Exhibitions

FERMENTING TEXTILES

Weaving Together Traditional Craft, Anthropology, Microbiology, and Art
Adama Séré, Laurence Douny, Regine Hengge, Pauline Agustoni, Satomi Minoshima

16 May - 6 July 2025

Fermenting Textiles is a unique trans-disciplinary research and exhibition project that puts active matter at the center: it connects anthropology, microbiology, and art through the engagement of artisans, anthropologists, scientists, and artists, as well as more-than-human actors. Fermenting Textiles explores the fermentation of textile in mud and plant material to produce complex dyeing for various use – from traditional hunter shirts in Burkina Faso to kimono silk dyeing in Japan. In each case the process is artisanal and has fascinating traditional uses and meanings. Both cases make use of natural chemical and biological processes to create unique aesthetic and medicinal results. Read more

Queer Sonic Fingerprint

Transdisciplinary Research
Isabel Bredenbröker and Adam Pultz

20 October - 1 December 2024

hands with blue gloves steadying a teapot with a sound device attached

Adam and Isabel in an archive recording sound sent from a small speaker through a basket into a microphone

How do bodies sound? And how can a group of cultural belongings in an ethnological museum collection resonate in unexpected queer kin relations? In their interactive multichannel sound installation Queer Sonic Fingerprint, sound artist Adam Pultz and anthropologist Isabel Bredenbröker speculatively imagines non-normative relations around cultural belongings in ethnological museums and beyond. The installation amplifies the collection‘s materiality through sonic fingerprints—that is—the reflections of a body’s unique acoustic characteristics. In a transdisciplinary encounter with sound processing and evolutionary computing, dynamically changing fingerprints bring selected parts of museum collections to life in a multichannel sonic ecology. Read more

Colour Topographies

Artistic Research
Käthe Wenzel

31 August - 6 October 2024

Site-specific colours combine colour and location, as a type of topographical perception through local colour. What colour producing plants and minerals can be found in this place, and how can they be perceived and understood through colour? Plant knowledge is knowledge of place. This project explores topics of plant blindness, urban ecology, mapping, bio-invasiveness and migration as well as Zero Waste, Queer Ecologies and Interspecies Cooperation. Read more

Intermediate Objects

Artistic Research
Kristina Stallvik

23 February - 24 March 2024

diagram with circles, squares and different letters, alphabets and characters. text: Riso Test Chart no. 16

People in a gallery looking at artwork and books

Intermediate Objects represents the first culmination of artist Kristina Stallvik’s multidisciplinary, practice-based research on ecosystems of independent publishing. The works in the exhibition are both a documentation of Stallvik’s investigative dialogues and a mediation on the social and material histories of risograph printing. By displaying the physical stencil masters used to print an eponymous research publication, Intermediate Objects animates these traditionally discarded products of duplication. Drafted with tools developed by Full Auto Foundry, the typefaces utilized in the exhibition further explore the collaborative potential of the stencil itself as a creative methodology. Read more

TERRA XENOBIOTICA

Artistic Research
Saša Spačal

10 November - 4 February 2024

Three soil chromatograms seen from above under red light, dark purple background. outlines of the runways on Tempelhofer Feld

of an airport seen from above on a black background

Art Laboratory Berlin is glad to announce the solo show of bio media artist Saša Spačal with the newly produced artwork TERRA XENOBIOTICA. “Terra Xenobiotica delves into the soil life hidden beneath the ceaseless traffic of airports – dense nodes of western human civilisation” says Saša Spačal. “Toxins are seeping into the ground, creating unfamiliar lands that call for different kinds of stewards – the ones who navigate and nurture, rather than gatekeep or extract.” Terra Xenobiotica by Saša Spačal was realised through a collaborative effort with cultural theorist Ali Sperling and was supported and produced by Art Laboratory Berlin. Additional support comes from the Rillig Lab | Plant Ecologies, FU Berlin, SKICA Berlin and the Berlin Senate. Read more

ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Exposing the Invisible: Data, Rendering and Code
HyungJun Park

1 September - 8 October 2023

HyungJun Park’s solo exhibition Artificial Consciousness. Exposing the Invisible: Data, Rendering and Code brings together three artworks, created in the last fifteen years. Park’s artistic exploration focuses on the relationship between machine and humans as well as humans and nonhuman beings. He connects and exposes nonhuman sensorial experiences through technological tools for human body experiences that mimic other perceptions. Read more

MATTER OF FLUX

Artistic Research
WhiteFeather Hunter | Lyndsey Walsh | Shu Lea Cheang and Ewen Chardronnet

26 May - 9 July 2023

The exhibited artworks critically reflect about nature, matter and health of female and nonbinary bodies through artistic and scientific research – exploring the use of menstrual serum for tissue culture, proposing new modes of care within the context of female and nonbinary health and discussing both traditional forms and new possibilities of reproduction. In context of the group exhibition, Art Laboratory Berlin will also realise a festival of the same title in June 2023 that seeks to initiate a wider network of and for female and nonbinary artists, scholars and cultural players in art, science and technology. Read more

VICIOUS CYCLE

Artistic Research on Climate Crisis
Cammack Lindsey | Gülşah Mursaloğlu | Sybille Neumeyer

3 March - 30 April 2023

In March 2022 scientific research revealed that microplastic pollution is now present in the human body. It moves around in the blood, lands in organs and passes to infants via breast milk. The exhibition title Vicious Cycle is based on this closed cycle of human disturbance of the environment and its return to the human and nonhuman body. In the exhibition the artists’ investigative and research-oriented works explore the problem of microplastics in soil, the impact of climate change and the effects of excessive agricultural activity on the water, soil, animals and wildlife. Read more

Archive

Radyo Somatodelia

Experiments in Sonic Animism
Tad Ermitaño

26 August - 9 October 2022

“Somatodelia”, a term suggested by Tad Ermitaño, complements the psychedelic as the project of recalling the physical roots of consciousness and perception. It, reveals the physical roots of our mental being.

