All things inspiring, notable and newsworthy

Catie is the newest artist in residence Exploratorium San Francisco, for whom I have carried out a major review, creating a Vision, Strategy, Budget and Extensive  Roadmap for taking the museum forwards in art and science in the 21st century. I am also currently looking after their latest AIR, Catie Cuan,  who encapsulates very beautifully my vision of where the organisation should be heading.

I am super happy to be working with her for the next few months as she begins researching and prototyping a new and very wonderful work at the museum, as well as being hired to  help the organisation in their hiring of a Director of AIRs.

Specialist adviser and jury member for the new international Synergies Fund launched March 2023. The fund is for new support research-based and process-oriented programmes that foster exchange between art, science and technology involving organisations in Switzerland and across the world

This innovative fund offers support of CHF 20,000 – CHF 150,000 for international collaborations and encourages programmes which spark new approaches, methodologies and connect knowledge from different contexts.

This is the first page of a double page spread in the leading Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera - in the app of their culture section called La Lettura - a dialogue between myself and the artist Goshka Macuga, facilitated by the journalist Stefano Bucci. The discussion focuses on the joys of physics and art - and what feels like a lifetime of discussion with Goshka since I invited her to CERN in 2012 as a Visting Artist.

I was invited to give a lecture on the Future/Now of Arts, Science, Technology and Ecology at Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland. It was for the 'Interactive and Immersive Art' Cluster  which comprises students from  “Information Design”, “Visual Narratives”, “Type and Written Language, "Story Ecologies”  and is part of the New Media Department.

Keynote talk about Power Structures in Art, Science and Technology at
MU Hybrid Art House as part of their Beyond Borders & Binaries exhibition. It features, amongst others, 3 BAD (Bio Arts and Design)Award winners from the 2022 BAD competition which I was on the jury of.

The photograph shows the installation featured in the exhibition Mud and Floods by the Berlin based art collective Nonhuman NonSense - a multisensorial piece reconnecting us to our kinship with the sea.

Future Artefacts FM focusses on Earth Water Sky artist in residence 2023, Niamh Schmidtke and her work-in-progress, The diamond’s less sexy sister. Somewhere between a radio essay and a voicenote, the 5 minute piece explores human relations to minerals, specifically with graphite. Combining scripted and organic conversation, prose and academic information, the audio slips in and out of speculation; is that a mineral speaking, or a person speaking about a mineral? Listen to the discussion which I am in also with artists Nina Davies untangling Niamh’s current research as part of their artist in residence program at TU Berlin, with Science Gallery International Network and Fondation Didier et Martine Primat. We collectively question the ways minerals could speak for themselves through technology, materiality and the act of holding hands.

January is the beginning of the Earth environmental science and art research residency at TU Berlin with winning artist Niamh Schmidtke and geochemist Dr Johannes Giebel, keeper of Germany's third biggest mineral collection. They will be exploring deep time together as part of Niamh's research project, Pulling From a Stone, which won the 3rd edition of the Earth Water Sky research, commissioning, production and exhibition residency funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primat and part of the Science Gallery Network. Niamh will spend two months at TU, workshopping ideas and engaging with the students. In May she will bid for a commissioning and production grant to realise her research within the following year.

One of six invited curators by University of Zurich, the Canton of Zurich and the architects Herzog and de Meuron to contribute curatorial vision for the new landmark university building due to open 2028. Known as UZH Forum, this new iconic Herzog and de Meuron building will become the new heart of the university quarter in Zurich. The winning vision and curator will be announced in January 2023

Invited Expert on Creative and Cultural Practice to the European Commission's  Policy Laboratory for feedback on a major EU Funded project.  The meeting in Brussels was part of the feedback on CreaTures  - a three-year EU funded project that investigates the role that transformational creative projects play in helping people to imagine and to build environmentally and socially sustainable futures.

I was honoured to be asked to give a Keynote on the Imagination in Arts and Science @FestivaldellaScienza Genoa Science Festival which is the oldest in Italy. It is 20 years old this year. In my capacity as a Bogliasco Foundation Fellow, I gave this keynote taking its title - Imagination and the Truth of the World from observations by Italo Calvino about imagination's power in his essays Six Memos for the Next Millenium.

Following my 6 month study and report for the Foundation for the International Committee of the Red Cross (FICRC), the Art Initiative I developed for them has been publicly announced at the public international relaunch of the Foundation.

My work for establishing the FICRC Art Initiative had a complex brief: hybrid between fundraising, public relations and think tank. My 98 page report included the vision, mission and values of a new programme, including in-depth analysis, strategy,  creation of a new art initiative to directly feed into the new positioning of the FICRC complete with 3 year business plan and action plan.  The Art Initiative was unanimously passed by the board and will appear in 2023. 

The pursuit of the unknown, both within the context of particle physics and artistic research, requires infrastructure, imagination, and experimentation.

I was invited by Dr Rebecca Collins ecturer of Contemporary Art Theory at the University of Edinburgh to join Dark Matter scientist,  Maria Luisa Sarsa Sarsa to share our tactics about how to engage the impossible. Maria is Professor of atomic, molecular and nuclear physics at the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Zaragoza. She is also  the Principal Investigator of the ANAIS experiment at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory.

The talk was the third in a series of talks called Parametres for Understanding Uncertainty organised by Rebecca held at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. The talk was recorded and will be released online later this year.

I was honoured to be invited to give a talk on September 27th 2022 about Response-ability and the Imagination by Ceri Hand, the founder and director of Artist Mentor.  Artist Mentor is a unique organisation dedicated to mentoring and coaching creative artists, producers and curators in their work and career.

On Monday June 27th at 1800 EEET I am in the last panel of a two day conversations series with Piritta Puhto, curator and senior producer at Bioart Society, artist and researcher Saša Spa?al . We are discussing beyond humanness. The discussion is part of a  free two day online conversation series  “Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data,” an outdoor exhibition at ATHENS’ biggest public park exploring the body – individual, collective, human, nonhuman, planetary – and how technology and technologically constructed worlds are shaping, affecting, and impacting our bodies, identities, and place in the planet. It is organised by the Onassis Foundation.

The exhibition and conversation series are curated by Irini Mirena Papadimitriou.

The BAD Awards are one of the world's leading Bio Arts and Design awards.

I am honoured to be invited to be a member of jury MU
Eindhoven, Netherlands.

The jury meets on June 1st with the final 12 selected teams of artists/designers and scientists presenting in person their projects. The winner will be announced shortly afterwards.

Click on the link to view the film in which a scientist says the following and find out more about the awards. 
"I am a better scientist because of the presence of [the artist] Charlotte Jarvis in my life"

This week you can catch the Uk premiere of Witness by Emma Critchley at the Brighton Festival. It is the first production of EarthWaterSky residency programme funded by Didier and Martine Primat Foundation researched @Ca Foscari University of Venice with The Ice Memory Project team lead by Professor Carlo Barbante.

Witness is now in a new wonderful and immersive production for the UK Saturday 7th – Sunday 15th May at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts @attenboroughctr. See the link below for details of opening times.

It also has an original live performance version on Thursday and Saturday, in Swahili, Italian, Latin American Spanish and English.

The sound design is by the award-winning composer Nicolas Becker (Gravity, Sound of Metal)

A discussion about Quantum Physics based around 'Ent'-  the new work by physicist turned artist Libby Heaney and commissioned by LAS, Berlin. This immersive installation is built based on quantum-coding, and in this discussion I join Libby and  quantum computer scientist Anna Pappa to discuss quantum, including its history, its applications and how it andquantum computing impacts the cultural field. 

I was awarded a fellowship and residency at the beautiful Bogliasco Foundation outside Genoa in Liguria for 4 weeks. The fellowship was for writing a book proposal about art and physics which is in the making. Standby for news about this in the future.

#Beautiful #book about #stars#space #theinfinite and the making of the #ground-breaking #immersive #VRexperience shot entirely aboard the #InternationalSpaceStation by @felixandpaul first shown @phicentre Montreal Canada. Includes amongst stunning images of @iss and the making of what is up until now the largest VR experience. There is an interview by me with @ryoji_ikeda who made an extraordinary #artinstallation reflecting the #infinite which was exhibited as part of the production. We talk in the interview about #maths #physics #infinity and @cern as well as ryoji's #work
#digitalart #space #science #art

I am honoured and delighted to be the arts strategic consultant for a new initiative by the Foundation of the International Red Cross Committee  who's headquarters are based in Geneva, Switzerland. My mission - to create an arts programme which highlights and integrates with the FICRC's aim to future think about humanitarian action and how to handle it as the world faces new sources of conflict: technology, climate emergency, urbanisation, law and finance. The strategy of engaging with the arts is mentioned in the new brochure issued by the FICRC - see link below.

Watch this space to see what is created. There will be news about the programme later in 2022. 

I am thrilled to be taking part in the V & A Museum's Alice in Wonderland symposium which marks their wonderful exhibition in London. I am in discussion with the German born Bristol based artist Mariele Neudecker who was the last artist I invited to Arts at CERN when I was curator there.

She continues her collaborations with CERN to this day, and for the V & A she made a piece about the ALICE detecto at CERN. We  consider how her new work introduces ideas, metaphors and concepts to do with #physics, scale, #perception, portals, the #human and the #machine #eye...drawing links to both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and the physics at CERN.

I was super honoured to be commissioned to write a polemical and provocative essay about sight in the digital age by the Finnish Cultural Institute and Satu Herrala and Hans Rosenström as part of their extraordinary evolving series of exhibitions called AISTIT/coming to our senses.  

My essay talks about sight as the colonising sense which has over dominated humanity to the point of making us sense-less - and far less human and out of touch with nature, ourselves and all beings.

My essay is in the catalogue to the exhibitions as well as available online.

I was honoured to be asked to write the Introductory text to this new monograph about the work of the german born Bristol based artist Mariele Neudecker who works in the cross over between arts and science.

Her multi form practice incorporates sculpture, video, painting and sound, explores the processes and effects of perception, the complexities and contradictions of landscapes and visuality, and the politics of representation and territorialisation.

I am honoured to be invited this year to be one of the judges for the Special "Panasonic Prize" for the YouFab Global Creative Awards 2021. The prize seeks works that  that will “energize the world and make our lives ideal”. YouFab Global  Creative Awards 2021.

I was in conversation recently with fellow judge Alex Ikenouchi, the Director of AkeruE the Panasonic Centre, Tokyo - the museum for children which encourage new ways of creating our reality through seeing, making, and communicating. Entries close October 31st 2021 and judging will take place in December.

Find out more here http://www.youfab.info/2021/

I visited Helsinki for 4 days to visit AISTIT - Come to Our Senses exhibition at Taidehalli - for which I had written an essay, to meet artists and curators, as well as do a public in conversation with Erich Berger, the artist and director Bioart Society. This was courtesy of a travel scholarship from FRAME, which supports the networking of Finnish and Finland-based contemporary art professionals by inviting international art professionals to visit Finland. We discussed the many ways in which art, science and society can come together within artistic and curatorial practices.

I had the honour to be invited by curator Alessandro Melis and the Italian Ministry of Culture to present the world premiere of  'Witness' by Emma Critchley at the official Italian Pavilion - Resilient Communities - at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia  on Saturday July 24th 2021.

The piece which I curated and produced is the first production from the EarthWaterSky environmental arts and sciences research residency, commission and exhibition programme fully funded by Didier and Martine Primat Foundation at Science Gallery Venice Università Ca'? Foscari Venezia' which began in 2019. Emma was the first winner and her work was inspired by her selected scientific partner, the Italian climatologist Professor Carlo Barbante and his team on the Ice Memory Project.

I have been invited as a Creative Director to the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale Italian Virtual Pavilion Sezione del Padiglione Italia. Curated by Tom Kovac, RMIT University and @Alessandro Melis Portsmouth University titled CITYX Venice responds to ‘How will we live together’ curated by Hashim Sarkis MIT, organized by La Biennale di Venezia.

