Dr.
Annemarie Estor (researcher and poet) studied Arts and Sciences at the
University of Maastricht, where she involved herself with the contemporary
relationship between the arts and natural sciences. After her graduation
she did her PhD research at the University of Leiden (English Language
and Literature department) in the field of Literature and Science. In
this period she was also a fellow at the International School for Theory
in the Humanities in Santiago de Compostela (1999). She took her doctoral
degree in 2004 with her dissertation Jeanette Winterson’s Enchanted
Science. In the beginning of 2005 she initiated her own artist in lab
project at the Dutch Institute for Brain Research (NIH). At the moment
she is writing a series of poems about the brain and brain research based
on interviews with neuroscientists.
Research
during kloone4000 - collaboration with Jennifer
Kanary
I want to observe how this work of art comes into being, how the cloned
thoughts will start to lead a life of their own, and how they will be
exterminated. During this process, I will interview the artist and the
public. I will ask how people experience the shapes and their (attempted)
repetition. Are they exact copies? Other questions are meant to ‘measure’
the effects that this work of art produces. Is art capable of bringing
about alterations in patterns of thought? To be able to answer this question,
I will go into the viewers’ personal memories as well. I want to
focus on people’s private experiences of ‘cloned thoughts’.
Did they ever experience repetitive, self-copying thoughts? How did they
experience this? Who is the agent in the cloning process? The brain? One’s
consciousness? The environment? Perhaps even traces from our past? How
can it be explained that these thoughts reinforce each other? Can thoughts
have a lasting effect on our brain, on who we are? Then, what are they,
and who are we? Can we become who we want to be? In the interviews I will
also discuss epigenetics. What is the relationship between this work of
art and the science that feeds it? Does the work of art feed back into
science? I will keep a weblog that reports on the results of the interviews.
The weblog will then contribute to a final essay on the way in which science
and art deal with one and the same idea. What is Jennifer Kanary’s
research method? Can her method be compared to scientific research methods?
Are art and science addressing the same problems? Do art and science really
want to meet? Can they? The weblog and the essay will be published on
roomforthoughts.com
and on annemarie.estor.nl
Annemarie Estor participated in the research on October 7 and 8, 2005.
relevant links:
