Institute of Advanced Study: Being Human

'Birth'

'The Expulsion of Eve'

Figures with Shooting Star

'Study for Eve'

Background

Following a very well-received exhibition at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham, in November 2007, the IAS invited Chris Gollon to become a Fellow & First Artist in Residence (January - March 2009). The IAS is based in the Georgian, grade-one listed Cosin's Hall, Palace Green, (adjacent to Durham Cathedral).

The IAS converted one of the academic rooms temporarily into a studio. The Institute invited a small number of leading scientists, social scientists, professors of humanities and British artist Chris Gollon to look at what it is to be human in the 21st century. Subsections to this theme included 'Home', 'Mind-Conciousness', 'Crises of Personhood' and 'Abjection, Bare Life & De-humanization'. Chris produced 16 paintings during the Fellowship.

Impressed by Gollon's innovations both in technique and in his image-making, as he describes the human condition in a unique way, the IAS saw his studio as a place of experimentation akin to a scientific laboratory. Chris Gollon enjoyed his sojourn at Durham, and the interaction and conversations with leading figures from other disciplines, led to him producing 16 remarkable new works. Accompanied by a 52-page colour catalogue with texts by art historian Tamsin Pickeral, Directors and Fellows at the IAS, these 16 works on the Being Human theme were shown for the first time in London at IAP Fine Art.

Preparation by the artist prior to the Fellowship & Residency

Chris Gollon on the show 'Early Thoughts' at IAP Fine Art, London, Sept-Nov 2008, prior to his departure for Durham:

"For this show I am starting the ball rolling for my residency at Durham in 2009. The big ideas (hopefully) will come during the residency with the interaction between myself and the other fellows. I will therefore not be dealing with the themes specified by the Institute – i.e. mind/consciousness – boundary crossing – crises of personhood etc. However, I would prefer to begin my Residency not in the foothills but half way up the mountain so to speak: hence the early start. I will begin with a more general approach to being human. I have decided to put the human being on trial in the first few canvases and see what happens. I will then try to do something different (and hopefully significant) on what it means to be human." Chris Gollon (June 2008)

Institute of Advanced Study Theme 2008-2009

Weblink: http://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/themes/0809/

What, if anything, is distinctive about being human? This question inspired a Renaissance that made 'man' (not God) the measure of things. It has prompted many cultures to set people above animals, along with the desire to rank some categories of 'being human' over others. The 20th Century drew on ideas of progress, reason, will and consciousness to define human achievement; at the same time 'modernism' and 'modernity' are terms that name a crisis at the heart of our culture. And at the heart of that crisis is the always historically specific yet fundamental question, 'what does it mean to be human?' In fact, a quest to establish the particularity of humanity and its gradations lies at the heart of human history.

Intriguingly, however, the start of the 21st Century has produced a different set of questions. People have taken their place alongside other sentient beings in a world of finite resources; faith, affect, and neurological sensing have come back into the equation; and the elaboration or extension of human being through medical intervention and technological innovation has moved to centre stage.

But the decentring of humanity has also been costly, creating new demarcations between the human and non-human and among humans. The time may be right to ask again whether there is merit, mileage or even the possibility of ‘being (distinctively) human'. To what extent do (and should) people (not technology), humans (not other animals), faith groups (not genetics) figure in a rapidly changing world? Is there a case for the recovery of human being, when so many people around the world continue to be reduced to bare life or less despite (or because of) the new decentring?

Take just the example of science and technology. Advances in medical science, for example, in the areas of molecular genetics, proteomics, neuroscience, brain imaging, and body scanning promise to make markings on the body less salient than signals within the body as indicators of people's capacities, capabilities, potential and life chances. The proliferation of predictive and diagnostic testing for a wide range health conditions has the potential to revolutionise health care and health prospects, but may also set up new geographies of distancing, avoidance and exclusion. More generally, human possibility is increasingly encased in, as well as driven and mediated by, technology and technological change, with profound implications for the character of human identity and behaviour. Alongside this trend, a new technological republic involving sophisticated software-based tools for ranking, differentiating and monitoring human beings has arisen, to inflect the life chances, opportunities, exclusions and discriminations that shape the moral economy and social landscape, in new and powerful ways.

