Taboo, transgression, transcendence and other provocative stories

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 18:28:00 +0000

The Taboo-Transgression-Transcendence (TTT) in Art & Science international conference was holding its 6th edition at Kino Šiška in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on September 9-13. Organised for 10 years by the Department of Audio and Visual Arts at Ionian University (Corfu, Greece), the event is also member of the Feral Labs Network and the Rewilding Cultures cooperation program, co-funded by the European Union. Chrysa Chouliara, the 2025 Makery summer chronicler-in-residency for the Rewilding Cultures program, shares her impressions of this provocative event.

Chrysa Chouliara

The Higgs boson didn’t go down in history as the world’s biggest entity, nor the simplest one. Instead, it earned its fame through its complexity. Sometimes, obscure fragments—when united—can shift our world more powerfully than one great, golden shitstorm. In today’s political climate, with the rise of raging fascism and mass ecocide, it’s no surprise that conferences like TTT exist. To paraphrase Newton: where there’s action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

It’s hard to write about TTT—it’s more of a holistic experience than a conference in its format. With approximately 170 speakers from over 30 countries focusing on questions about the nature of the forbidden and the aesthetics of liminality, and on opening spaces for creative transformation in the merging of science and art, it was humanly impossible to attend everything. Personally, I wish I had the capacity to revisit it all with a Time Machine since I’ve never encountered such an intricate curation of exquisite subjects.

At first, the format of TTT seems straightforward. In each panel, every speaker has 15 minutes to present, followed by a closing discussion with all participants. But here comes the twist: in most conferences, people are grouped together for having similar approaches to a topic. It doesn’t take long to realize that the genius of TTT’s curation lies in the contrasting perspectives and methodological approaches of its speakers. Each panel is a carpet exquisitely woven in opposing colors, firing our neurons in all directions.

Death is not the end: From vermicomposting to eco-grief

For over eight years, Andrew Gryf Paterson has practiced vermicomposting at home, documenting his interactions with his “clew” — a community of Eisenia fetida composting worms — through playful photo collages shared on a popular blogging platform. Under the Scots-familiar title Me an ma Wormies #1, these posts record a symbiotic relationship: he provides organic waste, and the worms and their microbial collaborators transform it into nutrient-rich humus, or “black gold.”

Passionate to his goal he brought his ‘clew’ composting worms all the way from Helsinki, Finland. The worms were fed among other typical delicacies such as vege scraps and coffee grinds: torn up papers from old falling-apart books. Paterson has been interested in exploring ways to inspire youth to embrace vermicomposting by turning into an engaging, educational experience through interactive visual media rather than static imagery, with the hope of creating a prototype ‘visual-jockey’ (VJ) system that visually reveals the hidden processes that take place within the compost bins. Natural sunlight exposure is lethal to worms, in a variety of ways. Earthworms don’t have eyes, they have receptor cells that are sensitive to light and touch instead making it exceedingly challenging to monitor their movements. Using different light frequencies like red and infra encouraged us to get our hands dirty and involved.

Staying in a decomposing mode, François-Joseph Lapointe—a biologist and bioartist—draws inspiration from molecular biology and genetics. In Buddhist practice, contemplating death is integral to meditation, and many cultures perform sky burials, leaving bodies exposed to nature. This pragmatic view of mortality inspired kusôzu, a Japanese art form (13th–19th century) depicting, in nine stages, the graphic decay of a corpse, usually female. This tradition, blending religion and aesthetics, finds a parallel in forensic studies of the thanatobiome—the microbial communities involved in the five stages of human decomposition: fresh, bloat, active decay, advanced decay, and dry/skeletonized.

Both artistic and scientific approaches explore the body post-mortem, reflecting the cyclical nature of life and death. While kusôzu visually narrates bodily decay, the thanatobiome unravels the microbial successions driving it, revealing thanatomorphosis—the gradual transformation of a human body into carrion, skeleton, and dust. Beyond mere representation, Lapointe’s hybrid art-science practice proposes new ways of depicting decomposition, bridging ancient aesthetic traditions with contemporary microbial forensics.

“Death is a node.
It is a point of implosion, where past, present, and future collapse – a presence/absence of that which dies.
And perhaps, a collapse for those who remain.
A key concern in Western philosophy and culture.
A point of reference. A term eternally re-appropriated by discourse.
Subject to both pornification and tabooisation at the same time..
Marietta Radomska

After months spent in various cancer wards as a patient, death, grief, and the taboo surrounding mortality touch me in ways perhaps different from most. Still, I had no idea who Marietta Radomska was when I found myself sweating and panting my way up and down two floors before finally entering her lecture — intrigued only by the title. I wasn’t disappointed. The concept of eco-grief gave form to feelings I hadn’t yet found words for.

“A sense of grief becomes increasingly tangible in contexts where climate change and planetary environmental destruction transform certain habitats into unliveable spaces and induce socio-economic inequalities and shared more-than-human vulnerabilities. Although grief and bereavement linked to the loss of a human or of that which has already passed are societally accepted or even expected, the mourning of nonhuman death and ecological loss has a rather different status. It is often described as ‘disenfranchised grief’ (Doka 1989): not openly accepted or acknowledged in society. Simultaneously, death and loss can presently be understood as important environmental concerns. In many ways, they are entwined with mechanisms of environmental violence and the myriad of its manifestations.”

Extract from “Mourning the More-Than-Human: Somatechnics of Environmental Violence, Ethical Imaginaries, and Arts of Eco-Grief” by Marietta Radomska, Somatechnics, Volume 14, Issue 2, August 2024.

Untaxonomizible taxonomies: “Too much order is a sign of danger”

It’s Thursday morning and most of us in the Komuna hall at Kino Šiška are crying. The reason behind this is daniela brill estrada’s “The in-taxonomizables”: a lecture/performance about indisciplined matter. Her words cut razor sharp like the teeth of the shark she so much admires.

“It is about all that can’t be taxonomized, categorized, measured, it is about shapeshifting bodies and existences that resist binary and closed systems of categorizations which deny life and matter in its purely free, complex, weird, messy, queer state.”

Estada draws inspiration from her personal journey of rebellion against fixed forms or taxonomies, drawing on the absurdity of gendered hierarchies, the violence inherent in social, colonial, and scientific classifications, and the deep wisdom of in-taxonomizable creatures like sharks, rocks, and salt dykes questioning the stability humans cling to, framing herself as a trajectory of information in constant transformation, celebrating the fractal, the contradictory, the in-disciplined, the distracted, the weird.

The next lecture is about “Queer Mermaids in Contemporary Art” by Jessica Ullrich. In Hans Christian Andersen the mermaid conforms to human norms and therefore suffers. Moments after her metamorphosis: “your tail will divide and shrink until it becomes what the people on earth call a pair of shapely legs. But it will hurt; it will feel as if a sharp sword slashed through you.” In her transformation she loses her voice and identity. But long before Andersen and Disney turned mermaids into icons, merpeople existed in Black and Indigenous cosmologies. The Western image of the mermaid reflects colonial ideas of beauty and femininity, but the figure itself has radical potential. As a hybrid between woman and fish, she challenges binaries between nature and culture, human and nonhuman. Artists who imagine queer, old, Black, disabled, or transgender mermaids use this figure to question racism, sexism, ableism, and human supremacy.

Aphrodisiacs, witches and multitudes

“What if humans could cure climate change by simply drinking a special potion? A potion that would create an equal playing field between all entities, human and other-than-human? And now imagine that this special potion is made by a new species of bioengineered oysters. These new and improved cyborg oysters secrete a fluid that when ingested turns that ecstatic feeling of aphrodisia in humans into a new state of sentience – an “aquadisia”!

“Aquadisia” is a playful performance and speculative design project by Stephanie Rothenberg that plays on the myth of the oyster as an aphrodisiac to reimagine a more mutually symbiotic relationship between humans and other-than-humans. It merges this with the aesthetics of telemarketing, where pseudo-scientific commercials promise everything from eternal youth to effortless weight loss.

In the times of massive ecocide and unapologetic femicides there’s no easy way out. Self-exploration becomes an act of defiance forging a witch coven preaching consensual pleasure in the performance on/scenity by le ambigue.

on/scenity is a celebration of synthetic desires, a provocative ceremony that interweaves sex, technology, magic and biology.

It is a ritual of reclaiming the body and desire.
It embodies the rebellion of Hecate’s witches, the biohacking of the future, and the sexual magic of the sacred obscene.

Our cult challenges the boundaries between technology and flesh, between impurity and power, between eroticism and revolution – it reflects her earthly, lunar, and chthonic aspects.

Following the tradition of ALMA Futura’s previous works/fields of research committed to female healthcare and its innovation, combining biotechnology and interactive wearables and the Bruixes Lab – nomadic lab of biohacking, sextech and witchcraft rituals the performance celebrates body autonomy & sovereignty: Our bodies are ours to explore, experiment and hack.

