Vernissage of The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbome

 with works by François-Joseph Lapointe, Saša Spačal with Mirjan Švagelj and Anil Podgornik, Tarsh Bates and 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.


More information at: http://artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-exh-archive.htm

mycophone_unison by Saša Spačal, Mirjan Švagelj and Anil Podgornik

from Other Selves by Joana Ricou

François-Joseph Lapointe and Microbiome Selfies/ 1000Handshakes

'The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome' Opening 26 February, 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

Performance - 1000 Handshakes: 3 February, 7-10PM during the openingif transmediale, House of World Cultures
Opening of the exhibition: 26 February, 2016, 8PM
Artists' Talk: 28 February, 2016, 3PM
Exhibition runs: 27 February – 30 April, 2016, Fri-Sun 2-6PM and by appointment
Closed Easter weekend (25 – 27 March)

left: François-Joseph Lapointe, Microbiome selfie, 2014, center & right: Saša Spačal, Mirjan Švagelj, Anil Podgornik Mycophone Unison, Responsive installation: electronics, sound, and biological material, 2013; Petri dish, detail of installation 2013

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. The show will present works from his performance 1000 Handshakes, performed at the opening night of the 2016 transmediale. The final images visualise the microbial change from interacting with someone else’s microbiome – by shaking hands, a basic and ancient act of networking.

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. By leaving a fingerprint the viewer sends a signal to the map that processes it through the central celestial plate to the microbiomes. The polymodal sonification stresses the multiplicities of the makers.

 

Tarsh Bates working in the science lab for artistic production, School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The University of Western Australia, 2015

Joana Ricou, Other landscape no. 1, microbiome of the artist and environment, C-print, 89 × 140 cm, 2014

  
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. Her new work Surface dynamics of adhesion is a flocked wallpaper sampler. Encased in acrylic boxes, living Candida, with blood from Bates herself, form patterns from wallpaper popular in the parlours of Victorian Britain. The work offers aesthetic experiences from the contact zones between the two different organisms, and highlights the unconscious relation we have with Candida.

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. Out of this two portraits emerged: Other-self Portrait, a composite of cultures derived from her body, and Non-self Portrait, a composite of environmental cultures.

Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz (curators)
More on the Nonhuman Subjectivities series

Tarsh Bates working on 'Surface dynamics of adhesion' for our next exhibition

The artist's own blood is sued to make the blood agar

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. Her new work Surface dynamics of adhesion is a flocked wallpaper sampler. Encased in acrylic boxes, living Candida, with blood from Bates herself, form patterns from wallpaper popular in the parlours of Victorian Britain. The work offers aesthetic experiences from the contact zones between the two different organisms, and highlights the unconscious relation we have with Candida.

Here are some images of Tarsh working on making blood agar at the laboratory of the DHZB Center for Biofilms and Infection in Berlin.

Tarsh Bates working in the laboratory

The blood agar is poured into acrylic boxes

All images by Ben Warner for Art Laboratory Berlin

More information on our upcoming exhibition The Other Selves, On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome, opening on 26 February here: http://www.artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-exh-archive.htm
 

Art Laboratory Berlin at London LASER - October 2015

Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz talk on The Biological Sublime in 21st Century Art, focusing on the fluid boundaries between visual arts, biology and the humanities with specific examples of art/science collaborations and new hybrid forms.

The talk took place At Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design on 20 October, 2015 and was moderated by Heather Barnett. It was the 11th London LASER talk.

 

1000 Handshakes – Towards an Aesthetics of the Microbiome

A Conversation between François-Joseph Lapointe and Christian de Lutz.  

