takahiro Tsukamoto
Takahiro Tsukamoto is a doctoral student in the Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies (Cultural Anthropology), Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo.
After graduating from the Department of Art Studies, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, he entered the University of Tokyo. His research focuses on the reflexive effects that experiences of art appreciation and artistic production have on human bodies and consciousness.
He is a Distinguished Research Assistant in the Graduate Program for Global Sustainability Science (GSI-WINGS) at the University of Tokyo and a member of metaPhorest.
Hanna Saito
After graduating from the Glass Course in the Department of Crafts at Tama Art University, Hanna Saito joined metaPhorest and began working in the field of bio art. She is currently a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo (Yasuaki Kakehi Laboratory).
Her practice combines scientific glassmaking techniques with living organisms, organic materials, image analysis, and other media, while also incorporating academic research. In recent years, she has collected and cultivated multiple species of wild slime molds for both research and artistic production.
Her work explores themes such as reconsidering the distinctions between nature and society, humans and non-humans, and the inseparability of the creator and the created. Her work Eaten Colors Ver.2 (2020) received the FRaU Ethical Award at ROOMS 41. She has also published numerous essays and academic writings.