Current exhibition:


Swarms, Robots and Postnature


Kaethe Wenzel | So Kanno | Sofia Crespo



Opening on 30 April 2021
30 April 2021 – 27 June 2021
We are pleased to announce that Swarms, Robots and Postnature will again be open to the public from Friday 21 May 2021 . All guests must book an appointment in advance. You can book a reservation at https://pretix.eu/artlaboratoryberlin/swarms/ Please note the health regulations below.*

30 April 2021, 8pm - Virtual Vernissage at https://www.facebook.com/ArtLaboratoryBerlin
6 May 2021, 8pm - Online artist talk with So Kanno (https://youtu.be/KLNwbQbdDpM)
20 May 2021, 8pm - Online artist talk with Käthe Wenzel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8pktu7P3ZU
3 June 2021, 8pm - Online artist talk with Sofia Crespo (online venue TBA)


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, robots made from animal bones, blur traditional categories of "technology" and "nature" as they are based on experiments from synthetic biology and represent semi-living machines. Wenzel's Bone Costumes thematise the mass consumption of living beings and the daily killing of animal bodies and the standardized forms into which we try to squeeze our own bodies. The works emerged from research into historical corset techniques and in connection with modern fashion technologies; they have developed into exoskeletons: half organic and half mechanical apocalyptic outfits.

So Kanno combines design and computer science with digital art and has been working extensively on robotic systems and swarm robotics in recent years. Lasermice is a swarm robotics system consisting of 60 small robots inspired by the synchronous behaviour of insects such as fireflies. Normally, a swarm's network is invisible, but in this case, these robots create a visible network using laser-light photodetector communication. Thus, they create a rhythm, acoustically perceptible through electronic magnets, that is constantly changing. The updated version Lasermice Dyad, also follows the idea of making natural phenomena artificially visible, and features even more parameters.

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 and to evolve. This implies the idea that technologies are a distorted product of the organic life that produced them, rather than a completely separate object. Her Neural Zoo project is research into how creativity works. Computer vision and machine learning build a bridge between us and a speculative "nature" that is only accessible through a high degree of parallel computations.

Curated by Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz.



*One person (+ 1 accompanying from the same household) at a time is allowed in the exhibition space. As per state health regulations, admission is subject to proof of a negative SARS-CoV-2 antigen or PCR test result within 24 hours prior to the appointment. FFP2 masks are required for the duration of the visit. Contact details for all visitors will be retained for one month. If you have any questions or concerns about these measures please feel free to contact us before your visit.

With the generous support of:







Next exhibitions:

Paired 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 live cells will be exhibited in the absence of any visible lab equipment, and the tension created by their isolation will be emphasized through two live projections of the growing cells that partially overlap. Only in the virtual space of the projection can the cells interact.

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. 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.

With the generous support of:




Last exhibitions:

Mind the Fungi | Art & Design Residencies


Theresa Schubert | Fara Peluso


3 July - 28 December 2020
Virtual opening: 2 July 2020, 6PM via Facebook Live

Curated by Regine Rapp and Christian de Lutz

FUTURIUM | Futurium Lab, Alexanderufer 2, 10117 Berlin
Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun 10 am – 6 pm, Thu 10 am – 8 pm, Tue closed, Free entrance






The Artist- and Design-Residencies of Mind the Fungi with artist Theresa Schubert and artist designer Fara Peluso bring in art and design as constructive sources of ideas for this research project. Schubert studied the effects of sound on fungal growth. Peluso has done research on new biomaterials on the symbiotic basis of algae and fungi. The artistic and design related works are a result of a close collaboration with both departments of TU Berlin’s Institute of Biotechnology – Prof. Vera Meyer’s department of Applied Molecular Microbiology and Prof. Peter Neubauer’s department Bioprocess Engineering. (More information)


With the generous support of the Technische Universität Berlin as part of the program Citizen Science - Forschen mit der Gesellschaft:



and






THE CAMILLE DIARIES.
New Artistic Positions on M/otherhood, Life and Care


Ai Hasegawa | Baum & Leahy | Cecilia Jonsson | Margherita Pevere | Mary Maggic
Naja Ryde Ankarfeldt
| Nicole Clouston | Sonia Levy | Špela Petrič | Tarah Rhoda





Exhibition and Symposium | Curated by Regine Rapp and Christian de Lutz

Exhibition
THE CAMILLE DIARIES. Current Artistic Positions on M/otherhood, Life and Care
Opening: 27 August 2020
Running time: 28 August - 4 October 2020
@ Art Laboratory Berlin, Prinzenallee 34 | OKK, Prinzenallee 29, 13359 Berlin
Opening Hours: Thu – Sun, 2 – 6 pm

Current health rules!

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. Here, the planet is understood as a symbiotic web in which we are all entangled with one another (humans, plants, animals, environment) - on molecular, organic, ethical and biopolitical levels. The artistic positions investigate reproductive mechanisms, biochemical connections between humans and nonhumans, and refer to alternative biomaterials as "source of life" in future times of scarcity and crisis.
(More information)


Online Symposium
THE CAMILLE DIARIES
26 September 2020, 10 am – 7:45 pm (CET Time Zone), with livestream (https://youtu.be/9VAIXGHwj0k)

The one-day symposium will bring the artists together with researchers from the humanities and natural sciences into a critical dialogue. In the panels “M/others, wombs and placentas”, “Fluid Inheritance” and “Modes of care” we will discuss current and alternative concepts. On the basis of the exhibited works, we will discuss approaches like "Collective survival" and "Arts of noticing" (A. Tsing), "Staying with the Trouble" (D. Haraway), and in particular “Bodies of water” connected to hydrofeminism (A. Neimanis).
(More information)



Accompanying Talk Show Series
Feminist SF: Visions of M/otherhood & Reproduction

Curated and hosted by Isabel de Sena
Mary Maggic | Alison Sperling | Noemi Yoko Molitor

This event series pays tribute to the powerful alternative images of mothering we've inherited through the pioneering work of feminist Sci-Fi writers, and examines their sustained relevance within the socio-political landscape of today. Through a live Talk Show format artists, scientists and scholars are invited to programme their "ideal TV and reading evening" on the topic, so that the audience (re)discovers the works through the guest's eyes.

(More information)





With the generous support of:




Associated project partners:
The project THE CAMILLE DIARIES arose from a generous invitation to take part in the international curatorial swarm for the open call »M/others and Future Humans«, initiated by Ida Bencke (LABAE,Copenhagen, DK) and Eben Kirksey (Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, USA).


Media partners:
art-in-berlin.de, www.art-in-berlin.de
AVIVA-Berlin, Online Magazin für Frauen, www.aviva-berlin.de






Borderless Bacteria / Colonialist Cash


Ken Rinaldo




26 January- 1 March 2020, Fri - Sun 2-6PM
Opens 25 January 2020 at 7PM

Borderless Bacteria / Colonialist Cash discusses important current aspects of biopolitics. By visualising microbiome landscapes of banknotes, the project invites us to reflect about the interconnectedness of ecological and economic exchanges.

