This next keynote session by Sarah Kember deals with the question of whether there is life on Mars - in a tongue-in-cheek way, though. In a roundabout way, the failure to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life has driven artificial life research as it is the only currently available avenue for biologists to study biological systems other than those found on earth - a-life as a kind of synthetic DIY biology. Life is essentially viral, and earth has been infected with it - the move to a-life is then a kind of sideways step, a jump of that virus from one host to the next. But much of this operates in highly categories ways, and Kember argues strongly for breaking out of these boxes. Life is not mind nor matter but creative evolution. Zoran Pantelic of kuda.org is next. He begins from a historical perspective, talking about the situation in Serbia-Montenegro (and before that in Yugoslavia). In essence, kuda.org is a platform for meeting artists, but has now also moved beyond this to other activities (publications, events, ...). Interesting to hear the term 'market' in this connection as well - kuda.org also aims to establish a market for the work of the artists involved (not only in a strictly commercial sense, I think, but also in terms of public exposure and interest). So, there is a library, some 'new experimental media stuff', and so on. This also involves conceptual artists from the 70s. But how does kuda.org identify itself within the new environment? It's taken the approach not to take an artist persona-driven approach, but rather to act as a professional body which interfaces with ministries and other bodies and provides an environment for artists to work within. It also aims to be a place of intersection between autodidactic artists and those in the academy, as well as generally inter-, trans-, or as Pantelic puts it, 'pluridisciplinary'. They've also been involved in the Trans_European Picnic which reflected on the coming accession of new member states to the European Union as well as looking back at the political changes in Europe which started in 1989.
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