Fighting against precarious funding, burnout, and uneven access, the success of TTT lies in its ability to create safe yet provocative spaces. Each subject was approached in a transdisciplinary way, breaking away from the format of a traditional conference. Every topic found its place and was treated with respect. In short, TTT is an inclusive mosaic of contrasting experiences, where a global network of diverse practitioners builds long-term collaborations, solidarity, and resilience.

Parallel events

Outside the lecture halls, a multitude of parallel events unfolded across the colorful city of Ljubljana. But time, being the bitch that it is, allowed me to attend only two.

Beneath the central bus station, in a passage frequented by drug users, lies Cirkulacija 2. Literally an underground association, Cirkulacija 2 is an artist-led initiative based in Ljubljana, with roots reaching back to 2007. Functioning as a local hub for independent artistic production, it fosters interdisciplinary practices grounded in mutual support, shared methodologies, and social cohesion. We are there for the exhibition Spatiality, Echoes of Movement by Bass Jansson — and, of course, to taste Slug Burgers.

Yes you heard right… Marc Dusseiller, nomadic researcher and workshopologist, and artist Dominik Mahnič, presented a participatory performance — a provocative exploration of BioArt confronted with an essential question: How can there be authentic biological art without embracing the reality of killing? The work builds on more than a decade of “Urban Hunting” expeditions, inviting participants to reflect on the blurred boundaries between creation and destruction, life and decay — a recurring motif throughout TTT’s investigations into the ethics and aesthetics of the living.

The next stop is Kapelica Gallery, where curators developed Forensic Performativity, a presentation method that includes forensic remnants, video and photo documentation of previously curated performance projects, and the performative experience of personal storytelling within the intimate setting of an exhibition set there succeeding to catch the unrepeatability of extreme performance as a medium through its remains.

In the same building, there are many ateliers. Among them is the studio of one of my favorite artists, VTOL / Dmitry Morozov, whose kinetic sculptures I’ve admired for years. Visiting his studio, somehow accidentally, felt like another Easter egg of TTT. Something that barely consoles me for missing the lecture of Maja Smekar on her problems with the Slovenian far-right (you can contribute to the defense fund at Art Kinship, a platform endorsed by Makery, editor’s note).

More on TTT2025 Ljubljana

More on Rewilding Cultures and the Feral Labs Network

Read our interview with Maja Smrekar.

Rewilding Cultures Mobility: Gemma Ciabattoni at NØ SCHOOL

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 14:21:35 +0000

Gemma Ciabattoni

The Rewilding Cultures Mobility Conversation aims at initiating conversations on cultural exchange and offers grants for mobility beyond the current forms of support. Amongst the projects of 2025, Gemma Ciabattoni travelled to the NØ SCHOOL in the city of Nevers, France, with the support of Radiona (Croatia). Here is her report.

Gemma Ciabattoni (she/they) is a creative technologist, artist, coordinator, producer, and engineer based in the Netherlands. A naturally precocious person, she has been exploring more of the philosophical and theoretical side of various applications in science and technology. Furthermore, with a background in literature, robotics, and biomechatronics, she has continued to interweave images of the body, mechanics, art, and technology, particularly how we embody those elements while also researching further into mixed modalities and perception through sound, visuals, and tactility. Her curiosity and creative process involves her experimenting with others’ works through workshops and asking questions! Coming from participation in a similarly reputable school, School of Machines, Making, and Make-Believe, where she completed the course, Data Cyborgs: Reconstructing Datafied Relations, she has been working on sharpening her technical skills while looking for new opportunities.

NØ SCHOOL began as an idea from Dasha Ilina and Benjamin Gaulon (aka Recyclism) to promote learning on subjects that are not often taught in academia and caters to participants who want to broaden and improve their technical skills as well as learn about the latest developments in technology and culture. Inviting artists, designers, academics, and makers, NØ SCHOOL offers intensive workshops and evening talks from tutors and participants alike to create a skill-sharing environment for all topics related to art, science, technology, permacomputing, glitch art, among several other scintillating topics.

All roads lead to Nevers?

Following an arguably long stint on a master thesis for a master’s in Interaction Technology, “A Different Kind of Creative Evolution: Exploring the Effect of Virtual Artefacts as a Tool for Creativity with Movement-Based Design Methods and Social VR for Contact Improvisation Dance”, I wanted to keep exploring the various topics I had discovered during this project. From philosophies around body technologies and perception, as well as the technologies themselves both hardware and software, to mixing medias (ie. using equipment intended only for visuals but instead for sound, what I consider “hacking”), there were several directions to go in. It was also my goal to improve my confidence in these fields as someone who feels like a perpetual imposter.