Much recent attention has been given to the human microbiome, the microbes which live on and within our bodies. These communities also exist on most surfaces around us. When we touch objects, we exchange bacteria, fungi and viruses, leaving some microbiota behind. It is no surprise that one of the objects we touch most – money – is not only a medium of economic but also microbial exchange. According to a study conducted by the NYU Center for Genomics & Systems Biology, 3000 types of bacteria were identified on dollar bills from just one Manhattan bank.

Ken Rinaldo, an established artist in the field of Bio and Postmedia art, develops hybrid human-nonhuman ecologies. Borderless Bacteria / Colonialist Cash explores the hidden microbiome of money within a critical framework that also sheds light on exchange and power. Do Chinese Yuan and American Dollars share bacterial and fungal communities?

This micro-performative project is intriguingly simple in its setup: Various bills of international currency are displayed in square Petri dishes on enriched agar. Time plays a crucial role, as a microbial landscape grows and realises itself over the course of several weeks.

On an aesthetic level, the iconography of the currency literally loses face as microbial growth undermines the representational aspect of the banknotes. The official character of money is subverted. As its microbial nature comes to light, it appears far less representative: a fine network of mycelia covers the head of George Washington on a $1 note; on a 10 CHF note, Le Corbusier is no longer recognisable due to bacterial growth.

Wishing to lessen his carbon footprint, artist Ken Rinaldo expressed the wish that the work be made without his travelling. This work was first made in 2017 during a residency at Cultivamos Cultura, Portugal. Some of the works in the exhibition were created with students from the Gustav-Freytag-Schule in Berlin-Reinickendorf as part of a collaboration between the school, ALB and the DIY Hack the Panke collective.
(More information)

Regine Rapp and Christian de Lutz (curators)

Part of the Vorspiel programme in partnership with the CTM and transmediale

With the generous support of:



Thanks to Cultivamos Cultura | Marta De Menezes and Dr Luís Graça; Dr. Mario Ramirez, Molecular Microbiology
& Infection, Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon, Portugal; Prof. Amy Youngs; Dr. Adam Zaretsky.





 

 

 



Art Laboratory Berlin Projects 2010-2020 as .pdf
Art Laboratory Berlin Projects 2007-2009 as .pdf


previous exhibitions:

 

  19.10-8.12.2019

Invisible Forces

Erich Berger    Mari Keto    Martin Howse


19 October- 8 December 2019, Fri - Sun 2-6 PM
Opening 18 October 2019, 8PM
Artist Talk 19 October 2019, 5PM

Local Area Network (LAN). Workshop with Martin Howse 13 Oct and 10 Nov 2019, 11AM-6PM
(Registration required at
m@1010.co.uk )

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. In this exhibition, the work of Erich Berger and Mari Keto is presented along with a workshop and forensic exhibition by Martin Howse to open a dialogue between contemporary culture and deep (geological) time and psycho-geophysics.
(More information)


1.6.-14.7.2019

The Silkworm Project
Vivian Xu

Opening: 31 May, 2019, 8PM
08 June 2019, 3-6PM: Workshop THE SILKWORM PROJECT with Vivian Xu.
@ Art Laboratory Berlin // Registration necessary (register@artlaboratory-berlin.org)
More information

30 June 2019, 3PM: Artist Talk with Vivian Xu and Lisa Onaga (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
@ Art Laboratory Berlin
More information

04 July 2019: Symposium The Artist-Silkworm Interface: The Agricultural Treatise as Source and Scrutiny for Creating an Artist Book, organised by Lisa Onaga, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.
Speakers: Vivian Xu, Regine Rapp, Anna Grasskamp, Yubin Shen, Dagmar Schäfer.
@ Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, at the Harnack House | More information: https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/event/artist-silkworm-interface-agricultural-treatise-source-and-scrutiny-creating-artist-book

In The Silkworm Project Vivian Xu explores the possibilities of using silkworms to design a series of hybrid machines capable of producing self-organised 2D and 3D silk structures. Xu wants to understand how far the behaviour of insects can serve as a foundation for technological design. To this end she has developed cybernetic devices based on both biological and computer-controlled logic. In the exhibition a series of interactive machines made of silkworms and electronics are displayed. The artist-designer works on the creation of self-organised silk structures designed by live silkworms, a posthuman machine.
(More information)



20.1.-17.3.2019

Watery Ecologies. Artistic Research

Kat Austen | Mary Maggic | Fara Peluso


Opening: 19 January 2019, 8PM
16 March 2019, 9 PM: HYDRO_PERFORMANCE Night. Performances, Talks with New Cassettes and Vinyls!
With Kat Austen, Robertina Šebjani
č and Fara Peluso


Water is the foundation of life, making up 60% of our body. Water-born organisms produce much of the planet's oxygen. Meanwhile human activity fills waterways and oceans with plastics, industrial waste and diverse chemicals, effecting the metabolisms of most living creatures, ourselves included.

This exhibition presents art projects on water, life and chemical disruption whose research transcends the boundaries between art and science. The artists pursue research in biology, chemistry and ethnography with distinct and radical DIY methods. Diverse approaches to the hydrosphere, the sum of the planet's water, explore the foundations of life and the threat of human impact on both the environment and our own bodies.

(More information)



22.09.-25.11.2018

Strange Encounters with Vegetal Others
Špela Petrič


Slovenian artist Špela Petrič approaches art production with a background in Hybrid Arts as well as a PhD in Biochemistry. These dual epistemological approaches inform her work with the Plant Kingdom as part of a multi-species collaboration exploring the ontologies, methodologies, ethics and practices of care involved in our relationship to the vegetal. Her first solo show in Berlin will give an insight into her multi-species endeavour.

The green kingdom, upon which we depend for our very survival, functions on a radically different biological basis from us: seemingly inert, literally vegetative and endowed with unexplored forms of intelligence. Yet science reveals an intricate world of mysterious chemical conversations, interspecies networks and non-centralised operations alien from our own existence. Through her work Petrič proposes novel modes of human-plant communication, intercognition and exchange.
(More information)




24.03 - 13.05.2018

Viscous Bodies
Sarah Hermanutz | Alanna Lynch
Artist Talk with both artists: 25 March 2018 / 3pm

The project follows an open framework in showing the ongoing artistic research of two emerging artists in the field of art & science. Taking all things fluid as a starting point, the work of 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. In addition to object and action, this project also invites the public to become engaged with the matter in manifold ways.
(More information)



30.9. - 26.22.2017

Nonhuman Networks
Heather Barnett | Saša Spa
čal, Mirjan Švagelj & Anil Podgornik

Artist Talk with Heather Barnett and Saša Spačal: 30 September 2017 3PM
Conference. Nonhuman Agents in Art, Culture and Theory: 24-26 November, 2017


Nonhuman Networks presents an aesthetics of new forms of communication between human and nonhuman actors. 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.

