The 15th annual Subtle Technologies Festival took place in Toronto for 3 days (May 24-27, 2012), with scientists, artists and designers from all around the world to share ideas, science and artworks. This year the Festival for the first time was made in collaboration with Ryerson University, with a packed program of presentations, workshops, performances, screenings and more, all connected to science and art. Also this year (like in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011) Roberta Buiani from Toronto attended the Subtle Technologies Festival’s events and made a reportage in Noema‘s n.blog, with reviews, interviews, images, videos…
Rachel Mayeri, Primate Cinema
The Festival tryed something a little different this year, with each day having different related themes: Friday May 25: Art, technology & science ideas, selected from a variety of different fields; Saturday May 26: Biology and Art — artists and scientists who share an interest in biology; Sunday May 27: The Immortal Body — events inspired by the story of Henrietta Lacks, cell technologies, medical research and the body.
From Roberta Buiani’s first post in Noema‘s n.blog:
Alondra Nelson is well known for her research on ancestry and the implications of DNA in genealogy. Her book Body and soul, the Black Panther Party and the fight against Medical Discrimination explores the way discrimination, far from being limited to the social realm, intervenes at the medical and genetic level to make sure that certain section of the population is not only stripped of their basic rights (like the right to treatment or medical attention) but also turned into an object upon which experiments and other forms of exploitation are practiced without consent. A less known facet of the Black Panther Party was their sustained medical activism consisting in campaigns meant to raise awareness about issues of medical discrimination and medical exploitation and in the construction of an underground network of medical assistance that lasted many years.
