Under the Viral Shadow
- Networks in the Age of Technoscience and Infection
- Anna Dumitriu | Alex May | Benjamin Bacon | Gene Kogan | Sarah Grant | Vivian Xu
This exhibition project will explore various networks – biological, cybernetic, and social – in context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have conceived a group exhibition, symposium, performances, and workshops with artists whose research and media are either in the life or computer sciences. We are particularly interested in artworks that explore biological networks, digital networks, and social networks under the pressure of new technologies.
The core of the project is the group exhibition Under the Viral Shadow which 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.
Read morePaired Immunity
- Marta de Menezes & Luís Graça
The exhibition project Paired Immunity presents two works by bio artist Marta de Menezes and her partner, the immunologist Luís Graça.In Immortality for Two Marta de Menezes and Luís Graça immortalize each other’s immune cells. This is achieved by introducing cancer-inducing genes in the cells with a viral vector. These immortal cells, although derived from two people in love, are immune cells involved in the bodily defence. If they interact, they will be mutually rejected. Thus, immortality comes at a price – perpetual isolation.
The work Anti-Marta extends on Immortality for Two, where the artist and scientist questioned the limits and understanding of their identity. In Anti-Marta a skin transplant was exchanged between Marta and Luís (with an autologous graft as control). Anti-Marta can be seen as a pact, where the inevitable rejection of the transplant contrasts with the live-long acquisition of a new form of recognition of one another afforded by the emergence of antibodies.
Read moreSwarms, Robots and Postnature
- Käthe Wenzel | So Kanno | Sofia Crespo
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. Käthe Wenzel has created interfaces between the biological and the machine in her project Bone Bots. These hybrid electronic animals blur traditional categories of “technology” and “nature”.
So Kanno combines design and computer science with digital art and has been working extensively on robotic systems and swarm robotics in recent years. His new work is inspired by the synchronous behaviour of insects such as fireflies. Sofia Crespo works on the representation of artificial life and generative forms of life. One of her main focuses is the way organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself.
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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
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.
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Mind the Fungi
- Art & Design Residencies
- Theresa Schubert | Fara Peluso
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.
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Borderless Bacteria / Colonialist Cash
- Ken Rinaldo
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.
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Invisible Forces
- Artistic Research
- Erich Berger | Mari Keto | Martin Howse
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.
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Mind the Fungi
- Local Tree Mushrooms as Sustainable Material for the Future
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.
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The Silkworm Project
- Vivian Xu
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.
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Watery Ecologies. Artistic Research
- Kat Austen | Mary Maggic | Fara Peluso
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.
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Strange Encounters with Vegetal Others
- Špela Petrič
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.
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Viscous Bodies
- Sarah Hermanutz | Alanna Lynch
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.
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Nonhuman Agents
- Nonhuman Networks
- Heather Barnett | Saša Spačal, Mirjan Švagelj & Anil Podgornik
How does the world’s largest single celled creature function as a computer? Can we tap into the so-called ‘Internet of trees’? Performative works act as enablers for the audience to engage in non-linguistic forms of awareness and contact with several deceptively simple life forms.
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Nonhuman Subjectivities
- Under-Mine
- Alinta Krauth
The exhibition project investigates possibilities of communicating nonhuman perception through the interface of artistic practice and new technologies. By using time-based techniques artist Alinta Krauth considers potential narratives of animals under threat from climate change.
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Nonhuman Subjectivities
- Aural Aquatic Presence
- Robertina Šebjanič
The exhibition offers a dialogue of agency and sentience in one of the ‘simplest’ of multicellular creatures: the jellyfish related to a human made machine. Another project discusses sound in marine systems, as well as the effects of human intervention on aural aquatic systems.
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Nature Cultures
- at the Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
- Brandon Ballengée | Katya Gardea Browne | Pinar Yoldas
The exhibition explores the interwoven fabric of both the human and nonhuman in the 21st century. The side effects of human technology intrude into every environment, altering the balance, and even the make up of what we once called nature. While ecological disaster…
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Nonhuman Subjectivities
- On Animals. Cognition, Senses, Play
- Rachel Mayeri | Maja Smrekar
The art projects discuss primates and the wolf-dog-human continuum: The instinct and the senses of the nonhuman are placed at the centre of artistic research, while aiming to translate the nonhuman cognitive ability by means of the performance, film and art science collaboration.
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Nonhuman Subjectivities
- The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome
- François-Joseph Lapointe | Saša Spačal with Mirjan Švagelj & Anil Podgornik | Tarsh Bates | Joana Ricou
Various artistic projects discuss the complex microbial environment found on and within the human body as performance, living installation or image. The phenomenon of the microbiome brings forth many complex questions about human identity and our relation to our multiple selves.
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