Saša Spačal, Mirjan Švagelj and Anil Podgornik combine art, biology and cybernetics to create a platform for inter species communication. In Myconnect the nervous system of a person and fungal mycelium are plugged into a biofeedback loop. By entering the capsule a person is equipped with a heartbeat sensor, headphones and vibrational motors that are placed on various parts of the body. Heather Barnett is an artist, researcher and educator working with natural phenomena and biological design. Projects include microbial portraiture, systems modelling, and an ongoing 'collaboration' with an intelligent slime mould, Physarum polycephalum, one of the world's largest single-celled organisms.
(More information)



26.2. -2.4.2017

Nonhuman Subjectivities

Under-Mine

Alinta Krauth


Artist talk: 26 February, 2017 at 3PM

The exhibition project investigates the problematics and possibilities of communicating nonhuman perception through the interface of artistic practice and new technologies. By means of interactive and non-interactive video that use generative and time-based techniques the Australian artist Alinta Krauth considers potential narratives of animals under threat from climate change.

Australian artist Alinta Krauth 's new project Under-Mine (2017) was specially developed for Art Laboratory Berlin. She has used video, generative art, data visualisation and an intensive study into the science of animal perception and cognition to propose narrative paths towards a meeting point of the human and nonhuman. Taking into account that each species' way of sensing the world is unique, and often beyond the ken of human experience, Krauth makes use of a diverse technological toolbox to navigate and translate nonhuman perceptions.
(More information)




3.9. - 9.10.2016

Nonhuman Subjectivities


Aural Aquatic Presence

Robertina Šebjanič

Seminar: Living Systems | Aquatic Systems
with Robertina Šebjanič, Kat Austen, Regine Rapp and Christian de Lutz: 18.9.2016


The exhibition investigates agency and sentience in one of the 'simplest' of multicellular creatures: the jellyfish, placing it into relation with a human made machine. Also noteworthy here is the importance of sound in marine systems, as well as the effects of human intervention on aural aquatic systems.

In her series of works Aurelia 1+Hz the Ljubljana based artist Robertina Šebjanič is interested in both biopolitical and technological attempts at the prolongation of life as well as a new critical reflexion of interspecies cohabitation. Šebjanič, whose work involves intensive cooperation with marine biologists from around the globe, has chosen to work with jellyfish, which have existed on earth for over 500 million years.

(More information)



 

2.7.- 4.9.2016

NatureCultures
Brandon Ballengée | Katya Gardea Browne | Pinar Yoldas

At the
Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung, Auguststr. 75, 10117 Berli

Curated by Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz

The exhibition NatureCultures explores the interwoven fabric of both the human and nonhuman in the 21st century. The exhibition title refers to a term coined by the American scholar Donna Haraway, which seeks to overcome the unproductive dichotomy of nature and culture. 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 repeatedly threatens, there is a surprising resiliency in the myriad of life forms on this planet. The exhibition presents three artists who explore a realm between science and artistic research as well as between natural and cultural forms of inquiry.

(More information
)



28.5. - 17.7.2016

Nonhuman Subjectivities

On Animals. Cognition, Senses, Play
Rachel Mayeri   Maja Smrekar


The exhibition On Animals. Cognition, Senses, Play investigates two groups of animals that are closest to us. Primates, our nearest 'relatives', have a complex cognitive proximity to humans, but also differ radically in certain areas. While dogs, with whom we have made a symbiotic contract., have evolved alongside us over the last 30,000 years. The works in this exhibition share Donna Haraway's concept of "cooperative actions": overcoming conventional dichotomies of nature/culture, human/animal or subject/object is all about joint action. The artists, Maja Smrekar and Rachel Mayeri, make use of certain narrative strategies and the phenomenon of immersion, to approach the perspective of a nonhuman counterpart. The works of both artists place the instinct and the senses of the nonhuman at the centre of artistic research, while aiming to translate the nonhuman cognitive ability by means of the performance, film and art/science collaboration.

(More information)



27.2. – 30.4.2016

Nonhuman Subjectivities

The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome

François-Joseph Lapointe  Saša Spačal with Mirjan Švagelj and Anil Podgornik   Tarsh Bates   Joana Ricou

The exhibition, the first of our new exhibition series Nonhuman Subjectivities, presents various artistic reflections on the complex microbial environment found on and within the human body. Scientists say that bacterial cells are as numerous as human cells in our body. The phenomenon of the microbiome also brings forth many complex questions about human identity and our relation to our multiple selves.

François-Joseph Lapointe connects his biological research with performance art. His latest works of art deal with the microbiome in our daily lives and physical connections to others. Lapointe sequences his microbiome to produce metagenomic self-portraits, Microbiome Selfies, which illustrate the metamorphosis of his bacterial self
. Saša Spačal together with Mirjan Švagelj and Anil Podgornik are interested in the contrast between the oneness of the human body as biological entity and the multiplicity of the human microbiome. In their installation Mycophone_unison the artist-scientist-designer collective has developed a sound map of intra-action between their microbiomes and the recipient.
Joana Ricou's works blur the fundamental boundary between organism and environment, taking the shape of photographs of microbial paintings or performance. Ricou collected samples of her own microbiome and that of her environment and cultured these in the lab to visualise them. Tarsh Bates artistically explores what it means to be human when we recognise our bodies as composed of over one trillion cells, of which only around half are human.

(More information)


 

26.9. – 29.11.2015

PROSTHESES. Transhuman Life Forms
Susanna Hertrich

The exhibition explores the phenomenon of the prosthesis as bodily extension in the 21st century. Exploring new technologies and recent developments in neuroscience and biology, Susanna Hertrich proposes new transhuman sensory extensions of what may eventually become 'human 2.0'. The exhibited works are part of her long-term artistic research project Bodies & Technology. In Susanna Hertrich's work a narration is constructed in which the human sensory apparatus is extended through computer controlled prostheses. The results can be understood as crossing the boundaries between artistic hypothesis and technological experimentation. The artworks reflect our current living environments, as well as critically question the social, political and physical consequences of the new technologies utilised in their making.
(More information)



29.8. - 20.9.2015

Growing Geometries - Evolving Forms

Theresa Schubert

The artist Theresa Schubert conducts research at the intersection of art, biology, and technology. She has studied Media Arts & Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar. Her artistic practice combines various media such as audiovisual installations, photography or work on paper which deals with the phenomena of nature not only as a source of inspiration, but as a material and critical process. By means of transdisciplinary methods, such as the re-enactment of scientific experiments, biohacking, theoretical analysis and collaborative practices, her work deals with the themes of self-organization, computational geometry and morphology. The starting point for her experiments are simple organisms that arranged in setups have the opportunity to grow and develop - always under the control of the artist - sometimes in interaction with people and visitors.

(More information)

 

 

25.04. - 21.06.2015

bOdy pandemOnium
Immersion into Noise
works by Joseph Nechvatal

Artist Talk & Noise Music Concert: 25. April, 14 Uhr

Joseph Nechvatal (born in 1951 in Chicago) is a post-conceptual artist working in digital art. He is one of the most important pioneers of 'new media art,' but at the same time makes use of 'old media' (such as painting and drawing). What is phenomenal, and in our opinion relevant to the 21st century, is that his paintings are created through a use of custom artificial life software and computer robotics..

(More information)



24.1.2015 - 29.03.2015

[micro]biologies II: πρωτεο / proteo - Joanna Hoffmann

Joanna Hoffmann

Opening: 23 January, 2015, 7PM
Opening of the [macro]biologies & [micro]biologies Library: 30. January, 2015, 7PM
Curators Talk: 1 March, 2015, 3PM

[micro]biologies II: πρωτεο / proteo featuring artworks by Joanna Hoffmann is the fourth and final exhibition of the [macro]biologies & [micro]biologies series at Art Laboratory Berlin. The exhibition explores the minute biomolecules that form a basis for the phenomena of life.

Joanna Hoffmann's transdisciplinary works combine art, microbiology, physics and technology. Her use of multimedia installations, 3d stereoscopy, experimental video animation and other media explore the visualization of sub-atomic and molecular as well as cosmic space. Her work relates to advanced scientific research on the phenomenon of life and to the interplay between scientific and cultural, sensual and illusive, digital and biological, natural and synthetic.
(More information)




27.9.2014 - 30.11-2014

[micro]biologies I: the bacterial sublime
Anna Dumitriu


Artist talk: 28 September 2014, 3PM
Workshop with Anna Dumitriu: 30 November, 2014

The third exhibition will be a solo retrospective of British artist Anna Dumitriu, whose work in the field of art and science brings together historical narratives, cutting edge biomedical research and an interest in ethical concerns.

Dumitriu is well known for creating "The VRSA Dress" & and "The MRSA Quilt" which were made from so-called 'superbugs'. To create those works she grew bacteria onto textiles and used natural and clinical antibiotics to create patterns (sterilised prior to exhibition).

The exhibition will also include works from her "Romantic Disease" series which explores the history of tuberculosis (TB) from artistic, social and scientific perspectives and covers subjects such as superstitions about the disease, TB's literary and romantic associations, the development of antibiotics and the latest research into whole-genome sequencing of mycobacteria.
(More information)

 

 

31.5.2014 - 20.7.2014

[macro]biologies II: organisms
Suzanne Anker
Brandon Ballengée
Maja Smrekar


Sunday 1 June, 3PM - Artists and curators Talk (all artists are present)
Friday 27 June, 6.30 PM - Integrating Nature's elegant solutions into the design process - a Talk with Dr. Prateep Beed, Co-Founder of Biomimicry Germany e.V. (in English)
Sunday 6 July, 3 PM - Tour of the exhibition with the curators and ALB staff
Saturday 19 July, 2 - 4 PM - Children's Workshop with Desiree Förster in conjunction with the exhibition (in German)
Sunday 20 July, 3PM - Artist talk with Maja Smrekar, followed by finissage

The second exhibition of the series [macro]biologies & [micro]biologies, [macro]biologies II: organisms will highlight the works of artists dealing with multi-celled organisms. Noteworthy is both the relationship of these organisms to us, as well as their roles as independent actors. The exhibition focuses on the works of three remarkable, internationally recognized artists whose work deals with multicellular organisms: Suzanne Anker (US), Brandon Ballengée (US) and Maja Smrekar (SI).

Suzanne Anker has been one of the key figures working at the border between art and biology for several decades. Her work combines inquiry into science and the newest technologies with a keen aesthetic sense.

Brandon Ballengée pursues a sustainable form of artistic research in his metier as a visual artist in the field of bioart and as a biologist in the field of herpetology.
Art Laboratory Berlin will show video documentation of his ongoing project Malamp Reliquaries, on which Ballengée has worked in various forms since 2001. The project's aim is to investigate the potentially unnaturally high occurrence of morphological deformities among wild amphibian populations

Maja Smrekar is an emerging young artist from Ljubljana, Slovenia, connecting the intersections of humanities and natural sciences with her main interest in the concept of life. For the exhibition at Art Laboratory Berlin Smrekar will present the installation BioBase: risky ZOOgraphies focussing on an invasive species, the marble crayfish (Procambarus fallax forma virginalis), and its form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization, called parthenogenesis.
(more information)

 

8.3.2014 - 4.5.2014

[macro]biologies I: the biosphere
Katya Gardea Browne
The Center for PostNatural History
Mathias Kessler
Alexandra Regan Toland


Artist Talk with Katya Gardea Browne: 30 March, 2014 at 3PM

Instead of a unified conception of existence, such as "world" or "nature", today, in the post-anthropocentric era, we find ourselves confronted rather with a multiplicity of structures and a blurring of boundaries. This show is part of a series of exhibitions - [macro]biologies and [micro]biologies - dedicated to artistic reflection on current drastic changes to how we connect, relate and interrelate to the worlds around us.

For [macro]biologies I: the biosphere we have chosen four important international artists dealing with the structures and systems of our world. The exhibition focuses on the ecosystem and the biosphere with billions of life forms that interrelate with other systems (i.a. geologie and climate).

The recent works of Mexico City based artist, photographer and filmmaker Katya Gardea Browne have stressed the cultural and environmental tensions between urban and rural in and around the megacity Mexico D.F. The Center for PostNatural History, based in Pittsburgh in the U.S., is an art and research project (Director: Richard Pell, Learning Science Advisor: Lauren Allen, Designer: Mason Juday) dealing with the history of mankind's manipulation of life forms, from early agriculture to genetic modification. New York based artist Mathias Kessler's deals, among other things, with the phenomenon of changing landscapes caused by human intervention. The Berlin based artist and ecologist Alexandra Regan Toland works on multiple levels to create social awareness about urban ecological systems.
(More information)




1.6.2013 -21.7.2013

Synaesthesia / 4:
Translating, Correcting, Archiving
Eva-Maria Bolz, Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Andy Holtin

Synaesthesia. Discussing a Phenomenon in the Arts, Humanities and (Neuro-) science" 5 & 6 July, 2013, Glaskasten Theatre, Prinzenallee 33, More information

Synaesthesia / 4: Translating, Correcting, Archiving presents works by Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen (DK), Eva-Maria Bolz (D) and Andy Holtin (USA). The exhibition devotes itself to selected artistic strategies for decoding the phenomenon of synaesthesia. It is significant that all three artists experience different forms of synaesthetic perception.

Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen's project Why Is Green a Red Word? is comprised of interviews with synaesthetes and scientists, but also includes conceptual video works such as What the Hell does Purgatory Look Like? and drawings depicting the spatial imagination of number forms by different synaesthetes. Contemporaneous with the exhibition opening will be the publication of Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen’s artist book Why is Green a Red Word?


