Our practice at the intersection of visual art and biology, with overlaps in botany, anthropology, landscape architecture, geology, and philosophy, aims to explore new paradigms of knowledge based on the understanding of the biological perspective of life and existence for both non-human species and humans.
The fascinating processes underlining non-human life can contribute to better understanding of human existence, behavior and culture. We engage audiences with discussions, talks and exhibitions.
- Life Discussions
- Centre for Contemporary Art
- Prague, Czech Republic
- March 12, 2022
List of speakers:
Adam Vackar and Jindrich Brejcha
Introduction, Transparent Eyeball
Michael Bok
Department of Biology, Lund University, Sweden
Reuben Fowkes
UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, London, UK
Johannes Jaeger
Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Miranda Lowe
Scientist, Natural History Museum, London, UK
Katja Novitskova
Visual artist, Amsterdam
Michael J. Ryan
Professor, University of Texas in Austin
Kostas Stasinopoulos
Curator at the Serpentine gallery, London, UK
Antonin Strizek
Scientist, Academy of Sciences, Prague
Life Discussions aims to bring new perspectives on how artists, art theorists and biologists can engage together in a collaborative insight into the relation between biological principles that drive our own creativity and our need to communicate. We want to build our understanding on solutions that life on Earth offers.
Today’s environmental issues are often complex. Finding effective strategies that encourage public awareness and stewardship are paramount for long-term conservation of species and ecosystems. Artists and biologists combined approach thrives to disseminate knowledge about ecology to non-specialists through novel art-science participatory research.
We invited internationally renowed scientists, artists and theoreticians to discuss the evolutionary driven process of art-making as well as to show that humans are inseparable part of the natural world and share planet with other beings with completely different interests and perception.
The lectures are pondering around questions of invasiveness among among plants and humans, beauty as a biological concept, public interventions related to environement, non-human perspective, the total difference of perception of the world we take as granted by Mantis shrimp, species with the most developped sight of all known beings and other themes.
To watch all lectures online click here
Transdisciplinary symposium
Academy of Arts, Architecture
and Design
Prague, Czech Republic
December 1 - 2. 2022
List of speakers:
Václav Cílek
Geologist, climatologist, writer
Mareike Dittmer
TBA21-Academy, Madrid
Habima Fuchs
Visual artist
Johanna Gibbons
Landscape architect, London, UK
Paloma Gonzalez-Bellido
Professor of ecology University of Minnesota, USA
Stefan Helmreich
Professor of Anthropology at MIT, USA
Tereza Stehlíková
Visual artist
Sissel Tolaas Visual
Artist
Neal White
Visual artist, CREAM, University of Westminster, UK
Šárka Zahálková
Visual artist, curator and cultural activist
How can we change our habits to protect our habitat (environment)? Place and environment shape us as much as we shape it; there is a deep reciprocity on Earth that has long been neglected.
This transdisciplinary symposium was born out of an urgent need to reformulate our relationship to our physical and mental environments, near and far, human and non-human.
The In-habit Symposium will bring together scientists, artists and cultural workers from the Czech Republic, the USA, Germany and the UK, institutions such as MIT, University of Minnesota, TBA21-Academy, Charles University.
Where is the right balance in our relationship between human and non-human agents? How can contemporary art, science and other disciplines come together to rethink and shift our point of view, to access non-human perspectives, non-human motivations, to change our habits and successfully coexist? What role does embodiment/senses play in training our sensibility? We need to rethink human behavior and point out the functional behavioral systems for the future.
Organized together with Tangible Territory, an open access art, science & philosophy journal, which focuses on how we make sense of the world through all our senses and the importance of place and embodied experience in giving meaning to our everyday experience of life and art.
The symposium received financial support through grants provided by the Ministry of Culture of the
Czech Republic and the City of Prague.
To watch all lectures online click here
Group Exhibition
NOD, Prague, Czech Republic
25.7. – 14.9.2023
Artists: Gerard Ortin Castellvi, Shezad Dawood, Andro Eradze, Pilar Mata Dupont, Martin Netočný, Andrey Shental, Adam Vačkář
Biologist - texts: Vojtěch Abrahám, Martin Adámek, Jindřich Brejcha, Kristýna Eliášová, Roman Figura, Petr Tureček, Martin Weiser
Currently, niche construction theory stands as a focal point in evolutionary ecology, captivating the attention of both artists working through moving images and biologists expressing their insights in written form. Collaboratively, artists and biologists delve into specific natural processes that underlie human existence.
The texts penned by biologists serve as a wellspring of inspiration, sparking curiosity about the narratives of these natural processes. Understanding these processes should ideally be at the core of future education, shedding light on the intricate ways in which humans and nature are shaped and interconnected, aspects of which many remain blissfully unaware.