record

Thesis Info

LABS ID
00457
Thesis Title
RELATIONS BETWEEN BIOPOLITICS AND ECO-AESTHETICS IN THEORIES OF ARTS AND MEDIA
Author
Milena Popov
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
PhD
Year
2013
Number of Pages
234
University
University of Arts Belgrade
Thesis Supervisor
Vesna Mikic
Supervisor e-mail
mikic AT eunet.rs
Other Supervisor(s)
Miodrag Suvakovic
Language(s) of Thesis
Serbian
Department / Discipline
Interdisciplinary Studies/Theory of Arts and Media
Copyright Ownership
Milena Popov
Languages Familiar to Author
English
URL where full thesis can be found
Keywords
biopolitics, biogenetics, technology, eco-aesthetics, art, environment
Abstract: 200-500 words
The subject of this dissertation is an examination of various connections between seemingly non-affiliated (or at least hardly connectable) concepts of biopolitics and eco-aesthetics. The purpose of this dissertation is to look at this very poorly researched area, to lace together diverse links between concepts, objectives and mechanisms of biopolitics and eco-aesthetics. Ultimately this research work seeks to map out a clear view of these relationships. The study is guided by several questions and hypotheses: Do ecology and eco-aesthetics stand in stark contrast to biopolitics and its goals? Can it be said that eco-aesthetics and biopolitics, each in its own way, control life? Does perhaps today's popularization of ecology and eco-aesthetics, as éiûek theorizes, represent a new instrument of politics of fear? Or is it a demonstration of the necessity of biopolitical power? It is this latter supposition that seems to me most correct. One of the essential elements of this control is archiving, bureaucratic and technical documentation of life (even before that life has started). Can archive serve as a matrix of life and its immortality, or does it represent the agent of death? Various statistical reports, plans and sketches of future projects are constantly producing new lives, and recall the genetic archive in the human body - the DNA. All of these archival materials are now used for cloning, different biogenetic engineering, creating cyborgs, new species, and so on - in the production of life, aiming for immortality - the complete control of human life, and control of nature and environment. In the race of technology developments that will make us immortal, one forgets about its essence and its primordial needs. There is also concern that developing the technology in the aim of total control, man will create a completely different power, which it would no longer be able to control. In the desire to make man immortal, does man become even more mortal? And then, where in this relationship is art? Is art only the naive accomplice in this demonstration of power? Or, is art an agent in the biopolitical arena, because it wants to become biopower and achieve a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk - create life as a work of art? Yet in participating, the avant-garde artist-revolutionary forgets that revolutions eat their children. The goal of this thesis is to thoroughly investigate and systematize, through interdisciplinary, hybrid theory, the connection between eco-aesthetics and biopolitics through research of their developments, the context in which they appear, and the status they have in modern society and in theories of arts and media.