Or again, consider the challenge posed to literature by technological change and advancement. An American Modernist such as Hart Crane seeks to 'celebrate the machine' in his poetry. His would-be epic The Bridge attempts to see Brooklyn Bridge as a reconciling symbol between past and present, history and myth, the man-made and the natural. But the poem is memorable as much for its sense of failure and disillusion as for any positive convictions. The trauma of a highly technologised World War presides over the nightmare of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, even as that poem asks at the end, 'Shall I at least set my lands in order?': a question which circles back to the issue of what it means to 'be human'. Eliot finds his own ultimate answer in the religious explorations of Four Quartets. But the question goes on clamouring to be answered, and the quest for answers is never ending.

All of which is to say that the decentring of humanity in our age - if indeed this is what is happening - requires urgent attention. Work of a specialised nature has started to emerge, focusing especially on the human interface with science and technology, sentience, and nature. What is missing, however, is a historical perspective, allowing the significance of contemporary developments to be measured against past interpretations of what it is to be human. In turn, contemporary research lacks synthesis. Little attempt has been made to link together the varied trends of human redefinition, involving, inter alia, the re-engineering of human life; the rise of new technologies of categorisation and control; shifts in modes of sentience, consciousness and longing; the status of humans of the many locked in precarious work, abject poverty and societal inattention; changing institutional and state practices towards the ‘deserving' and the ‘undeserving'; and changes to ethics of care and responsibility spawned by new forms of human attachment.

The IAS, as one among a small number of centres in the world covering all the disciplines, is well placed to address the challenges for both scholarship and society posed by reconfigurations of ‘being human'. We welcome proposals of a synthetic or historical nature, as well as those of a more specialised nature that are interested in adding insight from different fields of expertise (on the above topics or others). This is a theme for scientists and social scientists, scholars in the arts and humanities, historians, theorists and practitioners, artists, and policymakers, politicians and opinion formers. The principal requirement is to say and do something significant and different on what it means to be human, based on dialogue across the boundary.

'Being Human' Sub-Themes

Weblink:http://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/themes/0809/subthemes/

The IAS Directors, in consultation with colleagues at Durham, have identified the following main sub-themes to be explored during 2008/09. Details of activities falling under each sub-theme will be published shortly:

Home

This sub-theme will provide an umbrella for research that could include examining social and political structures and sense of place in terms of how this affects what it is to be human (e.g. community, nation, dwelling); what happens to the individual when these structures break down; home as a site for human experience; the effect of migration on the individual; and the use of home and its deprivation as a coercive force in society

Mind/Consciousness

This sub-theme will provide an umbrella for research that could include examining creative expression as an important element of being human; what it is to flourish as a human; models of consciousness in different periods (e.g. the classical period, the medieval period, the renaissance etc); and the ontogenic issue of when do we become human.

Boundary Crossing

This sub-theme will provide an umbrella for research that could include examining the boundaries between the human and the non-human (e.g. the human, animal, biological, divine, technological interface) and also the technologisation of the human (human-animal/human-machine).

Humanising Practice

This sub-theme will provide an umbrella for research that could include examining ethics of care; action as well as thought; humanising applied practice; the interaction between biology and culture (e.g. language, psychology, medical interests); and what happens when people are treated as non-humans by care professionals.
Crises of Personhood: The Rhetoric of Being Human in a

Changing World

This sub-theme will provide an umbrella for research that could include examining changing notions of personhood through the rhetoric of identification, description and narration; the varying forms of personhood from society to society; the identification of ‘crises of personhood', such as the challenge, or temptation, to use new genetic knowledge to define persons; and the experience of being human in a democracy and the relationship between individuals and the modern state.

Abjection, Bare Life, and De-Humanisation

This sub-theme will provide an umbrella for research that could include examining de-humanisation as a process; how humans are damaged and destroyed by being identified/classified as targets/the enemy; and being human in time of war (socially, politically, ethically)

Fellows Durham University January - March 2009

*Professor Frances Bartkowski, Rutgers University, Newark
*Professor David Campbell, Durham University
*Dr Ingo Gildenhard, Durham University
*Mr Chris Gollon, Artist
*Professor Eduardo Mendieta, Stony Brook University
*Professor Nirmalangshu Mukherji, University of Dehli
*Professor Tom Nairn, RMIT, Australia
*Professor Adi Ophir, The Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv University
*Professor Abye Tasse, Addis Ababa University

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created on 2008-09-01 15:22:10 by iapgoll

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