AKI BIO MATTERs
- Partner(s): ArtEZ AKI Academy for Art & Design
- Started in: January 2017
There are many examples of how we underestimate or actively push out of sight unwanted matters such as waste, viruses or even dust. Contrastingly, living matter, such as plants and animals, are seen as different categories entirely. But shouldn't all these matters be considered to envision a future in which matter can be approached in a more mindful and creative way.
The aim of AKI BIO MATTERs is to explore the relationship between the scientific and the artistic that goes beyond representation and is geared towards exchange. This is done by navigating the urgency to explore spaces of thinking while doing, and doing while thinking, with living matters. In a globalised and interconnected world, we are faced with the uncertainty and the radical openness of what life might become. A laboratory might be a sealed-off space, but its practices act in the world.
Bio-artists and bio-designers have been entering bio-scientific institutions and laboratories in order to collaborate with scientists and to learn to use their tools and protocols in artistic practice. The unique non-profit-oriented attitude toward experimentation, questioning, and invention that characterises both artists and scientists makes this an interesting exchange in imagining the world differently. Within the experimental space that is AKI BIO MATTERs, bio-artists become bio-philosophers, bio-educators or bio-activists and are creating experimental art practices where biology, technology, and philosophy are intertwined to navigate new possible lines of thoughts.