In Progress… | Colloquium

Art Laboratory Berlin is delighted to invite you to take part in our new discursive format – a colloquium on research in art, science and humanities, curated by Regine Rapp (next to our new Reading Club, curated by Tuçe Erel).

The Colloquium addresses an international interdisciplinary research audience to present and discuss past, present or future projects by artists and scholars, curators or editors from the fields of art, science and the humanities. The topics could refer to an art project, a book, text or chapter, a research or exhibition project, a lab experiment, a lecture series, a conference concept or other.

The presentations and exchange will focus on the work-in-progress. Methodological approaches – theoretical or practical – are also of great interest here. While researching, we often tend to shift between practical inquiry and theoretical research, browsing various disciplines. Following the original meaning of colloquium as “speaking together”, we want to provide a platform for exchange and embrace various kinds of work processes which are often not seen or talked about.

Structure of the sessions: Each session will include two presentations followed by discussions, altogether 90 min. The colloquium welcomes informal conversations amongst the participants.

Speakers on 1 March Session

Kat Austen | This Land is Not Mine

Berlin based artist Kat Austen focuses in her artistic practice on environmental issues. She melds disciplines and media, creating sculptural and new media installations, she also composes and performs music and sound art. With a PhD in chemistry, Austen’s practice is underpinned by extensive research and theory, and driven by a motivation to explore how to move towards a more socially and environmentally just future. Austen has exhibited and performed worldwide and her work is held internationally in public and private collections. She is a founding member of the Berlin art science research collective DIY Hack the Panke.

In the Colloquium she will elaborate on the work-in-progress of her recent project This Land in not Mine, a media project about the region of Lusatia’s socioeconomic challenges in a post-extractive era. A music album from the project has already been released in January this year (https://www.katausten.com/portfolio/this-land-is-not-mine-album/).

Alison Sperling | The Weird Theory

Alison Sperling is an IPODI Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technische Universität Berlin and an Affiliate Research Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin. She is also the theory tutor for the Ecology Futures program at the St. Joost Academy of Art. She researches Weird and science fictions in literature and visual culture, feminist and queer theory, and the Anthropocene. She has published in Rhizomes, LA Review of Books, Berlin Art Link, Girlhood Studies, and Paradoxa, with forthcoming work in Science Fiction Studies and The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction. She is also the editor of a recent issue of Paradoxa on “Climate Fictions.” She is currently at work on her first book project, Weird Modernisms.

She will present on “the Weird” as a primary affect in the Anthropocene with sections from the introduction to her manuscript-in-progress.