Events

Sending Occulto 8 to Print

A Temporary Editorial Office as Performance, Organic Exhibition, and Non-systematic Archive
Editorial Residency with Alice Cannavà

10 May - 7 July 2024

Occulto’s publisher Alice Cannavà will be in residence at Art Laboratory Berlin from 10 May until 7 July 2024, editing and designing the upcoming issue Occulto 8: Photographic, to be released in July. The temporary editorial office at ALB offers the opportunity to open up and make visible the work behind the birth of a magazine, uncovering its performative potential and the richness of its byproducts and side-effects. Occulto 8: Photographic focuses on photography from an artistic, historical, technoscientific, and ethical perspective, building on and playing with the transdisciplinary and cross-genre approach developed by Occulto over the years. As usual, the issue will combine richly illustrated essays with visual artists’ projects and experimental sound. The public is invited to visit the temporary editorial office on 31 May and on 28 June between 5 and 9 pm, as part of the Kolonie Wedding monthly open-door Friday. An Open Occulto gathering for contributors, editors, readers, colleagues, old and new friends, and interested newcomers is planned for 2 July 2024 at 6 pm. Read more

Event | Workshop

Hidden Colours

Inkmaking with Plants in Urban Space
Käthe Wenzel

13 - 14 July 2024

empty urban lot with grass, trees, rubble. In the background a mural of a little girl on the firewall of an apartment building

crushed stones and earth, pigment and a try with water

Workshop on urban ink and dye extraction from plants, soil and waste. 90% of modern paints are made from petrochemical products. Until the 20th century, the local and more environmentally friendly production of natural paints was commonplace as a technology both in the studio and in the home. Even today, inks and paints can be made from materials collected in urban areas. The workshop covers topics ranging from plant blindness, urban ecology, bio-invasiveness and migration to zero waste, queer ecologies and interspecies cooperation, and will focus on collecting, foraging rules, color extraction, modification and conservation. Read more

Event | Workshop

Embodied Methods to explore chemical relationships

with Jemma Woolmore and Pati Masłowska

22 June 2024

Chemicals pervade our environment, they interact with and alter bodies, yet are often invisible. Chemicals are agents whose paths reveal connections across bodies – land, water, human and non-human. How can we engage with what is happening inside our bodies? How can we better understand these chemical relations? This is a workshop to share and develop ways of knowing our bodies and the chemicals inside them. Collectively we will explore embodied approaches using the senses, materials and movement to find different ways of knowing chemicals and their relationships with us. Read more

Event | Reading Club

Inspired by…

Reading Club
With Guest Artists ella hebendanz and pamela varela

18 June 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 18 June 2024 ella hebendanz (DE) and pamela varela (MX) On 18 June 2024, Inspired by… will welcome the artist duo ella hebendanz (DE) and pamela varela (MX) via zoom meeting. They initiated “re-c(O)unting”, which is an artistic-scientific research project, investigating the colonial history between Europe and Latin America and relating it to the colonial approach medicine has had on female-assigned bodies. It was born as an attempt to investigate the link between their roots and create decolonial lines of exchange. Read more

Event | Residency, Talk, Workshop

If You Are Reading This

BIOMATERIALS AND DISCARD STUDIES
Elizabeth Shores

Residency (23 - 25 May) and Workshop (25 May)

a sample of bioplastics made by the artist

A hand holding leaves, flowers and stones

In connection with their spring studio residency at Art Laboratory Berlin, artist educator Elizabeth Shores invites the public to learn more about their current artistic practices between 23 until 25 May. There will be an artist talk and workshop on 25 May 2024. While in residence, Elizabeth will mix seaweed alginate with foraged compostable matter to create semi-transparent, stained-glass-like bioplastic and bioaggregate sheets for installation on the windows of Art Laboratory Berlin. Read more

Event | Colloquium

IN-PROGRESS… | COLLOQUIUM

Research in Art, Science and Humanities
With Alice Cannavà and Karolina Żyniewicz

21 May 2024 (on-site)

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 (21 May only on-site!) 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 | Reading Club

Inspired by…

Reading Club
With Guest Artist Nicol Rivera Aro

April 16 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 on 16 April 2024 Nicol Rivera Aro Nicol Rivera Aro is an artist and PhD candidate. Her research topic, titled “Noise from the Matrix. Dissident, hybrids, cyborgs, new body construction and technofeminism” is a performative research, which puts the focus on the body as praxis, as a tool to detach acknowledgement, to support the academic research. Read more

Event | Book Release Party

MATTER OF FLUX

Art, Biopolitics, and Networks with Care
Book Launch

23 March 2024 @ PA58, Prinzenallee 58

Book cover for "MATTER OF FLUX" Art, Biopolitics, and Networks with Care Edited by Regine Rapp / Art Laboratory Berlin

Welcome to the Book Launch of the new book MATTER OF FLUX. Art, Biopolitics, and Networks with Care published by Art Laboratory Berlin. We would be glad to celebrate with you the brand new book release at the Theater Hall of PA58 in Prinzenallee 58, opposite of Art Laboratory Berlin. The publication presents a sustainable insight into the research project MATTER OF FLUX at Art Laboratory Berlin. The book assembles essays and statements along with documentation in text and images by around 50 authors whose many fields of expertise create the polyphonic ground of MATTER OF FLUX: art, design, filmmaking, curatorial practice, dramaturgy, music, art history, media theory, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, feminist history of science, microbiology, plant ecology, biotechnology, neuroscience, and physical science. Read more

Archive

Event | Talk

Hackers, Makers, Thinkers

Curators Talk
Regine Rapp, Tuçe Erel, Christian de Lutz, Tengal Drilon

23 January 2022

As part of “Vorspiel | transmediale” ALB welcomes you to an online talk with the curatorial team of “Hackers, Makers, Thinkers”. This year’s event series will combine Berlin based artists with artists from Latin America and Southeast Asia, proposing art making as a tool for social empowerment and knowledge acquisition, collaboration, and working together.

Event | Residency

Signs of the Times

Artist Residency
Karolina Żyniewicz

10 January - 15 February 2022

During her residency at ALB artist Karolina Żyniewicz will use the exhibition space for her new project “Signs of the Times”: After having collecting numerous masks in Berlin, the artists started to interview people and communicate with them about their individual mask experience.

Event | Talk

Under the viral shadow

Viral Geographies
Online Talk | Sybille Neumeyer, Karolina Żyniewicz

25 November 2021

The event explores the biopolitics in our current age of pandemic. The online discussion welcomes artists Sybille Neumeyer and Karolina Żyniewicz to talk about their artistic research focusing on the virus in general as well as the impact of the current pandemic in their artistic practice.

Event | Talk

Under the viral shadow

Living with the Virus
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.

Event | Talk

Paired Immunity

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.

Event | Walk & Talk

DIY Hack the Panke

Walk & Talk
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.

Event | Conference, Conference

UNDER THE VIRAL SHADOW

Networks in the Age of Technoscience and Infection
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.

Event | Workshop

Under the Viral Shadow

NETworkshop
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.

Event | Workshop

Under the Viral Shadow

Plant-to-Plant Protocols
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.

Event | Workshop

Under the Viral Shadow

AI for Artists
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…

Event | Talk

Swarms, Robots and Postnature

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.

Event | Talk

Swarms, Robots and Postnature

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.

Event | Talk

Swarms, Robots and Postnature

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.

Event | Talk

VIRAL CLOUD | Berlin Tokyo

Hybrid Arts and DIY Bio Cultures
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.

Event | Performance

Mind Blind Pathetic Sublime

Online Performance Lecture
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.