The work of the Berlin artist and grapheme and lexical synaesthete Eva-Maria Bolz is dedicated to an exploration of the relationship between colour, text and perception. In her individual form of synaesthesia she feels an unchanging association of colours to numbers, letters, as well as whole words. The project Der Innere Monitor, which Eva-Maria Bolz presents at Art Laboratory Berlin, follows her subjective perception that colours and letters form a specific code through which a text can be translated into blocks of colour.

Andy Holtin has grapheme synaesthesia, connected with a particular colour-number association. In his video Corrections (2009) you can see how a hand colours in the numbers of different signs and nameplates in photographs. Corrections demonstrates the gap between the object and subjective sense perception as well as the personal impressions of the artist himself. In his video Connections (2013) the artist examines the complications he experiences when objects share a colour with a particular number due to Holtin’s individual synaesthetic experience, creating an extended perceptual relationship.
(More information)

 

 

 

 

 

 

23.3.2013 - 12.5.2013

Synaesthesia / 3: History of the Senses
Carl Rowe & Simon Davenport
Sergio Maltagliati & Pietro Grossi


Performances: 22 March, 7PM; 23 March, 2PM & 7PM ; 24 March, 2PM & 7PM

History of the Senses deals with the phenomenon of synaesthesia from the point of view of art and media history. The two artistic positions refer back to different movements from the 20th Century giving Art Laboratory Berlin's four-part exhibition series on synaesthesia a historical component, whilst nevertheless dealing with contemporary issues.

A Banquet for Ultra Bankruptcy, developed for Art Laboratory Berlin by Carl Rowe & Simon Davenport, forms the starting point for a series of performances followed by an exhibition. The overarching theme of synaesthesia provides a basis for the study of aesthetics, politics and participation, as well as for the reactions of the participants. A Banquet for Ultra Bankruptcy is made up of five performances for six guests. During a six-course menu selected foods are combined with images, sounds and scents. Each course is designed as an aesthetic experience, allowing the audience to participate in simultaneous sensations.

The work Circus 8 (1986/2008) by Sergio Maltagliati & Pietro Gross consists of eight pieces and is based on Grossi's HomeArt programs from the 1960s and 1970s, which automatically generated sound. Maltagliati has expanded Grossi's principle with software programs and added visual graphic variations. The visual data generated by the computer approximates the graphic score for a sound composition.Whilst the work Circus 8 adds a media historical dimension to Art Laboratory Berlin's Synaesthesia series, it also brings an important new component into the discussion: the computer as artificial brain with its own form of digital synaesthesia.
(More information)

 

26.1.2013-10.3.2013

Synaesthesia / 2: Space and Perception
Madi Boyd
Carrie C Firman

Artist talk with Madi Boyd 10 March, 2012 at 3PM

Inquiries into the nature of Space and Perception are the basis of Art Laboratory Berlin's second exhibition in the Synaesthesia series. Synaesthesia, the experience of two or more sensory impressionsat the same time, is both an artistic paradigm and neurological phenomenon. Two installations by Madi Boyd and Carrie C Firman explore the connection between perception and experience of mind and body from a synaesthetic point of view.

Madi Boyd is a synaesthete from Great Britain, whose artistic work focuses on perception and the brain. In collaboration with neuro-scientists, Dr. Mark Lythgoe and Dr. Beau Lotto, from University College London her work incorporates and combines installation, film and sculpture. Her recent project The Point of Perception explores how much information the human brain needs in order to know what it is looking at.

Carrie C Firman is an emerging electronic artist from the US. Her work is inspired by studying and experiencing the crossing of senses. She sees synaesthesia not only as a sensory phenomenon, but also a fantastic world interface, responsible for completely unique perceptual experiences.
(More information)

27.10.2012 - 16.12.2012

Synaesthesia / 1: The Orange Smell of November

Barbara Ryan
Annette Stahmer

28 October, 2012, 4PM - Artist talk and workshop with Barbara Ryan
16 December, 2012, 3PM Artist talk with Annette Stahme

As part of the new series Synaesthesia, Art Laboratory Berlin presents the first exhibition The Orange Smell of November with new works by Barbara Ryan and Annette Stahmer.

The artist Barbara Ryan’s perceptions of the world are underpinned by her polymodal synaesthesia which in turn forms the foundation of her artistic work. She experiences her synaesthesia »as something that is in her parallel conscious – as opposed to something that is in the subconscious, creating a duality of vision«

The work of the Berlin typographer and artist Annette Stahmer revolves around language, the relationship between voice and writing, the act of writing, palimpsests and synaesthesia. The two videos in the exhibition - A ist blau and Synästhetische Bilder I - IV - show the artist's mother, a synaesthete who connects vowels with certain colours.
(More information)

 

1.9.2012 - 14.10.2012

Time & Technology

Embodiment of Time.
Yasuhiro Sakamoto with Iñigo Giner Miranda
Dave Hebb


Opening: 31 August, 2012, 20 Uhr


As part of the current exhibition series Time & Technology the exhibition Embodiment of Time presents new works by Yasuhiro Sakamoto mit Iñigo Giner Miranda and by Dave Hebb. The Japanese artist and scholar Yasuhiro Sakamoto and the Spanish composer Iñigo Giner Miranda have developed the installation Visible Canon. String Quartet without Strings for Four Loudspeakers and an Art Machine, shown in the front room, especially for this exhibition. The work transforms the complex time structures of contemporary and classical music into an acoustic-visual model.

The video installation Monitor by the American artist Dave Hebb is a video and photographic documentation of an environmental intervention extending over a one-year period. Hebb placed a computer monitor outdoors and over the entire year documented changes to the environment several times a week. His piece is played on old computers and monitors and is inherently unstable, a common problem of technology as it becomes obsolete. This self-reference is also shown through the display of the video on the same type of monitor that is the subject of the piece itself, which is presented more as an object of media archaeology than merely a means of presentation
(more information)


24.03.2012 - 29.04.2012

Time & Technology


Fantastic Time Machines
Shlomit Lehavi
Sam Belinfante & Simon Lewandowski

Opening: 23 March, 2012, 8PM
Artist talk with Shlomit Lehavi: 30 April, 8PM

The exhibition Fantastic Time Machines presents new works by Shlomit Lehavi and Sam Belinfante & Simon Lewandowski. The two contributions deal with the phenomenon of time through synchronicity, simultaneity and succession. These artists have developed special forms of imaginary time machine.

