The festival has focused on bio-technology for the last several years, but this time took things a step further, demonstrably a step too far, by centering on the aesthetic use of eugenics. Since presentations opposing eugenics and biological determinism were not included, the potential for debate was, to say the least, restrained. THE GOAL of the festival, held earlier this month in Linz, Austria, was to scrutinize the contours of a society in which human beings are genetically configured not simply born. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the 20th century, let alone with new developments in medicine and bio-technology, can see that. Indeed, Ars Electronica embraces a future where humans will be fabricated, and where sex will be relieved of its functional indispensability for reproduction.
Historical ironies abound.
After the Anschluss of 1938, Hitler planned to destroy the national identity of Austria by reducing Vienna to provincial status and transforming his hometown of Linz into one of the largest cultural centers of Europe, a grand city reflecting the newly created eugenic purity of the Aryan race. And one key festival participant notes, Even rape can be considered an art-creational strategy. Complex tools and technologies are an integral part of our evolutionary fitness. Genes that are not able to cope with this reality will not survive the next millennium, says a recent festival press release. Meanwhile, the festival s discussions of genetic engineering, its confrontation of sexual taboos, and its masculinism were all couched in what many saw as an emphatic mysogyny.