In the center of the talk was Lapointe’s performance 1000 Handshakes, which was carried out during transmediale’s opening night. The performance raises questions about physical and social engagement. They also reflected the piece as part of the upcoming group show at Art Laboratory Berlin The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome at Art Laboratory Berlin. The exhibition is part of the series »Nonhuman Subjectivities«, consisting of theoretical reflection on nonhuman agents.
Podcast of the talk

François-Joseph Lapointe: 1000 Handshakes at transmediale/conversation piece 2016

For his most recent artistic project, Lapointe is sequencing his microbiome to produce metagenomic selfportraits, Microbiome Selfies, which illustrate the metamorphosis of his bacterial self. The performance 1000 handshakes is part of this project. During the performance Lapointe shook hands with people passing through the opening night of the transmediale festival, gradually changing the invisible microbial community in the palm of his hand. Periodically, assistants took a sample from his skin. The DNA of this microbiome will be analysed to reveal how our contact with others shapes the microbes between us, how it changes who we are. The performance raises awareness through physical and social engagement, through acts of participation and exchange on social, individual and microbial levels. The handshake, a basic and ancient act of networking forms the beginning of a social, scientific and artistic collaboration between the performer and the public. The data collected during this performance will be used to generate microbiome selfies, shown in the exhibition The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome at Art Laboratory Berlin (opening 26 Feb, 2016).

Science Cafe: Programming Life - Good Code/ Bad Code?

In this science café we want to address the images and techniques in art and science that apply to the living organism at its source: the organism as bacteria, as gene, as a storage, as connecting element, as an imaginative. Which problems, challenges and questions drive the artists and scientists that are dealing with life in its smallest and most complex form?

Biotechnology aims at prolonging life and minimizing disease. At the same time they have to comply with strong security regulations. The assumption that biology equals technology, which in consequence leads to an engineer-like approach towards life, is opposed to living organisms being complex and contingent “systems”. Biotechnology not longer describes its objects. Under the lead of the industry it is more and more split into specialized fields such as microbiology, genetics and synthetic biology. This development is strongly connected with new hopes and imagination, figuring a new knowledge and science of life, that might lead to both a longer and healthier life and a new industrial revolution.

Since biotechnology became a source for capitalist and humanist dreams, artists have started to engage with the technologies and the epistemic objects they apply to. They use the smallest bricks of biological life for new speculations on life and death, redefine our understanding of where one organism begins and another ends, and reveal life to all our senses.

In four short presentations we want to engage with different perspectives ranging from synthetic biology, speculative science and art.

Moderation: Johann Bauerfeind
1. iGEM Berlin - Mariam Hammoud: Building with BioBricks
2. Dr. Caroline Mair : Research with pathogens - Biodefense or Bioweapons?
3. Margherita Pevere: SEMINA AETERNITATIS
4. AnneMarie Maes: Urban Bee Lab 

Johann Bauerfeind

iGEM Berlin - Mariam Hammoud: Building with BioBricks

Margherita Pevere: SEMINA AETERNITATIS

 

 

 

Dr. Caroline Mair : Research with pathogens - Biodefense or Bioweapons?

AnneMarie Maes: Urban Bee Lab

Book launch and presentation by Rüdiger Trojok: Biohacking – Gentechnologie für alle

In the last several years a global movement of citizen scientists has developed with modern biology as a particular focus: their work has become known as biohacking. This book serves all those interested in this topic as well as beginners by offering a basic understanding of the world from a molecular biological perspective: Starting with the beginnings of life, the course of evolution is explained in broad terms, according to present knowledge. Theroretical knowledge is applied through practical examples: life can be programmed. Using advanced software, Synthetic Biology rewrites the digital code of life.

Subsequently a public debate has opened on how to deal meaningfully with this knowledge and the resulting technical possibilities. The modern understanding of life and deeper possibilities of intervention will, in principle, change the relationship between man and nature. Laboratories will soon be miniaturised computer chips, which can be used locally anywhere. Genetic databases will then represent the most important resource - but what are the limits of this global synthetic biology? Citizen scientists now pose the question of who can use the generally available knowledge of modern biological sciences, and for what purposes.

Order here