One Tree ID, by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, transforms the ID of a specific tree into a perfume that can then be applied to the human body
Category Archive: bio
An interview with Margherita Pevere who used DNA storage technique to preserve a woman’s intimate experience from her youth into foreign life
Heikkilä uses painting to address the necessity to acknowledge the importance of nonhuman life and our symbiotic relationship to it
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Avril Corroon gave a pungent visibility to the problem of rogue landlords and poor living conditions in rented accommodation by making artisan cheeses using bacteria cultures collected from the mould growing in London housing
What will happen to our sensory apparatus in 50 years, when the mechanisms for how we communicate and sense our surroundings become obsolete, prompted by the advancement of sensors that will enable brain-to-brain communication?
Basse Stittgen uses blood discarded from slaughterhouses as a biomaterial that he dries, heat-presses and then turns into egg holders, records and other domestic objects
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The book offers critical reflections on some of the most challenging environmental problems of our time, including land take, groundwater pollution, desertification, and biodiversity loss
A series of artworks in a disused biology faculty in Riga make the Anthropocene disturbingly palpable
The exhibition “John Walter: CAPSID” at HOME in Manchester mixes animation, paintings, textile craft, humour and pop culture to investigate the complexities of virology and the spread of deadly infection
I talked with artist and designer Xandra van der Eijk about space mining without the need to leave the Earth and about controlling or being controlled by microorganisms
Gracie’s experimental breeding programme aims to gradually recreate, in an enclosed habitat, the atmospheric conditions found on Titan and make sure that the common fly would slowly acclimate to it
National parks, reserves and other forms of sanctuarization of nature are often adopted as a measure to protect territories from the detrimental impact of human activity. This exhibition brought together artists whose work invites us to re-examine our relationship with the natural world
French artistic duo Art Orienté Objet attempted to save one of the earliest forms of life on earth from environmental disaster
“Arriba!” is a cocoa plant shipped from the Ecuador Amazonian rainforest, enclosed inside a temperature-controlled container and displayed on top of an Antarctic glacier
A sound work in which three anthropomorphised ‘trees’ personify the different kinds of work trees are required to do in contemporary society
An exhibition at the Parco Arte Vivente, Turin’s experimental centre for Living Arts, aims to offer new perspectives and lines of inquiry about the Anthropocene
Artists Andrea Roe and Cath Keay collaborated with animal behaviour experts to create toys and playful experiences for farmed pigs
Erik Sjödin‘s art and research practice has led him to investigate human relationships to fire, aquatic plants that might one day feed the first inhabitants of planet Mars, bees and humans connections and community-based ways of producing food
From biomimicry to forged documents, from scandals to substitutes, Fake asks when authenticity is essential, when copying is cool, and what the boundary is between a fakery faux-pas and a really fantastic Fake
With this installation, critical and speculative scenario designer Tina Gorjanc is asking whether producing ‘fake’ copies of an extinct animal is an attempt to understand the past, or just an excuse to constantly create the desire for rarity
Animals that fake their appearance to blend in their surrounding and attract their prey, people who fake a […]
Maja Smrekar has spent the past few years investigating human/dog/wolf co-evolution, co-habitation as well as the possibility to create a hybrid of the human and the dog species
Artist Maria McKinney uses ‘semen straws’ to explore genetics in cattle breeding as well as the hidden systems beneath beef and milk production
Ancestry DNA testing has been widely embraced as a new way to understand our identity. But how does this removal of identity from its narrative and social dimension impact on understandings of race and relationships? And what is the scientific validity of this testing?
The essays are organized around two key figures: the Ghosts of long-gone creatures and wiped-out plants and the Monsters that both result from and bring about ecological disruption
The filtering capacity of flowers is a neglected area of research. However, the 3D structures of flowers make them valuable allies when it comes to regulating air quality by removing pollutants from the atmosphere. Dust Blooms juxtaposes the beauty and function of urban flora using a synthesis of artistic and scientific methods to create awareness about the every-day importance of ecosystem services in cities
Do artists using biotechnological materials and scientific processes have the same obligations, rights and responsibilities as scientists? Or should they enjoy more liberties and particular prerogatives?
Beat to the Balance introduces participants to a ritualistic sauna practice which consists of whisking bodies with branch bundle of different tree species. The goal is to open energy flow and make more perceptible the interdependence between tree communities and humans
Momentum 9, The Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, opened a few days ago in Moss, Norway. Its focus is Alienation, a pertinent theme for a time characterized by deep social and economic inequalities, new forms of rabid colonialism, atmospheric turmoil, transhumanism, closing borders and relentless questioning of democracy
Can art help us understand the ethical complexities of emerging (bio)technologies? Are artists able to uncover our hidden desires and demystify the promises emerging technologies represent? Are living artworks allowed and is art allowed to alter life?
Drawing on fieldwork, philosophy, literature, history, and a range of other perspectives, each of the chapters in this book tells a unique extinction story that explores what extinction is, what it means, why it matters—and to whom
Socle Du Monde, the biennale that opened a few weeks ago in Herning (Denmark), celebrates artists who have “accepted the challenge of turning the world upside down”
EE #2 moves Beyond Nature, investigating experimental and emerging ways of understanding as well as making art/nature. This issue visits not just hybrid, but also parasitical ways of doing art in times of danger and apocalyptic visions. In the current ecological and socio-political crisis, the function of the artist emerges as more critical than ever
The Socle du Monde biennale in Herning is currently showing Koen Vanmechelen’s Planetary Community Chicken, a cross between his now iconic Cosmopolitan roosters and commercial hens
Last year, the Flatbread Society embarked on a year-long sailing expedition that will take them from Oslo to Istanbul. On board is a rotating crew of artists, sailors, anthropologists, activists, writers, ecologists, etc. As for the cargo, it consists mostly of grain seeds that had been lost or forgotten
An art/science research instrument,offering participants the possibility to listen in on the electro-chemical messages transmitted by their bodies, in exchange for donating their personal biodata to scientific research
Kirsten Stolle examines the global influence of chemical companies on our food supply and explores the connection between corporate interests and public health. Using post-WWII America as her stage, Stolle’s collages, drawings and site-responsive installations investigate corporate propaganda, environmental politics and biotechnology
Hybrid ecologies unfold through complex interactions between actors and elements: human, non-human, biological, mineral, robotic, artificial, etc. There has always been some forms of interaction between humans and their immediate biological environment (through agriculture, bee keeping, fermentation techniques, etc.) but contemporary science is speeding up the synergies and frictions
The actors of hybrid ecologies are many. They are genetically engineered plants, cloned trees, animals used as sensors. Or they are robots, software and networks that encroach on the biological and sometimes manage to fuse with it. Some of this hybrid ecology is the direct result of human actions but increasingly, we see signs that biological and technological entities are escaping human control and are transforming the planet
Greiner’s works involve buying 40 litres of maggots and bringing them to the exhibition space until they turn into flies, composing music based on the luminous skin of a squid, convincing the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin to consider a fly as a living artwork, photographing portraits of algae, carefully orchestrating explosions around Berlin