Events

Event | Talk, Visit

Hacking Networks

  1. Open Studio and Artist Talk
  2. Helena Nikonole | Winter Studio Residency
2 February 2025
Meet the artist Helena Nikonoloe in her current winder studio residency at Art Laboratory Berlin. In her talk, she will explore how artistic practices can challenge centralized systems of controlIn her talk Helena Nikonole will explore how artistic practices can challenge centralized systems of control through two of her current projects, which she is continuing to develop during her winter studio residency at Art Laboratory Berlin. The first project uncovers hidden structures of power embedded in generative AI systems based on Large Language Models by probing their biases around political ideologies. This investigation reveals how these technologies reflect and amplify societal inequalities. The second project decentralizes communication networks to counteract internet shutdowns and surveillance in high-risk environments. Read more
Event | Residency, Talk, Workshop

Guerilla Wearables | Politics of LLMs

  1. Winter Studio Residency 2025
  2. Helena Nikonole
January - March 2025
Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to announce that Helena Nikonole has joined ALB’s residency program. Nikonole is a new media artist, independent curator, researcher, and educator whose work explores the intersection of art and technology. Her fields of interest include bio-semiotics, hacktivism, and Artificial Intelligence, a subject she has been exploring since 2016, developing critical and artistic approaches to this rapidly evolving field. During her residency, Nikonole will focus on two primary projects: “Guerrilla Wearables” involves the development of political wearables designed to facilitate decentralized communication. By integrating technology into fashion, these tools provide secure, off-grid interactions in environments where internet access is restricted or blocked. With her project “Research on Large Language Models (LLMs) and Political Ideologies” Nikonole will continue her ongoing research into the biases present in AI language models as well as text-to-image and text-to-video transformers, and other AI systems built on these technologies. Read more
Event | Meet up

Get-together with Printed Matter

  2. Books and printed matter for sale, some farewells and updates about the program of 2025 and 2026
15 December 2024, 4 - 9 pm
Join us for a Get-together with warm drinks and snacks with some books and printed matter for sale. Let’s come together before the seasonal break and meet on-site at Art Laboratory Berlin for some farewells and some new announcements for the coming year. In our current challenging times, we consider it very meaningful to meet in person, support one another, and express the value of art and culture production. Come and join us with friends and colleagues – we would appreciate it a lot! Read more
Event | Seminar, Workshop

OUT OF BALANCE

  1. Bio-Art Workshop
  2. With Fara Peluso, Helena Nikonole, Karine Bonneval, Regine Rapp, and Christian de Lutz
24 November - 4 December 2024
The international 10-day BioArt workshop OUT OF BALANCE took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 24 November until 4 December 2024. The Goethe-Institut in Saudi-Arabien and the Alliance française d’Arabie saoudite, together with the French Embassy, had invited Art Laboratory Berlin to develop a program and organise the first BioArt Lab in Riyadh at the Gharem Studio, a perfect ground for studying BioArt in theory and practice. Five seminar units with curator and researcher Christian de Lutz and art historian and curator Regine Rapp offered a theoretical insight into BioArt, DIY Bio Labs, and art science collaborations. Three hands-on workshops shared techniques of various artistic work with biological organisms – palm trees with artist Karine Bonneval and algae with artist and designer Fara Peluso – as well as AI tools about speculative futures with artist Helena Nikonole. Read more
Event | Panel Discussion

ZOOM IN!

