Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera

Join internationally renowned artist and biohacker Heather Dewey-Hagborg for a screening of her short film , followed by discussion and Q&A.

This documentary and personal narrative, set to an original score by the composer Bethany Barrett, presents an intimate account of the interspecies relationship at the heart of the science of xenotransplantation – specifically, the genetic engineering of pigs to supply human hearts.

The film begins from the question: does this advanced form of gene editing represent a radical rupture or rather a continuation of the millennia old practices of selective breeding?

As such, the ancient and the high tech meet in an artwork that goes beyond simply educating audiences, but making them feel the dramatic weight of these new technologies, their complexities and long histories. The result is a whirlwind tour of a biomedical field with massive implications for ethics, aesthetics, and the fluctuating state of human/non-human relations.

Chaired by Laura Leuzzi, Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University.

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This event is free, but ticketed.

If you have any access requirements, please contact [email protected]

This screening is the first of two events hosted as part of Heather Dewey-Hagborg's residency at the University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre. For details of Dewey-Hagborg's ARC Conversation on Wednesday 13 May please visit our collection.

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About the artist

Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is a New York-based American/Canadian artist and biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. Her controversial biopolitical art practice includes the project Stranger Visions in which she created portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material (hair, cigarette butts, chewed up gum) collected in public places.

Heather has shown work internationally at events and venues including the World Economic Forum, the Daejeon Biennale, the Guangzhou Triennial, and the Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Biennale, Transmediale, the Walker Center for Contemporary Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and PS1 MoMA. Her work is held in public collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum, SFMoMA, among others, and has been widely discussed in the media, from the New York Times and the BBC to Art Forum and Wired.

Heather has a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a founding board member of Digital DNA, a European Research Council funded project investigating the changing relationships between digital technologies, DNA and evidence.

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