April 20, 2021, Brussels, Belgium / Online
April 20, 2021, 7 pm CET (UTC+1)
Panelists: Annemarie Maes, Camilla Colombo
Moderator: Edith Doove
Chaired by: Alexandra Dementieva
LASER Talks Brussels is a series of 4 online discussions held in the framework of a double exhibition SENSORIAL SKINS – WOVEN BY NATURE by AnneMarie Maes at PILAR, House for Art and Science and iMAL, Art Center for Digital Culture and Technology.
Sensorial Skins (8-23 April 2021), the first chapter of a double exhibition by artist AnneMarie Maes, presents investigations into the sculptural potential of organic materials, transformed into fabrics, membranes and biofilms whose surfaces arouse our senses through their materiality, their texture, their colours and smells. In these sculptures and installations, the skins become interfaces between the human and the non-human, the macroscopic and the microscopic, transforming the natural into the cultural realm.
Woven by Nature (29 April – 16 May 2021), the second chapter of a double exhibition by artist AnneMarie Maes, presents a selection of sculptures and installations about the potential of algae and bacteria. Investigating the origin of life as we know it, the works are plunging the viewer in an aquatic atmosphere where blue-green algae are cultured in handmade glass containers that grow on metal structures. Woven by Nature recalls the alchemical element of water, that, according to Greek philosopher-mathematician Thales of Miletus was believed to be the original matter out of which the world was created.
PANELISTS
AnneMarie Maes is an artist who has been studying the close interactions and co-evolutions within urban ecosystems. Her research practice combines art and science, with a keen interest in DIY technologies and biotechnology. She works with a range of biological, digital, and traditional media, including live organisms. Her artistic research is materialized in techno-organic objects that are inspired by factual/fictional stories; in artifacts that are a combination of digital fabrication and craftsmanship; in installations that reflect both the problem and the (possible) solution, in multispecies collaborations, in polymorphic forms and models created by eco-data. On the rooftop of her studio in Brussels, she has created an open-air lab and experimental garden where she studies the processes that nature employs to create form. Her research provides an ongoing source of inspiration for her artworks. Bee Agency as well as the Laboratory for Form and Matter – in which she experiments with bacteria and living textiles – provide a framework that has inspired a wide range of installations, sculptures, photography works, objects, and books – all at the intersection of art, science, and technology. In 2017, she received an Honorary Mention in the Hybrid Art category at Ars Electronica for the Intelligent Guerrilla Beehive project.
Camilla Colombo is a curator and producer whose practice focuses on arts and sciences. She curated exhibitions in collaboration with the Museum of Ixelles, at BOZAR, PILAR and iMal in Brussels, and she collaborated with z33 (Hasselt) and Atelier LUMA in Arles (France). With a background in the performing arts and in advocacy for the arts at the European level, Camilla worked in Italy, the UK, and Belgium. Interested in hybridization and crossing of disciplines, she served in art organizations of all sizes as well as with independent artists, focusing on multidisciplinary and multimedia productions. Since 2016 she is based in Brussels where she started merging her multilayered and multidisciplinary experiences in her curatorial practice. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Ohme, an organization curating and producing through collaborative practices at the nexus of arts and sciences. In 2019 she co-founded SALOON Brussels, a network for women working in the art scene of the Belgian capital. Aside from her curatorial practice, Camilla regularly organizes and moderate panel talks usually gathering artists, scientists, researchers, and civil society.
Dr. Edith Doove is a curator, writer, and researcher, specifically interested in notions of emergence and contingency, cross and transdisciplinary collaborations. She started curating in 1987 in Antwerp and worked as a freelance curator and art critic in Belgium until 2010 when she moved to the UK. Since 2018 she lives and works in France, currently in Rouen where she teaches at ESADHaR Le Havre-Rouen. She is a postdoctoral advisor with Transtechnology Research at Plymouth University where she attained her Ph.D. in November 2017. She’s a regular contributor to Leonardo Reviews since 2010, co-convenor of Currer Bell College since 2019, and a member of AICA and C-E-A, the French Organization of Curators. With BUREAU DOOVE, which she started in 2014, Doove continues to develop a unique bespoke way of collaborating, working, with, for and alongside artists and researchers.