All week long, Biolab members will be engaging in panels, discussions, interviews, showcases, and performances mapping the modes, methodologies, and nature of research-creation. This year’s theme questions the role of human, non-human, and more-than-human agencies.

AGENCY·IES
Current advances in the fields of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, environmental sciences and new materials, among others, raise new questions about our relationship with the world and the anthropocentric posture of both artists and researchers. In an era of climate transformations that are profoundly shaking ecosystems on a planetary scale, how to re-imagine the interactions between human and non-human animals, algorithms, plants, machines, data, viruses and other hybrids that have agency and impact practices, methods, and disciplines?

As these interactions bring to light new forms of agency and relationships between humans and more-than-humans, they offer fertile ground for creative exploration and the emergence of new forms of expression and interaction. In particular, they give rise to the development of scientific and artistic technologies and apparatuses that open up new possibilities for engagement, and have the potential to transform audiences, practice settings, and research environments alike. How does research-creation deploy new modes of engagement with agents, materials or objects that oscillate between art and science? What are the stakes and potential of inter-, trans- and even in-disciplinary approaches to addressing the questions raised by the posthuman context?

This edition of Rencontres Interdisciplinaires tackles these questions linked to the plural and distributed nature of agency, and puts forward singular research-creation approaches that highlight and question agents’ capacities for action beyond the human.

The event takes place March 25-28, 2024 | UQAM’s Agora du Cœur des sciences, Montreal

175, Av. du Président-Kennedy
Tiohtià:ke | Mooniyang | Montréal H2X 3P2
Situated in a small courtyard, behind the
Président-Kennedy Pavilion
Metro Place-des-arts. Bus 55, 80
Universal access

For more information and see the full schedule, click here.