Events

Event | Workshop

PANKE INTERVENTIONS

  1. Koji Workshop
  2. Workshop | ink Agop
26 - 27 November 2022
The Koji workshop by ink Agop introduces the symbiotic relationship between microorganisms and human cultural activities by demonstrating the connection between Koji mould and food culture in Japan. Participants make rice koji using koji mould. We will examine the process of cultivating Koji on rice and learn about how time, temperature and humidity control its growth. In the process of fermentation, they will learn how the enzymes produced by Koji decompose carbohydrates into sugar. We will experience the multiple parallel fermentation processes using koji, yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Read more
Event | Talk

TERRA XENOBIOTICA OR HOW TO BELONG

  1. Artist Talk | Saša Spačal
25 November 2022
Art Laboratory Berlin welcomes you to an Artist Talk with bio media artist Saša Spačal where she will speak about her currently evolving new artistic research project. During the months of October and November 2022 the artist undertakes artistic research for her new project Terra Xenobiotica or How to Belong at the lab of the Rillig Group | Ecology of Plants, Institute of Biology, Freie Universtität Berlin and at Art Laboratory Berlin. “Terra Xenobiotica is an exploration into a dark alterity of soil ecology, an umwelt of its own, where mineral and organic agents entangle as strangers, but decompose into oneness of the ground that carries biological life in the Zone. During the residency temporal aspects of xenobiotic substances and metabolisms will be sampled, researched and observed in the vicinity of airports. On the nodes of planetary aviation networks, traces of human grounding and ungrounding will be materially examined to reveal how foreign substances perform gradual belonging.” (Saša Spačal) Read more
Event | Reading Club

Inspired by…

  1. Reading Club
  2. With Guest Artists Interspecifics
22 November 2022
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. The project follows up Tuçe Erel’s Posthumanism Reading Group, organized between 2018-2020. After co-reading and discussing plenty of seminal texts in two years, the club is transforming into a new discussion, presentation and reading program, an online and offline exchange platform in a non-hierarchical and non-institutional infrastructure in the fields of arts, science and technology. Read more
Event | Talk

PANKE INTERVENTIONS

  1. Notes on Somatodelia
  2. Artist Talk | Tad Ermitaño
20 November 2022
As a self-described “refugee from the sciences” artist Tad Ermitaño creates in his films and artworks an uneasy field in which a facility with technology collides with a kind of postcolonial guilt slamming its head against the limits of empiricism. Radyo Somatodelia: Experiments in Sonic Animism (Tagalog of “radio”) recasts the act of looking and listening as ways of reconstructing an animist orientation towards the world. In this artist talk with curator Tengal Drilon, Ermitaño will discuss the methodologies behind his recent works, shown at Art Laboratory Berlin earlier this year. Read more
Event | Workshop

PANKE INTERVENTIONS

  1. Algature Workshop
  2. Workshop | Fara Peluso
12 November 2022
Can daily spaces be designed to house living machines, as an action to merge and connect different ecosystems by reducing the distance between the human and nonhuman spheres? The workshop supports this action connecting practices of DIY biology with art and design, encouraging participants to learn about science and discovering how powerful the transdisciplinary approach can be. Through a participatory format, the audience from different backgrounds are involved in an immersive experience with algae’s ecology, a DIY photo-bioreactor prototyping and a discussion on speculative practice focused on raising more awarenesse about daily habits. By considering a new way of approaching living organisms Algature will question how closeness to them can give economic, political and artistic contributions. The introduction to the speculative design combined with the DIY methodology will be an occasion to study some objects and, by stimulating critical issues, it will help to define a new possible generation of tools. Read more
Event | Colloquium

IN-PROGRESS… | COLLOQUIUM

  1. Research in Art, Science and Humanities
  2. With Saša Spačal and Joana MacLean
8 November 2022
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. Read more
Event | Workshop

PANKE INTERVENTIONS

  1. The Materiality of Ghosts
  2. Workshop | Cammack Lindsey
30 October 2022
Ghosts are material and they are acting in our physical realities, speaking to us from within pockets of past, future, and present time. How do material conditions determined by a capitalist system affect our mental state, and possibly induce visions of ghosts? As reflections of nature, our memories and environment, ghosts appear through language, noise, smell, color and shapes of lights and hues. How can mysticism and magic through our encounters with ghosts be used to question our mechanicalized bodies and commodified labor-power? How can science be a tool in transforming our ghosts into collective material bodies that can act, protest and rebel as weapons against our precarity. In this workshop we will explore these themes in relation to historical and environmental relics with intimate discussions, readings, and written poetry. We will experiment with our voices and harmonies, while learning about breathing and our body resonance to amplify our stories together in a final composition of our poems through a performance. The conditions of the final outcome will also be discussed and decided within the group so that everyone is comfortable. Read more
Event | Reading Club

