Tomorrow I participate in lunch time talk concerned with "Doing Science in a Gendered World" at LifeSpace Science Art Research Gallery in the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK along with artists Clara Ursitti and Ker Wallwork. This event has been curated by Cicley Farrer.
The title "doing science in a gendered world" is a quote by mathematical biologist and feminist historian of science Evelyn Fox Keller from the 1980s. She was making a case for the importance of who was identifying areas of scientific research, the gendering of language in scientific processes and the infrastructures that had meant that historically, science was typically a field where men worked. The intention of the quote is to highlight that the discussion isn’t simply about ‘women in science’ but recognising that behaviours and organisational systems can influence who does, or continues to do, science.
Following the seminar I will give a workshop exploring some of the spaces in Dundee’s School of Life Sciences in order to experience and examine how bodies (not just human ones) act in relation to institutions, and the kinds of ideas and knowledges that are produced within and with them. The workshop derives from ongoing research by Kira and her collaborator artist Jennifer Willet on the concept of the laboratory as a site to question the relationship between bodies and productions of knowledges. These ideas will reference the ongoing research and art works made in collaboration with Jennifer Willet.
I have not visited Dundee before, so I am very much looking forward to it, to meeting the other artists, curators and workshop participants, vising LifeSpace and to investigating these ideas in some of the labs of the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK.
Image: Kira O’Reilly and Jennifer Willet. Refolding (Laboratory Architectures). School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, 2010. Photography by Hugo Glendinning