  1. Current Collaborations Between Art, Biology, Music, and Anthropology
  2. Panel Discussion | With Isabel Bredenbröker, Adam Pultz, India Mansour, Sybille Neumeyer, Regine Rapp, and Christian de Lutz
@Berlin Science Week, Holzmarkt 25! 8 November 2024, 5:30 - 7:00 pm
Join us for an invited panel discussion at BERLIN SCIENCE WEEK at Holzmarkt 25 (Berlin Mitte): How do bodies sound? How can we visualize strategies for accessing environmental data from closed systems called biospheres? And how can a group of cultural belongings in an ethnological museum collection resonate in unexpected queer kin relations? Art Laboratory Berlin welcomes you to a diverse panel with cutting edge transdisciplinary research projects on current research topics: From postcolonialism over to postanthropocentrism, they nurture their knowledge production by transgressing discipline borders with a radical openness for nonhuman subjectivities. Read more
Event | Reading Club

Inspired by…

  1. Reading Club
  2. With Guest Artists Isabel Bredenbröker and Adam Pultz
5 November 2024
Inspired by… is an event series, a hybrid format derived from reading group and artist talk formats. In each session, an invited artist will choose a specific text or excerpt from a book that was inspirational for the artist’s practice and/or a particular project that the artist will introduce. Guest Artists on 1 October 2024 Isabel Bredenbröker and Adam Pultz On 5 November 2024, Inspired by… will be an on-site session with Isabel Bredenbröker and Adam Pultz during their exhibition Queer Sonic Fingerprint. This edition of Inspired by is an ‘independent event’ at Berlin Science Week 2024 and will take place at Art Laboratory Berlin on site. Read more
Event | Colloquium

IN-PROGRESS… | COLLOQUIUM

  1. Research in Art, Science and Humanities
  2. With Ionat Zurr
15 October 2024, 8 pm CET (on-site + online)
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 15 Oct it will be hybrid – both on-site and online) 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. Read more
Event | Walk & Talk

WALK & TALK

  1. Berries, berries, berries and rosehips. FERAL FIELDWORK back at Nasse Dreieck (Autumn Edition) | Artist Talk by Käthe Wenzel
6 October 2024, Walk (1 pm) and Talk (3 pm)
Art Laboratory Berlin welcomes you to a double event – a walk with the interdisciplinary research group FERAL FIELDWORK (1 – 2 pm) and an artist talk with Käthe Wenzel (3 – 4 pm). Both projects have emerged from the MATTER OF FLUX network and festival in 2023.Under the moniker “Feral Fieldwork”, Alice Cannavà, Chiara Garbellotto, and Sina Ribak invite to a walk at Nasses Dreieck communicating the dense botanical, socio-political, and toxic histories of the Stadtbrache, its life forms and their materialised traces, also involving storytelling, multispecies embodiment, and mapping, they will also share methodological reflections on how to work with multiple sensibilities and knowledges. At the last day of her exhibition “Colour Topographies”, Käthe Wenzel will reflect the artistic processes of urban foraging and ink extraction and the possibilities of natural inks and will give a short foray into urban biocolorants, techniques of inkmaking, and material cultures of colour(s). Read more
Event | Reading Club

Inspired by…

  1. Reading Club
  2. With Guest Artist Aslı Dinç
1 October 2024
Inspired by… is an event series, a hybrid format derived from reading group and artist talk formats. In each session, an invited artist will choose a specific text or excerpt from a book that was inspirational for the artist’s practice and/or a particular project that the artist will introduce. Guest Artist Aslı Dinç is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. Her artistic research and narrative are deeply influenced by sci-fi culture, RPGs, cybernetics, interconnected networks and power. These influences, along with gamer theory, hacker culture, and the deep sea milieu, shape her practice. Read more

Archive

Hands touching objects, rock, an orange, on a floor. covered with natural glue. More objects strewn along the floor.
Event | Workshop

Permeable Bodies

  1. Sticking with the Trouble
  2. Workshop | With Mary Maggic (on-site!)
26 November 2023 (on-site!) The Workshop is fully booked out.

The workshop explores the use of “stickiness” as both a practice and discourse for resistance, messiness, and alien knowledging. In a series of exercises that involve scavenging, blind sensing, and cooking with stickiness, participants embrace the entangled glue that binds us to disobedient relations, no matter how hard we try to separate them.

