Events

Event | Talk

CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

  1. Artist Scientist Dialogue
  2. With Helena Nikonole and Alvaro Rodriguez
Thu, 2 July 2026, 7:30 pm (on-site + online)
animal created by AI Close up of speakers on stage talking
Welcome to the next “Artist Scientist Dialogue” in context of the current research project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS. Artist Helena Nikonole will introduce aspects of her artistic practice, including her projects Acoustic Agriculture and Speculative Species Evolution, and share some ideas behind her collaboration with Alvaro Rodriguez on microbial communities and sound. Dr Alvaro Rodriguez will introduce metagenomics, the technique he has been applying for studying microbial communities, and discuss its possible applications to understand the behaviour of the microbial communities exposed to sound stimuli. 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. We are currently receiving strong outcomes in transdisciplinary knowledge transfer, artistic research, art science communication, and some new artworks critically highlighting 21st-century innovations. Join us for the event on-site or online. Read more
Event | Workshop

CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

  1. Sonic Mind. Sound, Consciousness, and Technology
  2. Workshop with Julius Holtz
Sat, 27 June 2026, 11 am - 6 pm (booked out!)
Welcome to the workshop “Sonic Mind. Sound, Consciousness, and Technology” with sound artist and researcher Julius Holtz, presented within the CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS programme by Art Laboratory Berlin. The workshop examines how emerging technologies and increasing human–machine interrelations transform concepts of identity, consciousness, and community. Positioned at the intersection of sound art, neuroscience, and technological innovation, Holtz presents his research through projects such as Introspective Garden, focusing on the generation of sonic environments via sensor technologies, data sonification, and participatory methodologies. Participants can engage in embodied listening sessions that integrate theoretical reflection with practical experimentation, addressing mindfulness, collective perception, and human-machine interaction. The workshop further investigates the relationships between neural activity and adaptive soundscapes, considering their social, artistic, and ethical implications, and is open to artists, designers, researchers, and other interested participants. Read more
Event | Long Night of Science

Art Laboratory Berlin at Long Night of Science (Berlin Dahlem)

  1. Collaborative Art Science Projects with the Rillig Lab | Ecology of Plants (FU Berlin)
Sat, 6 June 2026, 5 - 10 pm (Berlin Dahlem!)
Art Laboratory Berlin joins the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2026 (6 June, 5–10 pm) together with the Rillig Lab | Ecology of Plants at the Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Königin-Luise-Str. 12/14, 14195 Berlin. Founded in 2006, ALB is an award-winning platform at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Our decade-long collaboration with the Rillig Lab has produced various artist residencies, the research group “DIY Hack the Panke”, festivals such as “Matter of Flux” (2023) and “Bodies of Water” (2025), and the ongoing programme “CHRYSALIS. Artists in Labs”. Get a LNDW ticket and join us in Berlin Dahlem — everyone welcome! Read more
Event | Colloquium

IN PROGRESS… | COLLOQUIUM

  1. Research in Art, Science, and Humanities
  2. With Aisen Caro Chacin and Zahra Mokhtari
26 May 2026, 8 pm CET (online only)
close up of a sculpture, circles with metal mesh, yellowish cat to the photograph Trees photographed from below with a green-yellow cast to the photograph
The Colloquium (on 26 May online only) 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. Artist and researcher Dr Aisen Caro Chacin will discuss a performance artwork exploring human dependency on critical care machines and our co-evolution with AI. Physicist Dr Zahra Mokhtar will discuss how groups (ants, cells, or social media users) can form coherent movements or sudden opinion shifts without a central leader. 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. Read more
Event | Talk

CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

  1. Artist Scientist Dialogue
  2. With Margherita Pevere and Germán Joosten
Thu, 21 May 2026, 7:30 pm CET (on-site + online)
“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 and researcher 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. In the talk Margherita Pevere and her research partner, environmental anthrolopologist Dr Germán Joosten, 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. Read more
Event | Workshop

CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

  1. Pond Codex: Of Life and Death in Berlin's Small Water Bodies
  2. Workshop with Margherita Pevere and Germán Joosten
Sun, 10 May 2026, 11:00 - 18:00
a lake or pond surrounded by trees flasks and graduated cylinder son a table people sitting in the background
Margherita Pevere and Germán Joosten invite the audience to join the life cycle of Berlin’s ponds and small lakes. Acting as biodiversity hotspots and regulators of temperature, these small water bodies play a key role in urban ecology. Among their dwellers is Daphnia – commonly known as water flea – a small invertebrate which feeds on phytoplankton (microscopic algae), thus keeping phenomena like algae blooms in check. Its life cycle is fascinating: it reproduces mostly through cloning itself, but when things get rough, it can adapt to the environment, switch to sexual reproduction, and produce eggs that remain dormant in the sediment until better conditions arise. Daphnia can reveal much about the health, history, and possible futures of the small urban water bodies. Through hands-on sessions and speculative storytelling, workshop participants will assume a pond’s more-than-human perspective and explore Berlin as seen by its small aquatic inhabitants. Read more
Event | Meet up, Talk

ART SCIENCE MEET UP

  1. Research Exchange and Get-Together
  2. With Fara Peluso, Jemma Woolmore, and Matthias Rillig
Wed, 29 April 2026
Art Laboratory Berlin and the Rillig Lab host an Art Science Meet Up in Berlin, bringing together artists and scientists interested in interdisciplinary research. The first session, open to the public, features presentations on current projects: Fara Peluso explores DIY bioplastics and community gardening to rethink human–ecological relations; Jemma Woolmore investigates chemical pollution through collaborative and embodied artistic methods; and Matthias Rillig presents research on how ecosystems respond to combined environmental pressures such as climate change, pollution, and land use. The second session invites participating artists and scientists to collaboratively design experimental approaches, discussing methods, concepts, and formats for joint research, followed by group exchange and collective reflection. Read more

Archive

Event | Conference

The Artist-Silkworm Interface

  1. The Agricultural Treatise as Source and Scrutiny for Creating an Artist Book
  2. Vivan Xu | Lisa Onaga | Dagmar Schäfer | Regine Rapp | Anna Grasskamp | Yubin Shen
4 July 2019

This one-day symposium discusses how the lens of contemporary art can engage with the genre of the agricultural treatises and manuals that have long attracted the attention of scholars in the history of science.