The British artists Sam Belinfante and Simon Lewandowski produced The Reversing Machine (A Theatre of Kairos and Chronos) especially for this exhibition. The installation alludes to the notion of Kairos as opportune time, as opposed to Chronos, the course of time. The work Time Sifter is by the Israeli born and New York based artist Shlomit Lehavi who works primarily with new media and multi-channel video. Her video installation Time Sifter explores collective memory, collective forgetting and time based media as a contemporary time machine.
(More information)

 

 

27.01.2012 - 11.03.2012

Time & Technology

Navigating the Everyday
plan b
(Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers)

Opening: 27 January 2012, 8PM

Navigating the Everyday presents works by plan b, the British artist duo Daniel Belasco Rogers and Sophia New, and is their first solo exhibition in Germany. Since 2003 and 2007 respectively, Daniel and Sophia have been recording every journey they make every day using GPS devices. Additionally all areas of their digital communication (e.g. mobile phone text messages) are evaluated and processed artistically. Their work represents an artistic research by means of a digital archiving of their movements.

Over the years this practice has become part of everyday life, a form of private and personal 'sousveillance', in which the artists generate their own data, thereby reflecting the approach of those private and public agencies who collect all available data.
(More information)


 

25.11.2011 - 15.01.2012

Time & Technology

Controlling_Connectivity
Gretta Louw
Performance and exhibition

Online performance: 2-12 November, 2011

http://controllingconnectivity.tumblr.com/


Opening: 25 November, 2011, 8PM

14 January, 2012 3.30PM: Tour of the exhibition and Artists' talk with Gretta Louw
+ plan b (Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers) and Igor Štromajer; moderation: Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz (curators).

The exhibition project Controlling_Connectivity by the Australian artist Gretta Louw is a reflection of the latest forms of digital communication. Her online performance (2- 12 November 2011) has laid the basis for an exhibition which will include screen capture footage, photographs and an installation. For 10 days the artist was available 24 hr/day for discussions, emails, comments, or interviews - of both private and professional nature - for any internet user wishing to take part in the project.
(more information)

Artist book: Controlling_Connectivity. Art, Psychology, and the Internet by Gretta Louw


 

10.09.2011 - 16.10.2011
Bärbel Möllmann - VISIONS NYC - afterthoughts

Opening: 9 September, 2011 8PM

Book Release Party - VISIONS NYC by Bärbel Möllmann: 30 September, 2011, 8PM

In VISIONS NYC - afterthoughts the Berlin-based artist and photographer Bärbel Möllmann has gathered a series of amazing portraits and interviews with New Yorkers from Summer 2001, recording their individual plans, goals and dreams, and from Summer 2002 recording their reactions to the events of the previous year.

When she began her unique artistic project in July 2001, Möllmann could not have imagined the attacks on the Twin Towers that would occur only two months later. The actual events of 9/11 are not directly seen in the images, but rather felt as a historic turning point in the interviews and photos taken both before and after September 11. The project is rather about individual New Yorkers and their respective fates, which are brought convincingly near in these artistic photographs and authentic interviews, which shows just how strongly the city of New York and its residents changed in the aftermath of September 11.
(more information)

 

 

29.04.2011 - 26.06.2011
Artists in Dialog: Al Fadhil & Aissa Deebi

My Dreams Have Destroyed My Life. Some Thoughts on Pain
29 April - 26 June, 2011, Fri - Sun, 2-6PM and by appointment
Opening: Thursday 28 April, 2011, 8PM

Round table discussion Al Tahrir: The Day After, 1 May, 2011, 3PM

My Dreams Have Destroyed My Life. Some Thoughts on Pain was first conceived by the artists during a common artist residency in Taiwan. Both artists had lost brothers in respective conflicts in their countries of origin. Al Fadhil has lost two brothers to the wars in Iraq. One brother died in the Iran-Iraq war. Fadhil's father, as the parent of a 'martyr,' were granted an audience with the dictator Saddam Hussein, which was documented with a photograph.

Aissa Deebi's younger brother Nasim died in Israeli police custody in 1999. Deebi's works in the exhibition will trace his and his brother's connection to the land they grew up in. A series of holographic photographs will depict the route from Deebi's childhood home near Haifa to the coast, a route Deebi and his brother often took together when they were younger. The superimposition of geography, memory and historical space come together in Deebi's installation to form a palimpsest of the personal and the political.

(more information)

 

 

22. 01.2011 - 13.3.2011
Sol LeWitt: Artist's Books

Opening: 21 January 2011, 8PM
Sol LeWitt_Symposium: 19/20 February, 2011

The American artist Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007) was an influential figure in minimalism and is considered one of the most important representatives as well as co-founder of American conceptual art. The term "conceptual art" goes directly back to LeWitt: "If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product. All intervening steps - scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations - are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product." (Paragraphs, Artforum, June 1967)

LeWitt's intensive artist books production was extremely versatile: he used different designs and formats as well as varied techniques from color lithography to offset printing. Finally the phenomena of reproducibility was part of the concept: "Also, since art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced." (ibid.)
(more information)

 

 

30.10.2010 - 28.11.2010
Stardust Boogie Woogie
Tania Antoshina, Mo Foster, Marcela Iriarte, Christian de Lutz, Jane Mulfinger, Bob & Roberta Smith, Jessica Voorsanger.
curated by Francesca Piovano

Opening 29 October 2009 8PM

Finnisage: 26 November 2010 8PM
Special event: 30 November 2010 A reading by Mo Foster at the East of Eden bookstore

Stardust Boogie Woogie

When Andy Warhol declared that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, he probably didn't realized how true that was going to be. It is no longer necessary to have a particular talent, nowadays absolutely any one who is prepared by whatever means to be entertaining, can become a 'celebrity'. Then mass media, along with popular culture, will see that celebrities are consumed as spectacle giving them a package of meanings that has nothing to do with their intrinsic value.

To explore the issues of celebrity cult and modern heroes and to put them in a multifaceted international context, the exhibition Stardust Boogie Woogie has brought together 7 artists from different countries and backgrounds. Their work is around the notion of stardom and its related lifestyle (Jessica Voorsanger, Jane Mulfinger, Marcela Iriarte), of socialist personality cults (Christian de Lutz, Tania Antoshina) and of popular culture (Bob & Roberta Smith, Mo Foster).
(more information)


28.8.2010 - 26.09.2010
Artists in Dialog

Alex Toland and Myriel Milicevic - Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots

Opening: 27 August 2010, 8PM
Workshop: 4 September, 2010, 2-6PM

The exhibition Wunschgarten: Wild Urban Offshoots is a collaboration by the artists Alex Toland and Myriel Milicevic and part of the series Artists in Dialog. Both work on the border between art and life and environmental sciences. Together they have chosen the immediate area around Art Laboratory Berlin (the Soldiner Kiez) as a place to investigate interactions between the local human population and urban flora and fauna. The exhibition functions as a laboratory for the production of maps, drawings, models and prototypes. Wunschgarten is a series of dialogues: between the artists and the local community, between city dwellers and nature, between urban planning and urban wilderness. Toland considers the project 'habitat hacking' and Milicevic describes the project as 'reconstructing cross-species life worlds'.