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A group of people standing around a sculpture made of different found and collected objects. Background: a projection of sea and clouds A group of people standing around a sculpture made of different found and collected objects.
Event | Lecture, Talk

Permeable Bodies

  1. Performing the Sublime Sea of Co-Mattering
  2. Online-Talk | With Mary Maggic
22 November 2023 (online only)

Biohacking methodologies produce an existential knowing in our bodies and environments, leading to collective strategies that may help us out of ecological ruins. The talk describes how biohacking, as a xeno-feminist practice of care, can inevitably lead to a form of world-making, where collectivities can emerge with a radical breakage from the past.

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a pregnant belly with text written on it
Event | Reading Club

PERMEABLE BODIES

  1. Reading Group UNBORN0x9
  2. Live-Performance (online) | Reading Group SURROGACY, with Anindita Majumdar
18 November 2023 (online)

Welcome to the LIVESTREAM of the reading group SURROGACY as fork-out project of UNBORN0x9 showing in the exhibition MATTER OF FLUX. Initiated by Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet UNBORN0x9 reflects on the techno-scientific developments in obstetrical medicine, its social, cultural, philosophical and prospective implications and to offer an artistic view of the science in the making.

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a drawing of a woman in foreground. in background same woman as teenager in 20s in 40s in 50s in 60s . Text: EXPLORE MENOPAUSE. It could be the best time of your life. Femininity beyond fertility
Event | Workshop

PERMEABLE BODIES

  1. Explore Menopause: It Could Be the Best Time of Your Life!
  2. Workshop | With Nicola Hochkeppel
17 November 2023

With the removal of taboos, education and empowerment, it becomes clear how much good menopause can do for women, our environment and the community. The workshop provides an entertaining explanation of the basic biological phases and symptoms associated with menopause. The question however, of why we still associate femininity with fertility leads directly to political issues also discussed in the workshop.

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a forest of palm trees a kiosk with a container that looks like an ice cream dispenser with the words Taiwan chewing gum and Jing Xin Betel Nit and Chinese characters
Event | Lecture Performance

PERMEABLE BODIES

  1. Betel Nut. A Cultural Connector among Austronesian-speaking Societies
  2. Lecture Performance | With Mooni Perry and Hanwen Zhang (AFSAR)
4 November 2023 (on-site)

Drawing from their previous project “Looking for Sirih (beauty)”, which investigated betel nut chewing culture and its sexist stigma against women selling betel nuts, Moonwen will share their ongoing research on the interconnectedness of betel nut culture and Austronesian-speaking societies and beyond.

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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
Event | Colloquium

IN-PROGRESS… | COLLOQUIUM

  1. Research in Art, Science and Humanities
  2. With Kristina Stallvik and Louise Mackenzie
17 October 2023

The Colloquium addresses an international interdisciplinary research audience to present and discuss past, present or future projects by artists, scholars, curators or editors from the fields of art, science and the humanities, focusing on the work-in-progress.

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a person and sound recorder touching the soil a hand holding a mobile phone with a DIY microscope attachment photographing root like objects on the soil
Event | Workshop

PERMEABLE BODIES

  1. Capturing Leakage: Body Flows and Material Investigations
  2. Workshop | With Karolina Żyniewicz and Charlotte Roschka
14 - 15 October 2023

The workshop is based on the methodology of artistic research: conceptualization, sampling, and exploration. The crucial aspect of the project is building a narration based on writing, photographs, videos, sound, electromagnetic recordings, and material samples from the Panke River and Soldiner Kiez.

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Event | Talk

ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

  1. Artist Talk
  2. With HyungJun Park
8 October 2023

In the framework of the exhibition ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS. Exposing the Invisible: Data, Rendering and Code, the artist HyungJun Park and the co-curator Tuçe Erel talk about the exhibition. The conversation will take place on 8 October 2023 at 1 pm CET and will be live-streamed over Art Laboratory Berlin’s YouTube Channel.