The Red Cross Museum in Geneva for the month of May is holding a wonderful symposium every Tuesday at 1600 CET on Art and Humanitarianism. 

It is organised by Julie Enckell Julliard, Director of Cultural Development, Geneva Haute école d’art et de design, Pascal Hufschmid, Director, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Geneva and Philippe Stoll, Communication Adviser. Strategies, Innovation and Research, International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva

You can sign up for free in the link below as well as watch past lectures..

I was honoured to be the first speaker in the series, talking about the Artist as Visionary - debunking this commonly held idea on ideological grounds. The talk has been recorded and is found on this link too.

I will be speaking about Out of Our Minds: How Emotions became the New Truth and how Technology aided and abetted this and why.

This is at a free symposium about #creativity, #society, #technology and the #digitalageon Friday March 12th organised by Theodore Spyropoulos Architectural Association. Called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, the conference features Lucy McRae, @LibbyHeaney Sougwen Chung Minimaforms and Kenric Allado-McDowell leader of #Google #Artists and #MachineIntelligence programme.

Three of the subjects I care passionately about in the world is role technology is playing in society, our social contract, and creativity. Even before my work as a policy advisor for the ICT directorate, DG CNCT, at the European Commission.

I am thrilled and honoured to be one of the members of the distinguished Global Advisory Board  of the Edgelands Institute  - an Interdisciplinary Pop-Up aiming to redraw our social contract in this era of mass-urbanization, surveillance and pandemics. The academic partner and incubator is The Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Edgelands Institute is the initiative of Yves Daccord, the former director of the Internationa Red Cross Committee

I was honoured in December to invited to moderate the opening convention of a wonderful initiative by The Getty Foundation. The new edition of their Pacific Time initiative focusses on Art x Science in Los Angeles and Southern California. In 2024 will culminate in an ambitious range of exhibitions and public programs that explore the intersections between the visual arts and science, from prehistoric times to the present and across different cultures worldwide.

#science #innovation #research #knowledge #inclusion #diversity #art#craft #LosAngeles #California

I had the privilege of  being invited to take part in The Artian podcast to talk about art and science.

In my discussion with Nir, we talked about the interactions artists and scientists have, how scientists see the artists’ work, what is the role of imagination in both areas, and much more. Including the founding of Arts at CERN and the Earth Water Sky residency programme at Science Gallery Venice.

Venice exists on the edge of the earth, water and sky. Hence the title of the environmental arts and science residency programme I created and I curate for Science Gallery Venice in 2018. It is funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primat. Listen to the first two artists in residence, Emma Critchley (Water) and Haseeb Ahmed (Sky) talk about their practices. 

https://venice.sciencegallery.com/events/water-meets-sky-and-you?fbclid=IwAR2J3ja5E03RTyCwHCsBrIlevIS4m3P13uz9hGHlj2sqGH5HTMvatr82eXs

Exhibition opens @HeKBasel, Switzerland August 27th 2020 featuring 20 international artists exploring the accelerating interconnections between emotion and technology.

My fellow curators in Real Feelings: Emotion and Technology are the Director of HeK Sabine Himmelsbach and the Diretor of MU, Eindhoven, Angelique Spaninks with whom we collaborated with the wonderful artists in the show: AntoineCatala, @stine_deja & @mariemunkdk @hdeweyh , @justineemard , @cecilebevans , @eddfornieles, @maria_gucci (Maria Guta) & @adrnggg (Adrian Ganea), @esther.hunziker , Seokyung Kim, @clement_lambelet , @lorem_____ @laurenleemack & Kyle McDonald, @technoflesh (Simone C. Niquille), @daniploeger , @lucymcrae , Shinseungback Kimyonghun, Maija Tammi, @troika_london , @coralievogelaar and @liam_y (Liam Young)

The research-based artist Haseeb Ahmed who lives in Brussels is the second winner of the three year Science Gallery Venice Earth Water Sky residency programme funded by Didier et Martine Primat Foundation.

