Pierre Huyghe, Spider, 2011. Installation view: Symbionts: Contemporary Artists and the Biosphere, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photo: Dario Lasagni
Graduate Student Talk: Wakanene (Sebastian) Kamau
December 13, 2022
Join Wakanene (Sebastian) Kamau, a PhD student in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences here at MIT, for a conversation exploring the work of Pierre Huyghe in Symbionts.
In this talk, Kamau will discuss strategies for naviagating interspecies cohabitation and the ethics of engineering wild populations of pests. Kamau's scientific research meets themes in Huyghe's piece Spider by examining the boundaries between carefully controlled spaces, like the laboratory or the gallery, and conceptions of the wild.
This will be a hybrid event with a live video that can be streamed here at 5:00 PM.
About the Speaker
Wakanene (Sebastian) Kamau is a synthetic biologist and writer researching methods for developing culturally congruent biotechnology. Drawing on contemporary molecular biology techniques, science and technology studies, and ethics, Kamau is interested in the emotional valence of emerging techology. His research is and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the MIT Media Lab. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biological Chemistry from then University of Chicago and a Masters of Arts in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT.
Graduate Student Talks
MIT graduate students explore current exhibitions at the List Center through the lens of their own research, background, and interests. Join us for this interdisciplinary lecture series where we dive into how art and research are overlapping on MIT’s campus.
