CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

“Their world-building power lies in holding”: ponds and their ecology is marked by apparent stillness. The small water bodies that constellate the urban territory of Berlin unfold their intricate ecology in an apparent absence of motion, so different from the perpetual flow of rivers or the large tidal motions of lagoons. Drawing from her performance practice, artist Dr Margherita Pevere places the capacity of ponds to “hold” and transform living and dying matter at the heart of her research in the context of the ongoing research project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS.

Her main research partner is Dr Germán Joosten, postdoctoral scientist in environmental anthropology at the Jeschke Lab for Ecological Novelty at Freie University Berlin. His work explores conflicts and future narratives around human-environment relations for the project POUNDER. Pollution in Urban ponds, eco-evolutionary Dynamics, and Ecosystem Resilience, run by the IGB and ARL Leibniz institutes.

In the talk (on-site and online) Margherita and Germán will present their exchange across art and science, share the results and observations on their recent workshop Pond Codex: Of Life and Death in Berlin’s Small Water Bodies (10 May 2026), and bring the audience into the shallow but powerful depths of Berlin small water bodies.

About CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

During 2025 and 2026, Art Laboratory Berlin is unfolding the new innovative project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS with an interdisciplinary exchange between art and science in Berlin science laboratories, kindly supported by Lottostiftung Berlin. Building on Berlin’s unique status as a global centre for arts and sciences, we aim to create new synergies based on topics of current research. In collaboration with a consortium of scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and other instutions, Art Laboratory Berlin is initiating artist-in-lab residencies for several internationally recognized, Berlin-based artists – including Margherita Pevere. We expect strong outcomes in transdisciplinary knowledge transfer, artistic research, art science communication, and some new artworks critically highlighting 21st-century innovations.

About the speakers

Portrait of Margherita Pevere

Portrait of Germán Joosten

Known for her otherworldly work with living matter, ecology and biotechnology, Dr Margherita Pevere is an artist and researcher addressing taboos like death, sex, and vulnerability. Her practice embraces object-making, installation, performance, and writing, which she weaves seamlessly thanks to her transdisciplinary background. Her project Lament on wildfire ecologies was awarded the COAL Prize Transformative territories mention 2024 and she was shortlisted for the Falling Walls Awards Category Art and Science 2023 for the body of work around her concept ‘arts of vulnerability’. Among the projects she co-initiated are the exhibition Membranes Out of Order and the performance duo Fronte Vacuo. She holds a doctorate in artistic research from Aalto University.  

Born and educated in Argentina, Dr Germán Joosten is an environmental anthropologist whose work explores socio-ecological conflicts and the narrative futures of human-environment relations through transdisciplinary collaboration with diverse stakeholders. Currently he works as guest scientist at the Jeschke Lab | Ecological Novelty, FU Berlin, and is a researcher in the POUNDER project at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). He earned a Doctorate in Natural Sciences in 2023 at the National University of La Plata, where he previously completed a Diploma in Biology and worked as a Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant. His doctoral thesis examined the Western Qom and the Pilcomayo River. In 2023 he joined the Bundestag’s International Parliamentary Scholarship and currently conducts postdoctoral research at ARL focusing on stakeholder engagement and scenario development.