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Event | Book Release Party, Talk

Exploring the Visual

  1. Zine Launch, Reading, and Curatorial Tour
  2. With Kristina Stallvik, Li Yang, Kennith Rosario, Lebogang Mokoena, and Hana Peoples | VENUE: alpha nova & galerie futura
28 September 2023

Welcome to a zine launch presenting the results of a research workshop, conceived by Kristina Stallvik (Alexander von Humboldt German chancellor fellow) and Li Yang (Alexander von Humboldt German chancellor fellow). The event will take place at alpha nova & galerie futura, Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin.

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a pregnant belly with text written on it
Event | Open Call

PERMEABLE BODIES

  1. Reading Group UNBORN0x9
  2. OPEN CALL | Reading Group SURROGACY, with Anindita Majumdar
Apply now (deadline 1 October)

OPEN CALL for the online reading group SURROGACY as fork-out project of UNBORN0x9 shown in the exhibition MATTER OF FLUX. Initiated by Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet UNBORN0x9 reflects on the techno-scientific developments in obstetrical medicine, its social, cultural, philosophical and prospective implications and to offer an artistic view of the science in the making.

Read more
Event | Workshop

Exposing the Invisible: Data, Rendering and Code

  2. Workshop | With HyungJun Park and Juha Lee
23 - 24 September 2023

In the framework of the exhibition “ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS. Exposing the Invisible: Data, Rendering and Code”, the artist HyungJun Park and the co-curator Juha Lee lead one-to-one workshop sessions with participants who signed up for dedicated slots on 23 and 24 September 2023. If you would like to join with a friend, family member or partner, please mention this in the notes section.

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a laboratory vial filled with soil and green biomaterial, held by fingers green circles on a beige and pink background
Event | Workshop

PERMEABLE BODIES

  1. Hydrofeminist Ecologies
  2. Workshop | With Sarah Hermanutz, Fara Peluso, India Mansour
16 September 2023

The art, design and science trio continue their ongoing collaborations along the Panke River. Flowing together formats of reading groups, meditative sensory experience, DIY and traditional methods of scientific inquiry, and discussions both affirmative and critical, this workshop invites fluid practices of connection and care between and beyond humans.

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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
Event | Colloquium

IN-PROGRESS… | COLLOQUIUM

  1. Research in Art, Science and Humanities
  2. With Helena Nikonole and Lucy Ojomoko
13 September 2023

The Colloquium addresses an international interdisciplinary research audience to present and discuss past, present or future projects by artists, scholars, curators or editors from the fields of art, science and the humanities, focusing on the work-in-progress.

Read more
a glass vessel with red liquid a drawing in black and red. words: biological arts, queer ecologies, the non/living, Covid 19 scar, SEMINA AETERNITAS, biohacking DIY-bio, vulnerable bodies in art, leaky bodies, ahuman more.tan-huma, WOMBS W.01 W.02 W.03 near red lines these words: FEMISNIST POSTHUMANITIES, ARTISTIC RESEARCH, QUEER STUDIES Q. VERB
Event | Talk

PERMEABLE BODIES

  1. Arts of Vulnerability
  2. Artist Talk | With Margherita Pevere
24 August 2023

What does it mean to be vulnerable – and what may leaks tell us about bodies and environments in posthuman terms? Dr Margherita Pevere has addressed these questions through bioart and performance. In context of the current event series “Permeable Bodies” at Art Laboratory Berlin she will speak about her two concepts – ‘arts of vulnerability’ and ‘poetics of uncontainability’.

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digital rendering from an ultrasound scan of a fetus. the words UNBORN 0X9
Event | Reading Club

PERMEABLE BODIES

  1. Reading Group UNBORN0x9
  2. Live-Performance (online) | Reading Group ULTRASOUND, with Julie Roberts
15 July 2023

Welcome to the LIVESTREAM of the reading group ULTRASOUND as fork-out project of UNBORN0x9 showing in the exhibition MATTER OF FLUX. Initiated by Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet UNBORN0x9 reflects on the techno-scientific developments in obstetrical medicine, its social, cultural, philosophical and prospective implications and to offer an artistic view of the science in the making.

Read more