BIOARTS IN SCIENCE-CITYSCAPES ETHNOGRAPHIC FRAGMENTS OF THE NEUROWORLD

Abstract

This thesis is an ethnographic anthropological exploration of art and science in Thailand. The independent interrogation of the ‘art-in-science-city phenomenon’ follows in the tradition of experimental ethnography and life histories. Two collections of non-Western ‘Brain Art’ provide the material from which the inner social lifeworld of the first Thai biopolis – Pathumthani Science City – and the bioart scene of Bangkok are explored. Science-Cityscapes closes in on key events that cast light on the cultural and generational renewal of a Thai science-city community. Adding descriptive analysis to the cultural niches that form in the social worlds surrounding the healthy and diseased brain – the Neuroworld – is the task set forth in Brainscapes. How contemporary artists research the conflicted question, ‘Are we our Brains?’ is central to the discussion of how contemporary artists speak of themselves as finding alternative and complementary approaches and methods to neuroscientific explanations of personhood, language, and culture.