Boundless Bodies
Virtual Futures presents Near-Future Fictions on the theme of ‘Boundless Bodies.’
Bodies are often a product of the environment in which they are situated. Likewise, minds are partially shaped by both what they receive from the world around them, and the receptors that they use to process reality.
There is no guarantee that the Earth will be able to maintain its current ecosystems, or that the living beings of this world will remain on this planet.
Our authors consider how brains or bodies may adapt to different physical circumstances, spinning stories of manipulated creatures, novel forms of consciousness, distorted landscapes, or altered beings.
Join us for an evening that incorporates original reading, performance and live art as Virtual Futures continues its mission to reassert the significance of science fiction as a tool for navigating the increasing technologization of society and culture.
Curated by Jule Owen and Stephen Oram
Guest Speaker
Oron Catts is the director of SymbioticA, the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, within the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia.
Catts is an artist, researcher and curator whose pioneering work with the Tissue Culture and Art Project which he established in 1996 is considered a leading biological art project. In 2000 he co-founded SymbioticA, an artistic research centre housed within the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia. Under Catts’ leadership SymbioticA has gone on to win the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Hybrid Art (2007) the WA Premier Science Award (2008) and became a Centre for Excellence in 2008. In 2009 Catts was recognised by Thames & Hudson’s “60 Innovators Shaping our Creative Future” book in the category “Beyond Design”, and by Icon Magazine (UK) as one of the top 20 Designers, “making the future and transforming the way we work”.
Authors & Contributors
Andrew Wallace: “Frame Swingers”
Anne McKinnon: “Imagine”
Bea Xu: “Hot Globules”
David McAllister: “Death Watch”
David Turnbull: “The Upholstered Woman”
E A Solaris: “Cinnamoni{com} Unravelling”
Jane Norris: “Irene”
Jule Owen: “Non-Disclosure Agreement”
Stephen Oram: “Placodermi Protection”
Suzie Gray: “Spark”
Vaughan Stanger: “My iBed and Me”
Curators
Jule Owen was born and raised in Merseyside and now lives in London. She works in technology by day and writes science fiction and stories about future worlds by night. She is interested in the way that science fiction and science and technology inform and inspire one another.
Stephen Oram writes science fiction and is lead curator for near-future fiction at Virtual Futures. He enjoys working collaboratively with scientists and future-tech people; currently, he’s the cultural partner in a collaborative project with scientists at King’s College, London – they do the science he does the fiction. He’s been a hippie-punk, religious-squatter and an anarchist-bureaucrat; he thrives on contradictions. He is published in several anthologies and has two published novels, Quantum Confessions and Fluence. His recent collection of sci-fi shorts, Eating Robots and Other Stories, was described by the Morning Star as one of the top radical works of fiction in 2017.