GMW: Whose Technology? Dreams of Reason - a week-long event at UC Berkeley

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GMW: Whose Technology? Dreams of Reason - a week-long event

at UC Berkeley

" GM WATCH " <info

Fri, 13 May 2005 23:19:40 +0100

 

 

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Whose Technology?

 

Dreams of Reason

 

a week-long event at UC Berkeley

 

May 16-20, The Street

Hosted by Ignacio Chapela

 

Art, Science and Public Light

Around and About the Bioengineering Building

 

Got art, got science?

Got a question about biotech?

Care about the transformation of

nature in your name?

 

PARTICIPATE!

Ignacio Chapela and The Pulse of Science invite

 

 

Despite furious back-pedaling by the biotech industry and its

supporters in the ag-biotech field, the transformation of life forges

ahead

under such guises as " Stem Cell Research " , " Reproductive Choice " ,

" Biodefense " and the perennial " War on Drugs " .

 

Much of this happens today under cover of military and academic

license. A shroud of secrecy provides cover for our corporations as they

reach deeper into the fabric of life, ever more widely into public

landscapes, while the public remains in the dark about the meaning and

purpose

of the multi-billion dollar biotechnology enterprise.

 

The Bay Area is held up to the world as the exhibition grounds for the

dream of a biotechnologized future. Here the grafting of military,

industrial and academic technique grows under the lavish nourishment of a

generous California public. We shall give berth to the 6 billion

dollar initiative voted last November as Proposition 71, and will

become the

ground for planting the multi-billion dollar Bioengineering,

Biotechnology and Quantitative Biomedical Research Institute (QB3),

the Synthetic

Biology Corporate Consortium, the Molecular Forge, and other

publicly-funded incubators of someone's dream – in their own words, we

are to

become " The Field of Dreams " for biotechnology. And for this Bay Area

field of dreams, a flagship is now reaching completion, appropriately

located at the Mining Circle of the Berkeley UC campus. Twelve floors of

prime public-academic space dedicated to the manipulation of life in the

Bioengineering Building, whence the biotechnologist's dreams will issue

forth future beings into our real, reproducing life.

 

A few of us do not share in this dream. We wonder if this is not

reason asleep, or the nightmare of reason foretold by Walter Benjamin's

angel. A few among us find the biotechnologist's grandiose plans

closer to

folly than sound design. Some of us believe that other dreams are

possible, dreams that grow with the inclusion of multiple voices and

histories - and we wonder where our support could be better used. We

note

the words of an eminent promotor of the biotech dream: " In the end,

nothing [of these dreams] will happen unless Western governments and

charities foot the bill " .

 

We - public amateurs - wish to take the opportunity afforded by the

still-transparent hull of the Bioengineering Building to reflect on our

role in the transgenic future of the world. Today, this building is

covered in monotone canvas which belies the reality of what will come to

pass inside its finished skin. Against the backdrop of this embodiment

of the Biotech Dream, we want to circulate art, science and public light

to awaken ourselves to our participation in it, if nothing else simply

by also being live carriers of DNA.

 

At the start and close of every day during the week of Monday, May 16 –

Friday, May 20, we will circulate our meaning about the Bionegineering

Building, 7 - 8 am and 8 - 9 pm. With the onset of darkness, starting

at 9 pm, we will congregate for performances and thoughts across the

street.

 

A roster of speakers is being developed.

 

Volunteers are needed. Please contact ichapela,

or ali.

 

Info develops at http://www.pulseofscience.org

 

 

 

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