Following our goal of promoting transdisciplinary research, we participate in different projects in which we incorporate artistic vision into the creation and dissemination of scientific knowledge made at IBEC.
We are delighted to offer an ongoing open call for artists, providing a unique opportunity to collaborate with our researchers and explore the intersection between art and science.
If you are an artist seeking to push the boundaries of your practice, we invite you to apply by sending us an email at ibeccommunications@ibecbarcelona.eu.
We look forward to delving into the synergy between art and bioengineering.
CENTENARI ANTONI TÀPIES
We enjoy the opportunity to participate in the inaugural exhibition commemorating the centenary of the birth of Antoni Tàpies.
“A=A, B=B” is an exhibition inspired by the book “New Vision of the World” (1954), a work that has left a significant imprint on Antoni Tàpies’ creations. The exhibition aims to translate the reflections from this book into the present, more than seventy years after its publication. Focusing on transcendent themes such as the spirit of the scientific method, the motivations driving scientific research, and the profound meaning of science in our relationship with ourselves and art, the exhibition seeks to establish a dialogue between the past and the present.
Within this exhibition, we find works from a wide range of artists, highlighting the contribution of IBEC researcher Nimesh Ramesh Chahare, a member of the “Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics” research group led by Professor Xavier Trepat.
Furthermore, the exhibition will offer a unique experience through live connectivity with some of our laboratories, allowing visitors to conceptually explore the spaces where the pioneering research of our center takes place.
With this collaboration, IBEC aspires to contribute to the dialogue between art and science, creating connections between disciplines to address fundamental questions about the human condition.
TESS MARSCHNER
We are delighted to welcome Tess Marschner as our artist-in-residence in 2023/24. The residency is funded by the Art Foundation of the Free State of Saxony (KDFS Germany) work scholarship.
Follow on Instagram @tess.marschner
Tess Marschner was born in East Berlin in 1989. She did a training as a photo designer at Lette-Verein Berlin, from 2016 she studied in the class of Tina Bara for “Photography and moving image“ at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig (HGB). In 2020 she spend one semster in the Video & Photo Department at UNARTE Bucharest. In February 2023, she completed her diploma studies with the solo show “Animal Reminder” at Fetti Amore Leipzig.
In her work, Tess M. examines the ways in which scientific and theoretical knowledge shape and shift social relations. Her focus is on feminist, non-human and animal actors. She mainly works with texts and videos, but also with project-related materials. In her videos, she interweaves research materials and found footage with subjective sources. She sees herself as a storyteller and curator of these materials. Tess M. regularly works together with groups of artists and experiments with different forms of expression. With the artist collective HAZY BORDERS, she staged several performances, a thetatre play and a radio piece. The collaborative book project “When The Atmosphere Is Less Than Perfect” was presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig (MDBK).
Tess M.´s artistic practice focuses on the interweaving of humans, animals, plants and other agents through cultural and social processes. In the cell culture laboratory this interweaving takes place on a material level. In the project with the current title “Mythology of Cell Culture” she wants to approach this bioscientific phenomenon from a posthuman perspective and develop an understanding of its means, origins and potentials.
Life forms that are unbodied, partially immortal and only survive in the laboratory environment are distinctive for cell cultures. In the cell culture laboratory, cells from dog kidneys or mouse lymphs live an undefined existence; genetic cell chimeras are created from humans and mice or humans and pigs, which are reminiscent of the multiform intermediate beings of ancient mythology. These formations and fusions of human, animal and plant cells question existing categories of the living such as the division between the human and the non-human. To what extent does this technology change our society and the idea of what is human?
The term of mythology serves as a methodological concept itself: mythology is a science that deals with collecting, telling and analysing (fictional) stories. Tess M. regards the cell culture laboratory as a concrete physical, but also utopian space for experimentation and storytelling. She will develop an installation with videos and objects to imagine cell culture laboratory as part of a posthuman mythology.
The residency is funded by the KDFS work scholarship (Kunststiftung des Freistaates Sachsen, https://www.kdfs.de/projekte/stipendien).
ROSER CUSSÓ
We are thrilled to have hosted Roser Cussó as our inaugural artist-in-residence. Supported by the Culture Department of the Generalitat of Catalonia, her project, “Laboratory of Human Landscapes,” culminated in an exhibition in March 2023. The exhibition showcased 14 original illustrations and a workbook that documented Cussó’s creative journey during her residency.
“The Laboratory of Human Landscapes” project aims to focus on the human environments that science has not yet finished defining and which still remain far from rational knowledge”.
Imagination and fiction, as research tools, can help us building fictitious spaces to draw the invisible. Through this artistic research, we want to find new starting points on which new narratives can be built.
Related news
Roser Cussó Personal Area
In this space, illustrator-in-residence Roser Cussó will share her impressions during the different creative phases of the Human Landscapes Laboratory project.
I am starting the artistic residency at IBEC
These first few weeks I am interviewing researchers, while doing fieldwork around the center’s facilities. My research aims to discover which environments and geographical spaces of our body are being investigated by IBEC scientists. Do they resemble the landscapes we have on earth or distant planets?
Corridors/labs/meetings
The number of meetings with scientists is increasing. Right now, good orientation is very necessary to find the labs and offices of the research groups in the long corridors of the IBEC. It’s time to familiarize myself with the specific scientific vocabulary of each group and understand the work processes they use.
Symposium at the Hotel Alimara
On Wednesday 19th October I attended the 15th IBEC Bioengineering Symposium. It was a good opportunity to meet many people with whom we have met virtually and with whom we have pending meetings. Many of the presentations revealed to me many projects still unknown to me at IBEC. It was the moment to decide to narrow the study frame of the fieldwork and to be aware that I cannot get to know all the research groups in depth. Research must be prioritized.
Artistic research
After numerous meetings with researchers to learn about their work and objects of study, the stage of artistic research begins. This phase is nourished by the meetings, conversations and analysis of the material related to the scientists’ research areas.
Artificial environments
Artistic research advances and becomes a look that awakens speculative worlds, the vast majority artificially created in laboratories and on a micro scale. In my laboratory I also work in a small format, at the moment, in each paper I concentrate variations of the same starting point. Shapes and colors in different positions become views of the same space.
Artificial lives
Small organisms inhabit laboratory cultures. Unique structures that walk in their habitats without knowing that they are being observed. Their life expectancy can vary within the laboratory (hours or days) but in this image they are embodied for eternity.
Workshops with the scientific community
During one day I carried out two workshops with scientists from IBEC. We followed the same steps as in my artistic research. The concepts worked with the scientists will serve to expand the vocabulary of the artistic look in order to find new solutions on the scientific material.
ANTONI MUNTADES
In collaboration with Benedetta Bolognesi from IBEC, the renowned artist Antoni Muntadas presented a thought-provoking work on the Tasmanian tiger at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. His exhibition, “Welcome to planet B. A different life is possible, but how?,” sparked crucial conversations on extinction.