Event 3: Philosophy + Art + Science, Maria Antonia Gonzalez Valerio [May 26th]

For this event, Maria Antonia Gonzalez Valerio was the guest lecturer and she is from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her main points of her lecture dealt with asking questions of how art and science work together currently. What was very different about this presentation was the lack of answers as she stated from the get-go that she likes to pose questions but never answer them.

Professor Vesna introducing Maria Valerio

She began by lecturing how neither art nor science are subject to a definition and she shows this by saying art back in ancient Greece is no longer art today, She poses an interesting question of how can art be of importance to science if it cannot contribute to science. I began wondering the same thing, and have been wondering the same thing for quite some time... She gave a hint as to what artists may lack and that is knowledge of the sciences.

Maria Valerio giving her lecture

Like I said, her lecture posed a lot of questions but not a lot of answers, and I'm glad she did that because it really gets the audience thinking on topics that deal with the relevance of art in science.

Hand-stitched art piece used to protest GMOs.

She continued to talk about art and how it can contribute to activism through exhibitions and festivals, performances, labs, and workshops. One of the activism artworks she presented was a hand-stitched fabric used to show that corn was being contaminated and not to eat it. The picture shown above shows a scientist in a lab coat contaminating the corn or "maize" as it is called in Spanish. This art piece is used as a political statement against science in hopes of reforming scientific methods and research in creating genetically modified organisms or GMOs for short.

Myself and Maria Valerio

This event was very interesting as it showed a very political side to the arts and sciences that I have not been exposed to first-hand. I do think that the combination of the two can really help each other not only spread knowledge but also create ethical limitations on what is acceptable behavior in today's society.