HACKERS, MAKERS, THINKERS

Collective Experiments in Social Fermenting
Irene Agrivina | Interspecifics | Pei-Ying Lin | Cammack Lindsey | Constanza Piña Pardo | Rice Brewing Sisters Club

21 May - 10 July 2022

The project series will combine artists from Latin America and Southeast Asia with Berlin based artists. In group exhibition, workshops, performances we propose art making as a tool for social empowerment and knowledge acquisition, collaboration, and working together.

DIY Hack the Panke

Learning from the River
Documentary Exhibition with Artists and Scientists around the Collective

26 March - 30 April 2022

The art science collective critically explores the river Panke with events on various topics of urban hydro-ecology. The exhibition extensively documents the interdisciplinary research, shows new art works and invites to read about Hybrid Art in a Posthuman era.

Paired Immunity

Marta de Menezes & Luís Graça

30 October - 12 December 2021

The immune system can be seen as a sixth sense that identifies and discriminates our composition and the outside world. The work Anti-Marta extends on Immortality for Two, where the artist and scientist questioned the limits and understanding of their identity.

Under the Viral Shadow

Networks in the Age of Technoscience and Infection
Anna Dumitriu | Alex May | Benjamin Bacon | Gene Kogan | Sarah Grant | Vivian Xu

28 August - 10 October 2021

The group exhibition will feature internationally renowned artists such as Anna Dumitriu, Alex May, Benjamin Bacon, Gene Kogan, Sarah Grant, and Vivian Xu. The works are understood as artistic research on the interface of the biological and the technological…

Swarms, Robots and Postnature

Käthe Wenzel | So Kanno | Sofia Crespo

1 May - 27 June 2021

The exhibition Swarms, Robots and Postnature presents three research based artistic positions by Käthe Wenzel, So Kanno and Sofia Crespo exploring the interface of the biological and the machine, on swarm behaviour, and questioning the traditional concept of “nature”.

The Camille Diaries

New Artistic Positions on M/otherhood, Life and Care
Sonia Levy | Mary Maggic | Naja Ryde Ankarfeldt | Baum & Leahy | Špela Petrič | Margherita Pevere | Ai Hasegawa | Nicole Clouston | Cecilia Jonsson | Tarah Rhoda

28 August - 4 October 2020

The exhibition presents new artistic works by eleven international women and non-binary artists (installations, video, objects, performance). Reflecting on the current conditions of our world (environmental changes, gender aspects, biopolitics, etc.), the artists’ positions propose an ‘aesthetics of care’ as the basis for inter-species coexistence.

Mind the Fungi

Art & Design Residencies
Theresa Schubert | Fara Peluso

3 July - 28 December 2020

The second exhibition Mind the Fungi at Futurium presents the results of the Artist- and Design-Residencies with artist Theresa Schubert and artist designer Fara Peluso. Schubert studied the effects of sound on fungal growth. Peluso has done research on new biomaterials on the symbiotic basis of algae and fungi.

Borderless Bacteria / Colonialist Cash

Ken Rinaldo

26 January - 1 March 2020

By visualising microbiome landscapes of banknotes, the interconnectedness of ecological and economic exchanges becomes visual – essential aspects of biopolitics. The iconography of the currency literally loses face as microbial growth undermines the representational aspect of the banknotes.

Invisible Forces

Artistic Research
Erich Berger | Mari Keto | Martin Howse

19 October - 8 December 2019

Our planet is not only made up of earth and rocks, but also of a number of invisible forces that influence and shape the form and viability of life. Radiation is not just a by-product of the atomic age, but something that exists in the background of almost every environment.

Mind the Fungi

Local Tree Mushrooms as Sustainable Material for the Future

5 September 2019 - 30 April 2020

Mind the Fungi is a collaboration between the TU Berlin Institute for Biotechnology and Art Laboratory Berlin, combining scientific research, citizen science and artist and designer residencies-in-lab. The exhibition shows produced biomaterials with different shapes, structures and qualities.

The Silkworm Project

Vivian Xu

1 June - 14 July 2019

The artist explores silkworms to design hybrid machines capable of producing self-organised 2D and 3D silk structures. Xu developed cybernetic devices based on both biological and computer-controlled logic to understand how far the behaviour of insects can serve as a foundation for technological design.

Watery Ecologies. Artistic Research

Kat Austen | Mary Maggic | Fara Peluso

20 January - 17 March 2019

The exhibition presents art projects on water, life and chemical disruption. Based on research in biology, chemistry and ethnography with distinct and radical DIY methods, they explore the threat of human impact on both the environment and our own bodies.

Strange Encounters with Vegetal Others

Špela Petrič

22 September - 25 November 2018

The epistemological approaches of hybrid art and biochemistry inform the work of artist Špela Petrič with the Plant Kingdom as part of a multi-species collaboration. She explores the ontologies, methodologies, ethics and practices of care involved in our relationship to the vegetal.

Viscous Bodies

Sarah Hermanutz | Alanna Lynch

24 March - 13 May 2018

Taking all things fluid as a starting point, the work of artists Sarah Hermanutz and Alanna Lynch covers themes such as amphibians, bodily borders, boundaries, marginalisation, materialism, seepage, sensory and wetlands through performance, installations, multimedia and living artworks.