[rohrpost] Symposium: Ethics and the Arts, June 28th 2012, Rotterdam

[Ingeborg Reichle]

>From June 26th till June 29th 2012 Erasmus MC Rotterdam will host the
11th conference of the International Association of Bioethics:
THINKING AHEAD, Bioethics and the Future, and the Future of Bioethics.
This conference will discuss key issues relevant for the future,
including future technologies in health care, ethics and research in
developing countries, synthetic biology, enhancement, life-prolonging
strategies, environmental issues, the moral responsibility for future
generations, food and ethics, and public health.

http://bioethicsrotterdam.com/

Symposium 45 will be about the Arts and Bioethics (Bio-Art):

Ethics and the Arts, June 28th 2012

Organising Group: Centre for Biomedical Ethics (CBmE), Yong Loo Lin
School of Medicine, National University of Singapore

Chair: Professor Paul Ulhas Macneill

Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore, Yong
Loo Lin School of Medicine, Dean’s Office, Yong Loo Lin School of
Medicine, Website: cbme.nus.edu.sg

Background:

‘Art and ethics’ has been given a prominent position in the last two
World Congresses of Bioethics: in Riejka, Croatia in 2008 (where there
was an art exhibition, a performance session, a feature film, and
academic papers), and in Singapore in 2010 (where there were two ‘Art
and ethics’ Symposia and academic papers). A discussion of
these events has been has been published (Macneill P, Ferran B. Art
and bioethics: shifts in understanding across genres. Journal of
Bioethical Inquiry 2011; 8(1):71-85. Continuing work on this theme has
led to the forthcoming publication of a book Ethics and the Arts (in
2013 with publisher Springer) which will be a collection of original
essays on the theme of ethics and the arts. The proposed Symposium
will take some of the themes from this book and relate them to the
Congress theme and subthemes (as discussed below).

Presentation:

The Ethics and the Arts Symposium will explore a relationship between
ethics and the arts from: the perspectives of the various arts and how
they relate to ethics; and how an appreciation of ethics through the
arts can inform bioethics. There has been continuing debate about the
relationship between art and ethics through the history of
philosophy. In recent times, with changes in media, a nexus between
art and ethics has become more evident. Photos of victims of the
holocaust, of a naked child running from a napalm attack, frame our
thinking about the holocaust and the Vietnam war. Explorations in the
arts of ethical issues (for example: movies on the theme of genetic
manipulation) contribute significantly to public understanding.
Furthermore, explorations in the arts (such as a documentary on the
criminally insane, or artists manipulating living matter) have
implications in thinking through ethics more broadly. The Symposium
will take a few of these issues and explore them briefly, and from
these particular contexts discuss broader ideas and theoretical
considerations arising from ethics and the arts, before opening to
discussion with the audience. The panel comprises three authors of
chapters from the book and the discussion will focus on the following
topics from the broad area of Ethics and the Arts.

Topics for discussion:

 The arts and morality
 Ethics, aesthetics and politics in documentary-making
 Presence as ethics in theatre performance
 Bio-art and bio-ethics
 Implications for the future of bioethics

Relationship to the theme and subtheme of the Congress:

The Symposium relates directly to the theme of the Congress: and in
particular to ‘the future of bioethics.’ The focus of this Symposium
will be on the arts and ethics. However, the presentations will
explore a number of ideas that challenge ‘mainstream bioethics’ and
provide an alternative approach to conceptualising bioethics for the
future. Some of these ideas are that:

- Ethics is an aesthetic practice
- Ethics has a performative aspect: understandings from the training
of actors and theatrical performance can augment our understanding of
ethics
- There is a ‘nexus’ between ethics and all the arts including
photography, film, and literature: in that images from the arts are a
part of the social context of bioethics
- New media will play an increasing role in the evolution of ethics
and bioethics
- Bio-art and the exploration by artists of themes that are relevant
to bioethics—such as technological augmentation of the body, and
manipulation of life-forms—has an influence on how these issues are
perceived
- Literature, film and documentaries (and all the arts) create both an
affect and an effect that influences discussions of issues in
bioethics. These media play a role in the conception of future
technologies of health care, genetic manipulation, synthetic biology,
and enhancement therapies (to name just a few issues) as well as
influencing the tone, or emotional affect in the way in which these
issues are experienced and understood.

This Symposium will challenge bioethics at both a substantive and a
process level: by suggesting that the arts play a significant role in
the framing of substantive fields; and (at a process level) by
challenging bioethics to be more encompassing of the arts as a valid
means for investigation and discovery.

Style of Interaction:

The Chairman for this Symposium was a previous Congress Organiser
(Sydney 2004) and in that Congress and in subsequent Arts Symposia, he
has championed an interactive style of symposia. This was true of the
presentations in Rijeka—and in particular following the performances
in the Performance Session and following the movie ‘Romulus My
Father’—and it was true of the two Arts Symposia in Singapore. It is
fully intended that the style of this Symposium will be
interactive—both between the panelists and with the audience. The
intention is for the presenters to communicate with each in advance of
the Congress and be conversant with each other’s materials—and in a
good position to address some of the more over-arching themes that
come out of their particular arts focus.

Key-Speakers:

 Paul Macneill
 Debora Diniz
 Ingeborg Reichle