Inspired by…

  1. Reading Club
  2. With Guest Artist SU Yu Hsin
11 October 2022
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. The project follows up Tuçe Erel’s Posthumanism Reading Group, organized between 2018-2020. After co-reading and discussing plenty of seminal texts in two years, the club is transforming into a new discussion, presentation and reading program, an online and offline exchange platform in a non-hierarchical and non-institutional infrastructure in the fields of arts, science and technology. Read more
Event | Workshop

PANKE INTERVENTIONS

  1. Wetland Ecologies: Life in Transitional Zones 
  2. Workshop | Sarah Hermanutz, India Mansour, Fara Peluso
8 October 2022
In the workshop the artist, the designer and the biologist will introduce the participants to the river Panke and changing perceptions of wetlands and essential ecosystems playing a vital role in biodiversity preservation and climate change mitigation. Through river-side lectures and storytelling, participants will be encouraged to share and reflect on their own personal relationships (or lack thereof) with wetlands, while physically and sensorially encountering a small, fragmented patch of wetland along the Panke. We will weave together landscape-scale and microbiological perspectives and hack art, design and DIY biology: through a participatory format the audience is called to have an immersive experience with algae and Panke water ecology. Together we will develop an algae culture collection and prototype a DIY photo-bioreactor for indoor cultivation. The transdisciplinary practice will raise questions such as how closeness to living organisms can give us economic, political and artistic contributions. Our goal is for everyone to foster a deeper relationship with the river through situating, storytelling, contextualizing, experiencing, sampling, examining, collaborating, and dreaming. Read more
Event | Walk & Talk

HACK THE PANKE Festival

  1. Reflecting Symbiosis
  2. Walk & Talk | Saša Spačal and Matthias Rillig
3 October 2022
In our last event of the festival, a conversational walk along the river Panke, we will focus on artistic and scientific research on symbiosis. Artist Saša Spačal will introduce us into her artistic research about symbiosis and interspecies entanglements. She has developed technological interfaces and relations with organic and mineral soil agents, addressing the posthuman condition that involves mechanical, digital and organic logic within biopolitics and necropolitics of our times. Ecologist Matthias Rillig will give us an insight into his research on soil and plant ecologies especially on the symbiosis of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi with plants and its effects on soil aggregation. In October and November 2022 Spačal will realize an art residency at the Rillig Lab at Freie Universität Berlin, curatorially accompanied by Art Laboratory Berlin. Read more
Event | Workshop

PANKE INTERVENTIONS

  1. Taphonomy of Trash
  2. Workshop | Kat Austen
1 October 2022
What is the legacy of our waste? In this workshop, with artist Kat Austen, participants will explore the traces of human consumption, the act of throwing away and the process of decay. Inspired by the experimental practice of taphonomy, which examines decomposition over time, participants will search for discarded materials along the banks of the Panke River, cataloguing them while discussing their temporal nature, persistence, and degradation. Based on research developed for the Palaeoplasticene project’s Open Artistic Research Platform, participants will be introduced to the concept of incidental taphonomy, exploring the transience of organic existence and humanity’s relationship to long-lasting materials such as plastic. Read more

Archive

Event | Talk

Under the viral shadow

  1. Living with the Virus
  2. Online Talk | Caitlin Berrigan, WhiteFeather Hunter, Sebastian Cocioba
18 November 2021

As we face the prospect of the SarsCov-2 virus becoming endemic for the foreseeable future we ask what does “Living with the Virus” mean for us and individuals and as a society. We have asked three artists working at the borders of art and the life sciences to talk about how viral infection, contagion and potential cure has affected their lives and work.

Read more
Event | Talk

Paired Immunity

  2. Art & Science Talk | Marta de Menezes & Luís Graça
30 October 2021

In the talk the artist Marta de Menezes and the scientist Luís Graça will give insights into their collaborative art-science projects, currently on show at Art Laboratory Berlin in the exhibition “Paired Immunity”. In “Immortality for Two”, they questioned the limits and understanding of their identity. In “Anti-Marta” a skin transplant was exchanged between them.

Read more
Event | Walk & Talk

DIY Hack the Panke

  1. Walk & Talk
  2. With members of the art science collective
31 October 2021

Members of the collective will meet for a walk along the Panke river, together with the public, to talk about their previous research on the river, its flora, fauna and ecologies. We will also give a preview of our upcoming DIY/ DIWO program for 2022.