(more information)

 

 

29.05.2010 - 27.06.2010
Artists in Dialog

2-1/4-n/2 x 21/4-n/2
Heidi Hove & Jens Axel Beck

Opening: Friday, 28 May, 2010, 8 PM
Performance/ work in progress (open to the public): 31 May - 3 June, 2-6 PM

Artist talk: Saturday 12 June, 2010, 6PM

The exhibition 2-1/4-n/2 x 21/4-n/2 by the Danish conceptual artists Heidi Hove and Jens Axel Beck is the first exhibition in our new series Artists in Dialog. Both are interdisciplinary artists, whose practice includes sculptural objects and installations as well as architectural, spatial and social interventions. A point of convergence in their work is a focus on daily life and the public and private spaces that we daily travel through. Their work examines how we navigate and organise ourselves in the world. Through simple and diverse manipulations, the daily and the recognisable are brought out of their regular condition.
(more information)

 

 

 

24.04.2010 - 22.05.2010
OFF FENCE.
Art on the Californian-Mexican Border

Michelle Chong
Katya Gardea Browne
Ed Gomez
Luis G. Hernandez
Camilo Ontiveros.

Opening: Friday, 23. April 2010, 20 Uhr
Artist Talk with Michelle Chong: So. 25. April 2010, 4PM

The exhibition project OFF FENCE. Art on the Californian-Mexican Border is an artistic platform with five positions, exploring the cultural overflow, overlap and tensions in the border region of Southern California and Northwest Mexico. The artists come from Los Angeles and Mexico City.
(more information)



Azin Feizabadi, from Repititions-Revolutions -Rituals

 

28.11.2009 - 07.02.2010
Art and Law IV

Creative Rights. On Appropriation, Copyright and Copyleft

Azin Feizabadi, Gilbert & George, Christian de Lutz, Triple Candie
The Creative Rights Library with documentation on Shepard Fairey vs AP, Richard Prince vs Patrick Cariou, Creative Commons, The Fair Use Projekt, Piratpartiet, etc.

Opening 27 November 2009, 8PM

Workshop: "Copyright and related topics for artists. musicians, filmmakers and other creative producers" with Andreas Lichtenhahn (lawyer), in German.
28 November 2009, 15h

Creative Rights. On Appropriation, Copyright and Copyleft investigates questions concerning the use, re-use and misuse of images and information in the contemporary art world from artistic, legal, political and philosophical viewpoints.

Since the late 1970s appropriation of images and information by such artists as Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince has become a common and accepted technique, part and parcel of postmodernism's critical approach. Indeed it follows a tradition that goes back through pop art and nouveau realisme to Dada and cubist collage. Not without ethical, aesthetic and legal controversy, a number of law cases involving appropriation seems to have increased in recent years involving artists such as Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Shepard Fairey. The exhibition Creative Rights consists of three parts: The exhibition with four artistic positions, the Creative Rights Library with extensive material on the presented artists and other recent law cases as well as a workshop on the theme of copyright.

(more information)



02.10.2009 - 15.11.2009
Art and Law III


Seized - Critical Art Ensemble
& Institute for Applied Autonomy

Opening: 2. October 2009, 8PM
Artist Talk: 4. October 2009, 4PM
Film Screening: Strange Culture, 2. November 2009, 7.30 PM (see events)

The exhibition Seized by Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) is the third part of our series Art and Law. The exhibition documents the FBI raid on the house of CAE member Prof. Steve Kurtz in May 2004, following the death of his wife Hope. In the weeks prior to the raid Steve and Hope Kurtz had been preparing for an exhibition examining GM agriculture at Mass. MOCA.

An emergency worker of the fire department responding to Steve Kurtz's 911 call found materials in their houserelated to the upcoming exhibition suspicious and informed the FBI. The raid, conducted by FBI-officers wearing hazmat suits, and blocking off a half block radius of the home, caused much media attention. (more Information)



Photo copyright 2009 by Michael J. Mulley
 
 

30.05.2009 - 28.06.2009
Art and Law II
Ztohoven
. Media Reality

Filmscreening: On Media Reality
by Vladimir Turner. Followed by artist talk: 29 May, 8:30pm

The Prague based artist collective Ztohoven use their work, often interventions in public space, to scrutinise the creditability of mass media and advertising. In their action Media Reality, which took place on 7 June, 2007, they ‘hacked’ into the Czech weather channel ČT 2 and added the image of an atomic explosion to the live image of a mountain valley. The channel pressed charges under laws against “indecent behavior” and the “diffusion of false information”. In two separate legal actions members of the group were acquitted. At the same time, Ztohoven were awarded the first NG 333 prize for contemporary art from the Prague National Gallery, in connection with Media Reality

Besides showing the work Media Reality and related court documents, Art Laboratory Berlin will present the German premiere of the film On Media Reality, which documents the legal and artistic aftermath of the action. The film’s director Vladimir Turner will be present at the opening on 29 May.(more information)



 

 

21.02.2009 - 29.03.2009
Art and Law I:

CAT.
Monstration

Lecture by Maksim Neroda (CAT): 22 March 2009, 5PM

The CAT (Contemporary Art Terrorism) collective from Novosibirsk creates situations in public space, which lay bare the absurdity of the way in which political power functions. Unprepared passers-by were drawn into the process of creating critical artistic statements. For organizing a May Day monstration - a counterpart to a classical May Day demonstration - in which marchers carried individual banners with apolitical, often poetic or non-rational slogans, the artists were sentenced to pay a fine. The exhibition Monstration shows video works and documents of the public reaction by means of legal documents and mass media reviews.
(more information)


 

 

29.18.2008 - 04.01.2009
Curators from East and Central Europe III:

Mari Laanemets

Hier wäre das Leben leicht
(There, Life Would Be Easy)

The exhibition revolves around issues of design, of the construction of surfaces we are surrounded by in everyday life: from textiles to texts, to street and city. One of the underlying intentions of the exhibition is to reflect on how these formal constructions organize our behaviour, give our lives a scheme, a program, and on the sedimentation of ideology in forms.
Participating artists: Kadi Estland, Anton Koovit, Sirje Runge, Killu Sukmit, Tere Recarens and Florian Wüst.(more)


 

 

24.10.2008 - 16.11.2008
Curators from East and Central Europe II:

Elena Sorokina
Subjective Events, Sometimes Recorded

Tour of the exhibition: 02 November 2008, 3PM
Workshop 24 October 2008, 6PM

In everyday language, an event is a notion that embraces two different meanings - a happening violating limits or, in the opposite, invigorating them. One is destructive, the other restrictive; one is closer to the chaos of a revolution, the other to a meticulously performed ceremony with a set of rules. The work in the exhibition focuses on the second meaning: initially, it comments on contemporary rituals or pronounced interest in social codes, which often re-emerge in times of crisis and insecurity. Through recording, staging, or enacting some examples of today's ritualistic behavior the artists examine how the so-called "flexible personalities" engage in a performance of specific and mainly self-imposed rules. (more)



