In brief
This artistic research programme focuses on finding new biomaterials and developing new theoretical and practical understandings of how to live in the precarity of the future that has always been now. By engaging artists and designers with DIY biology, biohacking, life science and speculative ways and methods of working with living bodies, the programme focuses on developing ecologically and critically engaged art and design practice.
Symbiosis of theory and practice
During lecture discussions, readings and workshops the programme goes into problems, methods and ideas as they arise within the life sciences, philosophy, ethics and ecology. The goal of BIO MATTERs is to bring new methodologies and ways of thinking into the artistic and design realm where difficult yet urgent ecological and aesthetic questions are critically researched through material practice. This allows urgent questions to be raised hands-on, when we immediately experience our role and responsibility before the living bodies we create with.
“What I enjoyed the most in the course of living images is the fact that we delved into philosophies and matters simultaneously. The concept of contamination that we worked through still haunts till now; a porosity that makes me moving as I am situated, a sort of ethical entanglement between matters that requires a responsibility of movement on a micro level; a responsibility of contamination."
Tammam Azzam (platyhelminth)
Guest student at AKI-ArtEZ - currently pursuing a Bachelor Degree at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague.