NOT NATURAL

Science Gallery Melbourne is inviting proposals for projects to be included in our 2024 show ‘Not Natural’. Through installations, performances, events and workshops, this exhibition will explore the friction between cultural perceptions of nature and the implications of creating synthetic forms of life. Advances in synthetic biology have opened a plethora of possibility and a pandoras box of ethical dilemmas. We’ve stepped into a new era, where the tools of genetic engineering and biotechnology allow us to gene-edit, splice and de-extinct almost anything biological. We get to design new life-forms and modify existing ones. But are we redesigning evolution or is evolution re-designing us? And just because we can, should we? In this exhibition we want to consider various viewpoints about what’s considered natural and not natural, to gain a greater understanding of how we have arrived at this ecological point in history and where we might be heading into the future.

Potential subthemes:

• Synthetic biology, redesigning of nature, and new technologies

• Symbiosis between humans and their environment

• How we categorise the world and the biases expressed in this

• First Nations’ perspectives on connecting and caring for country

• De-extinction research and creating new species

• Hybridity, chimeras, mythos, and science fiction

• Human evolution and genetic engineering

• Romanticism vs. classicism

• Ethics or moral philosophies and different cultural perspectives

Some considerations:

This open call invites you to propose installations and research projects that can operate in a shared-space group exhibition context in a non-traditional gallery environment, where the light and sound conditions are not necessarily constant. Projects selected via our open call are generally funded for up to $8000 AUD (Australian dollars), which includes all fees, materials, freight, and other project costs. Unfortunately, at this stage, we are not able to include travel costs in this budget. These projects will be open to the public for approximately four months attended by upwards of 30,000+ people, with a focus on 15–28-year olds. We value projects that are simple in their invitation, opening the door for complex debate and ongoing enquiry. We love projects that are iterative, interactive, contribute to genuine research and that are interdisciplinary. We love humour, provocation, speculation, and irreverent ideas that entertain people first and then educate them. The project you propose can be a new idea, in-development or evolved for another presentation or existing works that are ready to go.