How I discovered NØ SCHOOL remains a mystery to me exactly, but I can say it was uncovered as another consequence of reading about other initiatives, collectives, and/or organizations looking into similar topics, as often is the story with hidden gems. I applied to the school in January 2025 and after being offered a place following an interview, and eventually was able to attend in June-July 2025 with the support of Radiona, Zagreb Makerspace and the Rewilding Cultures mobility grant.

A snapshot of NØ SCHOOL’s workshops

The residency took place in Nevers, France, a small town south of Paris on the Loire river and hosted at Verte Inc. Besides having the enigmatic instructions to bring various miscellaneous items from home and how to transport dirt from our homelands, NØ SCHOOL required little else from its participants in anticipation of its activities; bring your curiosity and playful attitude. Participants had a wide vast number of skills from AI engineering to architecture in both industry and academia.

During the two weeks, we participated in curated workshops around the aforementioned topics so we could dabble in topics in which we had some knowledge or none-what-so-whatever. I wanted to highlight a few that impacted me to explore these concepts more closely, while maintaining that every workshop had a significant impact on the inspiration for where I want to take my research next.

With Terrains Communs, a local initiative in Nevers, we took soil from our home countries or chosen home, in some cases mixing it with soil from the local area to have enough material, to ultimately create a collective artwork. As they share on their own account of this workshop, “The goal of the workshop was to create a collective artwork that reminds us that — wherever we are — we are always walking on shared ground. A gesture of connection, but also of care: acknowledging our responsibility to the soils that sustain us” (Terrains Communs, https://terrainscommuns.org/NO-SCHOOL-25).

After some reflection, I choose to think of this collective artwork as a reflection of all of our backgrounds in the summer school, and also that this time going back to school is also a matter of retracing our steps to what brought us to Nevers. I also think that taking a practice, like chromatography, that requires time and patience, forces you to be slow and be aware of the intricacies in the milieu around you, which is something at least I have taken for granted.

In another workshop, led by the co-director Recyclism, we had the opportunity to deconstruct with some high quality scavenged materials. From old games for Playstationto defunct printers, the only task was to make a custom fidget toy.

I had my eyes set on this part of the printer because once it was removed from the husk, it reminded me of a spine and wind instrument. So, I decided to take the soft buttons off a modern typing machine and place them on the side of the roll unit. Maybe not the most travel-friendly fidget toy, but it definitely kept both hands busy for the time being.

As for the final workshop, in Claire Williams’s “Electromagnetic Walk” workshop, we constructed an antenna from a random assortment of materials, wrapped them in copper wire, and proceeded to solder the main components to create an EMF amplifier, to receive the sounds of the electromagnetic field around us.

Sharing is caring, but make it pink neon and radical!

Besides our workshops, every participant and tutor held a roughly 15-minute talk about their work. Part of what helps with the development of one’s project is also sharing what they have done and learned and where they are curious to go.

Ultimately, I discussed my thesis research, “A Different Kind of Creative Evolution”, for the master’s in Interaction Technology at the University of Twente. The work consisted of creating a virtual world in the social virtual reality (VR) platform, Neos, which was then migrated over to the new platform, Resonite. This virtual world, renamed “Octopus Garden”, contained several interactive components meant to influence two users while they were tasked with performing the specific dance form, contact improvisation. This study looked at what virtual features can stimulate creativity and translate from the virtual to the physical world and in what way do they influence the dancers. The study also looked at the onboarding of dancers before entering virtual reality in a new design framework called Movement-based design methods.

Besides the initial defense, this was the first time I had presented this project to an inter- and transdisciplinary group of creatives. With some participants coming from engineering, it was a great opportunity to share where my background in engineering landed in the art realm and following every talk, we all had a chance to learn a bit more about one another’s motivations and obsessions. Afterwards, I was given several leads on more dance-focused creators in places such as Croatia, Canada, and France.