Read more
Event | Conference, Conference

UNDER THE VIRAL SHADOW

  1. Networks in the Age of Technoscience and Infection
  2. International Conference (online with livestream)
9 October 2021

The online conference (with livestream) explores various networks – biological, cybernetic, and social. It will include presentations by the artists, currently on show at ALB, and guest scholars from art and media theory, biophysics, and computer science, design and culture studies.

Read more
Event | Workshop

Under the Viral Shadow

  1. NETworkshop
  2. Workshop | Sarah Grant & Danja Vasiliev
1 - 3 October 2021

In this 3-day workshop participants learn low-level networking using only command-line tools and network hardware. In doing so they not only grasp how to create and manipulate computer networks, but how they can be used to manipulate us.

Read more
Event | Workshop

Under the Viral Shadow

  1. Plant-to-Plant Protocols
  2. Workshop | Sarah Grant
24 - 26 September 2021

The workshop is an unstable network of radios and IR sensor pairs attached to plants. It is a meditation on the aesthetics of data transmission and network disruptions caused by the natural movement of plants in response to light, wind, and other natural conditions.

Read more
Event | Workshop

Under the Viral Shadow

  1. AI for Artists
  2. Workshop | Gene Kogan
28 August 2021

AI for Artists Workshop | Gene Kogan Gene Kogan is an artist and a programmer who is interested in generative systems, computer science, and software for creativity and self-expression. He is a collaborator within numerous open-source software projects, and gives workshops and lectures on topics at the intersection of code and art. The workshop will…

Read more

Read more
Event | Talk

Swarms, Robots and Postnature

  2. Artist Talk | Sofia Crespo
3 June 2021

The exhibition project presents research based artistic positions on swarm behaviour, questioning the traditional concept of “nature” and explores the interface of the biological and the machine. As part of our online program the exhibiting artist Sofia Crespo will give an insight in her artistic research and practice.

Read more
Event | Talk

Swarms, Robots and Postnature

  2. Artist Talk | Käthe Wenzel
20 May 2021

The exhibition project presents research based artistic positions on swarm behaviour, questioning the traditional concept of “nature” and explores the interface of the biological and the machine. Exhibiting artist Käthe Wenzel will give an insight in her artistic research and practice.

Read more
Event | Talk

Swarms, Robots and Postnature

  2. Artist Talk | So Kanno
6 May 2021

The exhibition project presents research based artistic positions on swarm behaviour, questioning the traditional concept of “nature” and explores the interface of the biological and the machine. As part of our online program the exhibiting artist So Kanno gives an insight in his artistic research and practice.

Read more
Event | Talk

VIRAL CLOUD | Berlin Tokyo

  1. Hybrid Arts and DIY Bio Cultures
  2. Hideo Iwasaki and Matthias Rillig
21 February 2021

Since spring 2020 ALB and BioClub Tokyo have been arranging online meetings between hybrid artists and associates in our respective cities. In our Meeting #13 two scientists talk about art and science collaborations.

Read more
Sublime
Event | Performance

Mind Blind Pathetic Sublime

  1. Online Performance Lecture
  2. Sarah Hermanutz
16 February 2021

Five years since she presented the lecture-performance “Mind Blind: Therapeutic Interventions for Human/NonHuman Communications” for Transmediale | Vorspiel 2016, artist Sarah Hermanutz revisits the problems of social cognition in this time of isolation and multiple intersecting crises.

Read more
Event | Talk

VIRAL CLOUD | Berlin Tokyo

  1. Hybrid Arts and DIY Bio Cultures
  2. Fara Peluso and Sachiko Hirosue
17 January 2021

Since spring 2020 Art Laboratory Berlin and BioClub Tokyo have been arranging online meetings between hybrid artists and associates in our respective cities and beyond. In our 12th meeting we feature presentations by designer and bioartist Fara Peluso and Bioengineer Sachiko Hirosue

Read more
Event | Talk

VIRAL CLOUD | Berlin Tokyo

  1. Hybrid Arts and DIY Bio Cultures
  2. Heather Barnett
22 December 2020

Since spring 2020 ALB and BioClub Tokyo have been arranging online meetings between hybrid artists and associates in our respective cities and beyond. Meeting #11 features Heather Barnett on her art and science practice, recent collaborations in Japan, and new projects.

Read more
Event | Talk

VIRAL CLOUD | Berlin Tokyo

  1. Hybrid Arts and DIY Bio Cultures
  2. Walter Waldman
25 November 2020

Since spring 2020 ALB and BioClub Tokyo have been arranging online meetings between hybrid artists and associates in our respective cities and beyond. Meeting #11 features Walter Waldman presenting his research on microplastics and ideas for cooperation across disciplines.

Read more