 

30.08.2008 - 28.09.2008
Art and Science III

Reiner Maria Matysik - Failed Organisms

Artist's talk: 31 August 2008, 5PM
Tour of the exhibition: 28 September 2008, 3PM

The Berlin artist Reiner Maria Matysik (born 1967, Duisburg, Germany) works in manifold ways with concepts for future organisms. In the course of the last years he has created his own new system of post-evolutionary life forms at the borderline between art and biology. In his installations, videos, actions and publications the term "biological sculpture", coined by Matysik himself, plays a vital role.
(more)


 

 

30.05.2008 - 29.06.2008
Art and Science II

Marcus Ahlers
- Transposed Nodes

Artist's talk: 14 June 2008, 5PM
Tour of the exhibition: 29 June 2008, 3PM

The artworks of Marcus Ahlers (born 1974) functions on the borderline of visual arts and science. On one hand they explore visual metaphors for the human body in its surroundings, making reference to social and architectural space. On the other hand they are receptacles for electro-chemical reactions, which take place within them. (more)


 

 

29.03.2008 - 04.05.2008
Art and Science I

Dmitry Bulatov - Senses Alert

Artist's talk and workshop: 29 March 2008, 5PM
Tour of the exhibition: 27 April 2008, 3PM

Contemporary Art already long ago turned away from a solely anthropocentric point of view. Currently in Science Art, it is concerned, among other things, with ecological phenomena and is investigating the existence of newly emerging life forms; Art and Science have been combined. The Kaliningrad based artist Dmitry Bulatov views the contemporary art scene as a kind of petri dish of living material for his investigations. Coming from his own artistic experience he has investigated this sphere and explored its dynamics and spatial vectors. In connection with his scientific research and artistic practice, Bulatov has staged an active evolutionary dramatisation of ‘post-biological’ forms whose paradoxical development may completely change our idea of the surrounding world. (more)


 

 

26.01.2008 - 2.03.2008
Eastern and Central European Curators I:

Denisa Kera and Pavel Sedlak
Cosmopolitics - New Media Art from the Czech Republic

Workshop with Denisa Kera (curator): Curating New Media: 27.01.2008 5 PM
Artists Talk 01 February 2008 8PM
Tour of the exhibition 0 2 March 2008 3PM

The Czech new media art scene could be characterized by a latecomer strategy which in recent years is turning its disadvantages into a source of advantage. As video art and other trends from the 1980s and 1990s were never strong in the Czech art academies, young artists feel free to experiment and often develop very promiscuous relations to different traditions, trends and technologies. (more)



 

 

23.11.2007 - 6.01.2008
Art and Text III

Prinzenallee: a Play without Dialog by Birgit Szepanski

Artist's talk: Sunday, 06 January 2008, 5pm

In her installations, the Berlin artist Birgit Szepanski composes an aesthetic form of urban space using word and image, in which the walls, floor, windows and doors of the exhibition space become part of the art work. Taking regular walks through urban localities is a major part of the artist's production process, during which she collects thoughts, words and images of the city for her exhibition projects in Germany and abroad. There is a correlation between the architectural and bibliophile aspects in her artist's books, photographs, films and audio pieces.(more)

 

 

 

28.9.2007 - 28.10.2007

Art and Text II

Christian de Lutz - Ekphrasis

Christian de Lutz has worked as a photographer and visual artist since moving to Europe in 1994, after having worked in painting and video in New York during the late 1980s and early 1990s. During these years de Lutz has built up a considerable photo archive, which he has used as the basis to create his current images. The original analogue photographs have been processed through digital imaging software; some information has been taken away, while new information has been added. In the last seven years the artist has increasingly worked at the periphery of image and text. By means of a digital montage of photography and source code or algorithmic texts his pictures have generated a palimpsest-like layering of pictorial and literary signs.

As part of the exhibition series Art and Text, Art Laboratory Berlin is presenting a selection of de Lutz's most recent Source Code Images. (more information...)

 

 

 

31.8.2007 - 23.09.2007
Art and Text I


Farkhondeh Shahroudi

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to present a solo exhibition of book art, drawings and a digital work by Farkhondeh Shahroudi as part of the series Art and Text.

Born in Tehran in 1962, Shahroudi has lived in Germany since 1990. She is both a visual artist working in a variety of media: sculpture, drawing, painting, photography, video and computer, and a poet writing in Farsi and German. Her work indeed functions like a series of hyperlinks between art and text, between tradition and technology. (more information)

 

 

 

30 June- 22 July 07
Art and Music III

Viktor Alimpiev - Two Songs

Viktor Alimpiev, whose work Summer Lightings was shown at the 4th Berlin Biennale in the Former Jewish Girls' School, combines different artistic fields in his cinematic work: visual arts, music, theater and dance. In his films he has worked with the human body and more recently with song and speech. During the 2005 Venice Theatre Biennale he directed the play We're Talking about Music in Italian language together with Marian Zhunin. In Linz in 2006 he created the video Wie heisst dieser Platz? in German. (more information)

 

 

 

25 May - 17 June 07
Art and Music II


3-ROOM-CONFERENCE. A Live Performance with an Exhibition by the Berlin Tiefenrauschorchester

The 3-Room-Conference is a performance project, which was organized by the Berlin Tiefenrauschorchester especially for the rooms of the artspace Art Laboratory Berlin.

In connection with his painting Inbetween (2001) and his film projection Cloud Pieces (2005) Leo Königsberg will realize a sound collage on his space cello. This audiovisual production will be taken further by the live act by Christian Glass' electronic acoustics. The dance performance by janusz de woyciechowski, in relation to his film Titania (1970), which will be projected in the art space, will develop this interdisciplinary experiment through the human body in movement. (more information)

 

 

 

30 March 07 - 20 May 07
Art and Music I


The Artist Group PG – video works

The Group PG was founded in 1998. It now consists of Ilya Falkovsky, Alexey Katalkin and Boris Spiridonov. PG is a play on words that can be interpreted differently, for example as “Criminal Group”, “Hydrant” or “Hand Grenade”.

The group activity is multifunctional. It publishes its own magazines and postcards, releases musical albums, makes comics and performances. (more information)

 

 

 

'pre-opening' 23 February 2007
Film screening:
Bildungscamper.
Der Blick des Patriarchen

A documentary film by Nicola Hochkeppel
2004, 62 min                          

A 1960's and 70's West German vacation idyll. The Hubert J. Wagner family of Cologne – all nine of then – trapped between the „simple life“ romanticism of camping and the educated middle-class ideal of classics-based scholarship. Tax consultant Wagner, the arch-catholic clan patriarch, suffers no amendments to his meticulous plans for the rigorous summer pilgrimages. Using the family's home-movie footage (1965 – 1975), the documentary film LEARNING BY CAMPING also chronicles a chapter of German social history during the heyday of the flourishing welfare state.(more information)

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