The jury were unanimous in awarding it to Haseeb Ahmed due to the originality of his proposal in the connection of this year’s topic of the Wind. His proposal combines sculpture, architecture, performance and film in order to engage and work with both the audience of Science Gallery Venice as well as the people of Venice in a potentially unique, ground-breaking and dynamic artistic process which will also have a digital life.

There were nearly 160 entrants for the second Science Gallery Venice Earth Water Sky open call from 43 countries around the world.

Haseeb's residency begins this Autumn 2020 with a new and exciting digital life.

I was asked to write an essay in praise of the Gap for Clot Magazine. Here is an extract. The link to the full essay is below this selected paragraph.

"The gap enables the human spirit to go beyond its limitations, soar, create, make, discover and play. It's where our imaginations flourish and grow. We lose the gap at humanity and culture’s peril if we cede responsibility for our all actions, emotions and lives solely to the certainty of the digital realm and technocratic future-present. "

https://www.clotmag.com/oped/entangled-realities-minding-the-gap-by-ariana-koek

The Nordic Photography Triennale, Backlight2020, is happening now in September 4 – November 8, 2020 in Tampere, Finland. In addition to exhibitions, screenings and installations, the festival features lectures and seminars on photography, science and new technologies, as well as portfolio reviews.

I am one of the curators, together with the Finnish artist Maija Tammi, photography curator Lars Willumeit, and Director of Backlight Hannu Vanhane.

We have sifted through thousands of photographs in the past 8 months and selected 23 international artists on the theme of Related Realities.

Related Realities exhibition will be open at the Gallery Himmelblau, Tampere, Finland on 5.9. – 31.10.2020

Link to more information here https://backlight.fi/the-call-is-open-for-backlight-2020/

Here is the second Open Call for artists in any art form to come to Venice for #EarthWaterSky artists residency programme Science Gallery Venice Università Ca' Foscari Venezia.

This is a unique chance to work with a leading historian of the science as well as environmental scientists from the Veneto on the subject of WIND. https://opencall.sciencegallery.com/earth-water-sky-residency

Applications by January 6th 2020.

Claude Monet is one of the greatest painters of light and the passing of time. The largest collection of his paintings in the world is housed at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris.

On Monday October 22nd, the second in their new series called Unexpected Dialogues opens. Each year, the museum commissions a leading international artist to respond to works in the collection. This year it is the Turner prize winning artist Keith Tyson - known for his interrogations of the nature of reality using different materials.

One of the many things I love doing, is being invited to write about artists and their work and witness the creative process in action. I had the great pleasure of interviewing Keith whilst he was making the works in response to Monet and to talk to him about the process. 

My interview with Keith is published in the catalogue of the exhibition and it reveals many things, including his thoughts about arts and science, and the process behind the paintings he has made in response to Monet's. There are some surprises - you have been warned.

I am delighted to be one of 4 judges and curators for the oldest and largest photography Triennale in Northern Europe. 

Backlight Festival has an open call for photographers to engage with its theme - Related Realities - to be chosen for the exhibition in Tampere, Finland, near the Arctic circle September 2020.

Related Realities is about crossing boundaries - between the arts, sciences, and other ways in which we look at our realities and beyond. It also welcomes artists who work across technologies and is not just confined to pure photography.

Deadline October 31st. Apply here https://opencall.fi

It's really happened!

My first book : https://www.hatjecantz.de/entangle-7394-1.html

The book is connected with the exhibition Entangle: Physics and the Artistic Imagination which was at Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden early this year.

The book contains essays on Entanglement by Carlo Rovelli, Surrealism and Physics by art historian Gavin Parkinson, Physics and Imagination by science writer Philip Ball, Physics and Culture by the Director of FACT Liverpool, Nicola Triscott, and one by me about the Entanglement of contemporary art and physics.

The book features the work shown in the Bilidmuseet exhibition of 14 international artists -including Iris van Herpen, Julian Charriere, Goshka Macuga, Ryoji Ikeda, Sarah Sze, Julius von Bismarck, Davide Quayola, Jorinde Voigt, Carey Young, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Keith Tyson, Solveig Settemsdal, William Kentridge, and the architect Sou Fujimoto.

