Events

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
Event | Colloquium

IN-PROGRESS… | COLLOQUIUM

  1. Research in Art, Science, and Humanities
  2. With Karolina Żyniewicz and Regine Hengge
Tue, 17 March 2026 (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 17 March 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. 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 | Video documentation

Art Laboratory Berlin 2025

  1. Video Documentation
A Year in Review 2025
A huge thank you to the ALB team, to all the artists, researchers, and contributors, to our open-minded and wonderful public, and to our cooperation partners and colleagues for sharing this year with us. Our ‘YEAR IN REVIEW 2025’ video offers a glimpse of the encounters, experiments, conversations, and collaborations that shaped our year. And heartfelt thanks to the participants of our 2025 programme and to the institutions that supported it! Read more
Event | Workshop

CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

  1. Ideologies in the Machine: Political Bias in Large Language Models
  2. Workshop with Helena Nikonole
Fri, 12 December 2025
animal created by AI
This hands-on workshop with artist and researcher Helena Nikonole, pursuing a PhD at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Die Angewandte) on Large Language Models and Political Ideologies, explores how contemporary AI systems encode and reproduce ideological narratives. The event takes place in the framework of the project CHRYSALIS. Artists in Labs, organised by Art Laboratory Berlin in cooperation with Berlin Open Lab and other cooperation partners, with the generous support of the Lotto Stiftung Berlin. The workshop will take place in the Einstein Center for Digital Future in Berlin Mitte. Focusing on Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, as well as derivative systems like text-to-image generators, participants will investigate how AI reproduces political bias and ideological framing through language and visual representation. Through experiments with politically charged prompts, participants will analyze how these models interpret ideology, shape discourse, and amplify systemic bias. Read more
Event | Talk

CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

  1. Artist Scientist Dialogue
  2. With Julius Holtz and Julia von Thienen
Fri, 28 November 2025, 7 pm
Join us for the first of several upcoming ARTIST SCIENTIST DIALOGUES that will take place in the context of the current research project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS at Art Laboratory Berlin. Composer and sound researcher Julius Holtz, one of the CHRYSALIS artists in residence, will speak in dialogue with Prof. Dr. Julia von Thienen from the German University of Digital Science. Julia von Thienen is a researcher, educator, and innovator at the intersection of digital engineering and collaborative creativity. Julia’s research in the field of Sonic Thinking and Neuro Design at the Hasso Plattner Institute inspired Julius Holtz’ current artistic investigations into the relationship of sound and Brain Computer Interfaces. In addition, Julius will discuss his artistic research into the interaction among participants, sound environments, the formation of (self-)consciousness, and the creation of spaces that invite active listening. Through technical, biological, and conceptual insights into the design of his Brain Computer Interface enhanced listening sessions, Julius will demonstrate how he translates mind activity into sound compositions via real-time data sonification. Read more
Event | Panel Discussion

CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

  1. Panel Discussion | With Helena Nikonole, Álvaro Rodríguez, Julius Holtz, Ludmila Litvin, Margherita Pevere, Germán Joosten, Regine Rapp, and Christian de Lutz
@ BSW Holzmarkt 25, 8 November 2025, 13-14:30
Join the presentation of our current research project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS at the Berlin Science Week 2025 on 8 November 2025. We will give an insight into Berlin-based artists researching in Berlin science labs – with topics on neuroscience, artificial intelligence, biodiversity, and ecology! 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. 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 all three Berlin universities, the Charité, and the University of the Arts Berlin, Art Laboratory Berlin is initiating artist-in-lab residencies for four internationally recognized, Berlin-based artists – Helena Nikonole, Julius Holtz, Sybille Neumeyer, and Margherita Pevere. We expect strong outcomes in transdisciplinary knowledge transfer, artistic research, art science communication, and some new artworks highlighting 21st-century innovations. In this year’s BSW panel discussion we present three artists of the project CHRYSALIS together with their scientific partners of the respective Berlin science laboratories. Read more
Event | Festival

