While new forms of bio-art seem to signal a change in direction for contemporary art and ideas, they in fact merely extend a tradition that is already well established. When the process of making and observing art is understood in a way that denies the distinction between object and viewer, and recognises the inherent continuity between biology and technology, then artistic forms like bio-art no longer seem so transgressive. This extended view of material and biological existence, I would argue, is essentially what should be understood by the term 'posthuman'. Here the posthuman being is seen as an agent within a boundless reality, and we are faced with the challenge of how to articulate this new reality with concepts that no longer seem adequate to the task.
Paper at Zoontotechnics Conference, University of Cardiff, May 2010
