ART SCIENCE dialogue feat. Joshua Serafin
Join us for an ART SCIENCE dialogue with Joshua Serafin and Joris Koene, moderated by Heidi Mendoza, on Tuesday, March 10. In the conversation we will delve into topics surrounding fluidity, whether of gender, time or knowledge sources.
Serafin’s work attempts to break through boundaries created by Western ideas about humanity, gender, the past, present and future. The artist combines indigenous knowledge with a vision of the future, based on a desire to restore balance to the planet. Their performances, films and installations bring together research into gender, indigenous knowledge and nature. In the rituals and location-specific performances that Serafin develops, the body reconnects with the earth, the spiritual world and the cosmos.
Prof. Dr. Joris M. Koene is an expert on socially transferred materials during reproduction, with a focus on hermaphroditic animals. His scientific achievements include unravelling why land snails inject their mating partner using a “love dart”, identifying the first accessory gland protein in the semen of a hermaphrodite, and defining the term allohormone. His research integrates different biological levels (e.g., behaviour, evolution, ecology, physiology, neuro-endocrinology) and addresses both evolutionary and mechanistic aspects of hermaphroditism in animals. His teaches focusses more broadly on physiology and anatomy of animals, often in relation to evolution and sexual selection. Over the past years he has collaborated with several artists in multimedia bio-art projects such as “Sex Shells” and “rec(o)unting”.
Heidi Mendoza’s PhD research focused on understanding how riverine communities live and imagine with droughts and floods in the Peruvian Amazon. Her work is part of the PerfectSTORM Project (‘STOrylines of futuRe extreMes’) that tries to bring together different disciplines in understanding water-related extremes. Before joining VU Amsterdam, she was the Program Coordinator of the Sustainable and Inclusive Landscape Governance (SILG) implemented by Forest Foundation Philippines, Tropenbos International, and Wageningen University and Research.