Research

For more than ten years Art Laboratory Berlin has enhanced research based projects with international conferences and interdisciplinary symposia, as a sustainable theoretical addition next to exhibition projects, seminars and workshops. Here you can research the individual concepts and the multidisciplinary panels of our conferences, starting in 2011. From the beginning we have worked intensely on the accessibility of these discursive events; by recording the conferences, they are now all available as video online publications. Read more

Through interdisciplinary art science practice, the art science group DIY Hack the Panke aims to explore the Panke River for living organisms and critically examine its complex history of human use. Existing since early 2018, we offer public workshops on topics such as river flora, fauna and microbiology; bio matter as part of artistic research; plastic waste and other pollutants; and the impact of history, culture and technology on the present-day Panke. The public is also invited to take part in walk & talks, art performances as well as public labs to rediscover their urban environment, as well as learn and take part in Citizen Science. Read more

Art Laboratory Berlin is glad to have produced the Podcast Channel SONIC ECOLOGIES in 2023 and 2024, partially supported by the Berlin Senate. The podcast series was conceived by Tuçe Erel, with composition and production by Korhan Erel. Each year the podcast had a special theme. The subject matter of 2023 complemented the series Permeable Bodies, while the topics and conversation partners from 2024 were loosely connected to Art Laboratory Berlin’s running program. Each curatorial team member – Regine Rapp, Christian de Lutz, Tuçe Erel – interviewed artists and scientists, and the series spread throughout the year. Read more

During the months of October and November 2022 bio media artist Saša Spačal 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, FU 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

Art Laboratory Berlin, in cooperation with the Institute of Biotechnology TU Berlin, is pleased to present the Art & Science project Mind the Fungi, which is dedicated to the research of local mushrooms and current fungal biotechnology. In the project Mind the Fungi we use the interdisciplinary concept from STEM to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Art) to expand scientific research with artistic and design-based research. The Institute of Biotechnology works with Berlin citizens, artists and designers to develop new ideas and technologies for mushroom and lichen-based materials of the future. The Artists in Residence programme brings art and design into the project as a constructive source of ideas, multipliers and communicators of scientific issues, and supports the process of sharing research processes and findings with the public. Read more

Since March 2023, Art Laboratory Berlin has hosted Alexander von Humboldt Chancellor’s Fellow, Kristina Stallvik, in support of their year-long research project: Zine Ecologies: Collective Structures in Independent Publishing. Over the course of the fellowship, Stallvik has crafted a practice-based research methodology – approaching topics of publishing from the varied perspectives of printer, editor, curator, artist, archivist, reader, and distributor. With a background in critical and queer ecology, Stallvik draws upon non-normative understandings of kinship, interdependence, and mutualism to understand the importance of community formations created through the making and publishing of books. Read more

In 2019 and again in 2022 bio media artist Saša Spačal provides artistic research for her project Symbiosis in intra-flux of the Anthropocene at the Rillig Group, Ecology of Plants, Institute of Biology, FU Berlin. She addresses pressing societal and environmental issues such as climate crisis and plastic pollution in the context of symbiosis as a process of planetary metabolism in the case studies such as red clover-bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi. The project arose from a cooperation between Art Laboratory Berlin and the Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Rillig Group – Ecology of Plants, Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin. Read more

Vivian Xu’s Silkworm Project explores the possibilities of using silkworms to design a series of hybrid biomass machines capable of producing self-organized flat and spatial silk structures. Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to collaborate with the Berlin-based Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) on a four-month research stay in Berlin by Vivian Xu, who lives in Shanghai. Between May and August 2019, Vivian Xu upursued artistic and practical research at MPIWG and ALB. An exhibition (May – July 2019), a conference at MPIWG, talks and workshops on sericulture by Vivian Xu provided the public with insights into the fascinating long-term project. Read more