Thinking ‘The End of Times’: The Significance of Bioart|BioArt for Art|Education

This chapter explores the importance of bioart within the historical moment of the Anthropocene. It raises questions as to why artists and art educators need to pay attention to such developments, although they seem marginal and minor. To do so, I turn to the early works of Eduardo Kac and Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A) and Natalie Jeremijenko where the question of ‘life’ is explored in order to outline the impact that BioArt has made concerning the ethical and political issues surrounding bioengineering. This raises the difference between philosophy of biology and biophilosophy as raised by the theorist Eugene Thacker. I make the distinction between bioart and BioArt: the former is less political and is more concerned with biomimesis, while the latter is ‘minoritarian’ in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, attempting to intervene in the dominant discourse of bioengineering.