Marc Garrett's presentation is a contemporary take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and asks us to reconsider her warning, that scientific imagining and all technologies have unintended and dramatic consequences for the world. It also invites us to ask the same about the arts and human imagination. Shelley’s classic, gothic horror and science fiction novel, has inspired millions since it was written 200 years ago in 1816, and then published anonymously in London in 1818. It offers a lens through which to look at the practices of arts and sciences today and how they shape society’s relationship with technology. 

The presentation considers the roles of our arts and science traditions and examines these issues as part of everyday life; as they are played out in the anthro­pocene, climate change, gender politics, ethics, governance, surveillance, posthumanism, transhumanism, hacking, biohacking, colonialism, post-colonialism, neoliberalism, biopolitics and accelerationism. Dr. Frankenstein plays the role of the Promethean scientist, a creative genius, and also a narcissist tangled up in his own individual desires, exploiting others in an irresponsible and abusive drive to control nature. But, who is the real monster? 

The talk materials that have come out of his research on the subject also includes documentation from the touring exhibitions Monsters of the Machine: Frankenstein in the 21^st Century and, it’s smaller version Children of Prometheus as well as Garrett’s essay/exhibition “Prometheus 2.0: Frankenstein Conquers the World!”

Marc Garrett is co-director and co-founder, with artist Ruth Catlow of the arts collective Furtherfield (a gallery and a Commons lab, both situated in the park, in Finsbury Park, London), that began on the Internet in 96. He has curated over 50 contemporary Media Arts exhibitions and projects, both nationally and internationally. He is the main editor of the reviews, articles and interviews on the Furtherfield website and has written book chapters and articles about art, technology and social change, most recently in Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain (Torque Editions and Furtherfield, 2017, ed. with Ruth Catlow, Nathan Jones, and Sam Skinner). And Artists Re:Thinking Games (Liverpool University Press, 2010, ed. with Ruth Catlow and Corrado Morgana). He is currently in the last year of his PhD in Art History at the University of London, Birkbeck College.