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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00375
- Thesis Title
- in vitero: Exploring an interspecies aesthetic of care
- Author
- Tarsh Bates
- E-mail
- tarshbates AT gmail.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- MSc (Biological Art)
- Year
- 2012
- Number of Pages
- 83
- University
- The University of Western Australia
- Thesis Supervisor
- Dr Ionat Zurr
- Supervisor e-mail
- ionat.zurr AT uwa.edu.au
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- SymbioticA/Biological Art
- Copyright Ownership
- Tarsh Bates
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English
- URL where full thesis can be found
- Keywords
- aesthetics of care; interspecies; alterity; model organisms; estrangement; intimacy; performance; biological art
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- in vitero was an artistic research project investigating the embodied nature of relationships between human and non-human organisms. Nine species commonly used in scientific research were cared for over a period of seven months. This exegesis discusses the aesthetic and ethical experiences of this prolonged interspecies care through the lens of alterity, a phenomenological mode of negotiating relationships between Self and Other. It extends this concept from solely human associations to those between human and non-human organisms. The exegesis explores the ambiguities and contradictions that arose through caring for organisms that did not ‘look back.’ The complementary strategies of estrangement and intimacy are employed to describe attempts to live in the liminal spaces between anthropomorphisation and zoomorphisation in order to undertake the new category work necessary in defining human/non-human relationalities.