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Event | Talk

Conversations in Silk

  1. Artist and scholar talk
  2. Vivian Xu and Lisa Onaga
30 June 2019

“Conversations in Silk” presents a dialogue between historian of biology Lisa Onaga and artist and designer Vivian Xu reflecting on the intermingled topics of silk, sericulture, and specultations of the future of the silkworm-human relations within a technoscience framework.

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Event | Workshop

THE SILKWORM PROJECT Workshop

  1. Vivian Xu
8 June 2019

The Silkworm Project Workshop gives insight into the artistic research and practice by Vivian Xu and offers a hands-on part, based on the artist’s at ALB of the same name. Participants were each given silkworms to take home and raise, hand-reared by the artist in Berlin.

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Event | Workshop

DIY Hack the Panke

  1. Panke Life. Microbiodiversity
  2. Sarah Hermanutz | India Mansour | Fara Peluso
26 May 2019

The workshops invites to investigate artistically and scientifically microbial life and ecologies of an urban waterway. The workshop will explore the river Panke and floodplain as microbial habitats, with special emphasis on water, sediment and soil along the riverbanks.

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Event | Workshop

DIY Hack the Panke

  1. (Un)Real Ecologies. Microplastics
  2. Kat Austen and Frithjof Glowinski
13 - 14 April 2019

How do organisms and microorganisms exist with microplastics? We will investigate water samples and will use DIY chemistry methods to separate microplastics from mineral and organic matter, and discover the origins of the plastics they find by creating density columns.

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Event | Performance, Talk

HYDRO_PERFORMANCE NIGHT

  1. PERFORMANCES, TALKS WITH NEW CASSETTES AND VINYLS!
  2. Kat Austen, Robertina Šebjanič and Fara Peluso
16 March 2019

The Matter of the Soul | Symphony by Kat Austen is a performance work that engenders empathy with the consequences of climate change. Aquatocene / The subaquatic quest for serenity by Robertina Šebjanič investigates underwater noise pollution created by humankind in the oceans.

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Event | Workshop

Phytocracy in situ

  1. Prototyping tools for the investigation of plant governance
  2. Špela Petrič
22 September 2018

As part of the inquiries into Vegetal Otherness, Špela Petrič set out to produce her own phytocracy-revealing onto-epistemological tools that are inspired by actual institutions/domains/cultural practices framing plant-people relations…

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Event | Performance, Talk, Workshop

Biosignals

  1. Sound Art, Narrations and Nature-based Data Streams
24- 25 August 2018

BioSignals is a series of site-specific sound art, narrations and nature-based data streams by human and nonhuman cultural producers in connection with the 2019 Pixelache Festival..

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Event | Performance, Talk

NOW. A Kinetic Life

  1. Bidisha Das and Thomas Heidtmann
3 - 5 August 2018

is an interactive installation that spans a visual and acoustic connection between outer space and physical spaces that surround us. It is an orchestra of movement using elements from outer space, nature and human bodies as instrumentations.

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Event | Workshop, Workshop

DIY Hack the Panke

  1. (Un)Real Ecologies. Microplastics | Workshop
  2. Kat Austen and Joana MacLean
6 - 8 July 2018

How do organisms and inhabitants of the Panke live with plastic in their habitat? In the 3-day workshop we search for visible interactions between plastics and biota in and around the Panke. We also use chemical protocol for the analysis of (micro)plastics in water samples.

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Event | Book Release Party

Half Life. Machines/ Organisms

  1. Artistic Positions in the context of Climate Change and Extinction
  2. Book Release Party
6 July 2018

41 artistic positions from 15 countries provide critical and visionary views onto socio-emotional service machines – proxies and social crutches; Ersatz: Machine environments and artificial organisms; Utopia; Mediator machines and trans-species communication…

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Event | Conference

Nonhuman Agents in art, culture and theory

  1. Interdisciplinary Conference
24 - 26 November 2017

The conference takes into account recent philosophical approaches which question anthropocentrism. We will redefine intelligence (human, animal and plant intelligence), agency and sentience. Exhibiting artists as well as scholars from humanities and science will debate together.

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Event | Talk

Nonhuman Agents

  1. ill-at-ease seep
  2. Sarah Hermanutz
28 October 2017

In her lecture the artist Sarah Hermanutz discussed the relationship between humans and wetlands, which is the focus in her long-term artistic research. Wetlands are one of the most biologically diverse and important ecosystems for life on earth, but within the past century..

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Event | Workshop

Nonhuman Agents

  1. Swarm | Cell | City
  2. Heather Barnett + plan b (Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers)
23 - 24 September 2017

This workshop is a participatory experiment on art, performance and biology that precedes the exhibition Nonhuman Networks. The project invites the participants to view the city of Berlin by the nonhuman perspectives of the intelligent single-cell organism, the slime mould.

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