BODIES OF WATER

  1. Learning from the River Panke through Art, Science, and Storytelling
  2. Workshops, Walks, Talks, Reading Sessions, Panel Discussions, Performances
21 - 22 June 2025
Art Laboratory Berlin welcomes you to the two-day festival BODIES OF WATER exploring themes around urban waterways, in context of the ongoing series ON WATER | PARCOURS by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA). With the art science collective DIY Hack the Panke and scientists from the fields of eco hydrology and medicine, we will explore what forms an urban river takes and what lives in and around the Panke river. There will be workshops, walks, talks, reading sessions, panel discussions, and performances for participants of all ages. Let’s embark on a multi sensorial and transdisciplinary journey along one of Berlin’s fastest flowing bodies of water! Join us on 21 and 22 June to explore our connectedness to water, urban waterways, and the river Panke through learning, crafting, sensing, walking, and listening. Read more
Event | Colloquium

IN-PROGRESS… | COLLOQUIUM

  1. Research in Art, Science, and Humanities
  2. With Robertina Šebjanič and Marco Barotti
8 April 2025, 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 8 April it will be 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 | Workshop

Politics of AI

  1. Artistic Research
  2. With Helena Nikonole
29 March 2025
WORKSHOP FULLY BOOKED /// The hands-on workshop Politics of AI with artist and researcher Helena Nikonole explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, as well as text-to-image AI systems, reproduce biases and embed political ideologies. Participants will experiment with AI-generated responses to politically charged prompts, analyze biases in text-based AI outputs, and examine how these biases extend into AI-generated imagery. Through practical exercises, we will critically assess how AI models shape narratives, reinforce stereotypes, and amplify bias through a feedback loop. Helena Nikonole will share her insights and artistic methodology, demonstrating how artistic research can serve as a critical tool for exposing and subverting AI biases. Read more

Archive

Event | Walk & Talk

Mind the Fungi

  1. Walk & Talks
  2. Theresa Schubert and TU Berlin
Autumn 2018 and 2019

In the Walk & Talks artist Theresa Schubert and biotechnologists from TU Berlin explore with public groups the potential of sustainable biomaterials from fungi in the forests of Berlin and Brandenburg. After collecting tree fungi, the public is invited to the TUB lab to cultivate them.

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Event | Course

Mind the Fungi

  1. Mushroom Cultivation Courses | TOP Lab
Spring 2019 and Autumn 2019

TOP Lab will host a mushroom cultivation course where the participants will learn how to isolate and grow mushrooms for different purposes, such as packaging materials, furniture, building materials and even leather. The course will show how to set up a culture to grow edible mushrooms.

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Event | Workshop

Local Area Network (LAN)

  1. Part of the project: Invisible Forces
  2. Martin Howse
13 October 2019

Local Area Network (LAN) open workshop is a collective, speculative investigation of local fields/particles, and energetic exchanges, towards the hacking and re-routing of energy flows and networks at all stacked levels of local geological, environmental and technological…

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Event | Performance, Workshop

DIY Hack the Panke

  1. Wasserpank | Workshop & Jam Session
  2. Kat Austen and Nenad Popov
5 October 2019

Artist and chemist Kat Austen together with sound and new media artist Nenad Popov take the Panke river and its water as a starting point for this exciting workshop on sound experimentation from water and the environment, experimenting with hydrophone recordings.

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Event | Performance

DIY Hack the Panke

  1. Pankquelle
  2. Sarah Hermanutz and Nenad Popov
5 October 2019

The artists perform a new work based on their involvement in the art science collective DIY Hack the Panke. The two artists’ previous collaboration have mixed Hermanutz’s artistic research into wetland ecologies with Popov’s sound and programming-based work.

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Event | Walk & Talk

DIY Hack the Panke

  1. Summer Walk & Talk #2
  2. India Mansour | Nenad Popov | James Whitehead
22 September 2019

For the last day of summer, sound and new media artist Nenad Popov and biologists India Mansour and James Whitehead walk along the Panke and give a series of short talks interwoven with participatory inter/actions between visible and invisible ecological layers.

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Event | Walk & Talk

DIY Hack the Panke

  1. Summer Walk & Talk #1
  2. Eliot Morrison and Daniel Lammel
13 July 2019

During the event we will discuss the interaction of water, soil and atmosphere from the molecular level and how this effects and is affected by organisms up to the larger ecological level and how water, plants and soil take part in cycles of carbon and nitrogen that support life.

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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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