The book includes a series of dyptychs - with six different artists and physicists separately reflecting on different phenomena - Matter, Light, Time, Space, Entropy, Gravity. It's in the gap between different ways of looking at the world as well as the connections that the imagination grows.

This June one of the world's underwater artists, Emma Critchley, began her 2 month Earth Water Sky residency  which I created for Science Gallery Venice, generously funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primat. She is working with one of Italy's leading environmental scientists, Professor Carlo Barbante who is based at Ca Foscari University and is one of the leaders of the Ice Memory Project - an extraordinary project to create a library of non polar ice cores which record the changes in climate  and which will be stored in Antarctica.

The bubbles of gas stored in the cores give clues as to how the climate has changed. Tiny particles organic materials stored in the ice core can give clues also to people's movements across time and space - across continents and the centuries - prooving also that migration and movement are facts of life.

Emma's residency continues in September and October. At the end of the residency she will bid for a 26,000 Euro production grant to make an art work inspired by her work with Professor Barbante. It will be exhibited during the Venice Biennale.

The biggest joy of working on projects is collaborating with the artists, scientists, cultural institutions and individuals who work with you to make things happen. Without that, nothing happens.

Julian Calo was my first formal coordinator at Arts at Cern for the last 18 months of my work there. I won funding for him after 3 and half years of establishing the Arts at Cern programme. As a present, I gave him the opportunity for him to see Entangle: Physics and the Artistic Imagination at Bildmuseet,  to say thank you. In return he made me this film, documenting the exhibition for me.

Today Julian runs with his partner Margot a sustainable lifestyle and fashion blog, called Bloomers. Thank you  very much Julian for the joy and hardwork you did with me in the past! And the  wonderful work you are doing in the present and the future! 

Here is the film of the exhibition for you all to see.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lDygWkzOXgw

The Exploratorium, San Francisco is one of the most beloved institutions in the world. It is a unique museum dedicated to curiosity, learning and critical thinking founded in 1969 by Frank Oppenheimer, brother of the father of the bomb, Robert Oppenheimer.

The museum has always had at the heart of its mission inspiring the public to question, learn and look below the surface of reality and phenomena. It does with over 640 extraordinary hands-on, interactive exhibits which are all made in the museum workshop. Often prototypes of the exhibits are put out, tried and tested on the museum's visitors.  As one artist put it to me:

'You think the visitors are going to react in a certain way. But the exhibit only truly comes alive with an audience and by truly testing it out  you discover what it really is.'

I have the honour to be invited as consultant by this world famous Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception, to investigate and develop their arts engagement with science. I am resident with the Exploratorium in San Francisco for 2 months as part of the research and development of this 3 month assignment.

The UK artist Emma Critchley who specialises in underwater work has been announced as the first winner of the residency programme funded by Didier et Martine Primat Foundation, initiated for Science Gallery Venice.

Bildmuseet for the first time achieved national television coverage due to Entangle: Physics and the Artistic Imagination which I devised and curated.

The exhibition is based on my knowledge, experience and passion for the field of particle physics and contemporary art.

A catalogue based on the exhibition will be published in April 2019 by Hatje Kantz with essays by best selling physicist Carlo Rovelli, the Director of Arts Catalyst, Nicola Triscott, art historian Gavin Parkinson,  and the popular science writer Phillip Ball.

I was commissioned by the Finnish artist and photographer Maija Tammi to write the text about her ground-breaking work  - One of Them is A Human -  for her first solo show in Berlin, Germany which opened on December 7th 2018.

One of the images in the series, Erica, won two awards at the world's largest photographic portrait prize competition hosted by the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2017, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.

The mere shortlisting of the portrait as one of the finalists became a media event; The New York Times wrote: "Do androids dream about being featured in portrait competitions?" and Xinhua news in China wrote: "Portrait of android shortlisted in human portrait competition".

The rules of the competition state that the image "must have been taken by the entrant from life and with a living sitter." 

Whether or not an android is a living sitter naturally depends how "alive" is defined. Welcome to a posthuman era.

My text for the solo show looks at these issues.