Where to go from here

My goal in going to NO SCHOOL was also as a means to understand how I could help support other initiatives back home, including Coders Against Genocide (CAG), applying art and technology to activism in the remainder of 2025. So far, I have taken the antenna project and presented it at the Hackfest in Enschede and created a zine detailing how one could make their own antenna, with the aim of calling to question, “what is hacking?”. It was already my plan, after the workshops of hellocatfood and Ted Davis, to create a mixed media interactive game or installation with a similar goal as Terrains Communs, to create a collective piece highlighting one’s surroundings and their interactions with it, perhaps connecting this also to CAG. Many quests pending, but my new target is to repurpose technical applications from what they were originally created to, as Terrains Communs shares, re-sensitize and remind us of our responsibility to the space we share.

Rewilding Cultures website

NØ SCHOOL is part of Feral Labs Network

Gemma Ciabattoni was mentored by Radiona for this mobility grant

Switzerland: Oscillations from the HomeMade super camp

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 18:32:08 +0000

HomeMade is an annual week-long mechatronic research retreat, hosted in different remote locations across Switzerland. The camp is designed to foster DIY (Do-It-Yourself) and DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) practices in an off-the-grid environment. From 1st to 10th of August, the camp brought together 109 participants and infinite projects at a Swiss Gästehaus on the Untersee of Constance Lake. Chrysa Chouliara, the 2025 Makery summer chronicler-in-residency for the Rewilding Cultures program, shares her impressions of this unique edition of the Swiss event.

Chrysa Chouliara

“Hacker artists operate as culture hackers who manipulate existing techno-semiotic structures towards a different end, to get inside cultural systems on the net and make them do things they were never intended to do.”

Jenny Marketou, greek multidisciplinary artist, lecturer & author, in an interview with Cornelia Solfrank in 2000.

The first time I joined a summer camp, I was around nine years old. After one week of maladjustment among my peers, my unsupervised existence away from home ended in the back seat of my parents’ car—with Band-Aid-covered legs and two different shoes.

Since then, the only camp I’ve consistently returned to is the HomeMade camp in Switzerland. Organized by SGMK (Swiss Mechatronic Art Society), it takes place each year in a different location—from abandoned chocolate factories to remote castles—offering a unique DIY-or-die, off-the-grid atmosphere, filled with a constellation of people from all over the world.

20 years of HomeMade camps

This year, HomeMade lasted ten days instead of the usual week. The reason behind this is its 20-year anniversary. Most associations organize summer camps so that members can get to know each other better and dive into their favorite subjects. In the case of SGMK, it was the other way around—the association was formed after the third edition of the HomeMade camp.

The camp acts both as the glue that holds this community together and as the spark that ignites new projects. Unsurprisingly, its tight-knit community and international guests share a similar mindset. Their span between electronic music, art, science, and technology, with a strong focus on “hacking” in its broadest sense. SGMK members often join forces to creatively push the limits of systems, devices, programs, or objects—whether by building DIY synthesizers, transforming webcams into USB microscopes, or even attempting to reset the monitors of pregnancy tests.

We all arrive at the Wartburg, a guest house in Mannenbach, sweating and panting from the climb up the hill. The Gasthaus sits above the lake, its scenic view competing with the swarm of familiar faces meeting and greeting. From the corner of my eye I catch Paul Tas- AKA Error Instruments. Paul didn’t exactly have an easy start. School was a struggle, dyslexia turned the basics into battles, and somewhere along the way he picked up the nickname Error — lifted from the “syntax error” screens that blinked across early computers. But instead of dodging mistakes, he leaned into them, turning glitches, slips, and wrong turns — all stitched together with modern microcontrollers. The outcome: small batches of bizarre, wild and stylish instruments.

With 109 people attending this year, the logistics was tough, but self-organization thrived once again. True to the camp’s name, everything was made — and maintained — by the participants, cooking and cleaning included. We enjoy the specialties of chefs who serve us Algerian, Indian, Slovenian, or Japanese dinners.

Hacklab in the wood house

Under the main building, almost hidden by towering trees, a seemingly endless stairway leads down to the Waldhaus — the “forest house,” where all the musicians and many workshop practitioners are busy setting up their lair.

I’m excited to see, among others, Quentin Aurat — a multidisciplinary practitioner from France whose performance with his DIY spring instrument, Poutr, I had adored during the ArtLabo Retreat. His work moves between art and technology, dissecting transmission protocols, human media devices, and the strange poetry of their artifacts. A self-taught musician, Aurat’s practice is rooted in improvisation, and his performance at HomeMade would prove it.

Late at night midway down, a glowing light-and-smoke installation by Charon Obulus cuts through the dark shadows. I walk into a translucent tent that envelopes a pool filled with water and floating. Mesmerising as it may be it’s a warm night night perfect for night swimming. I glance right, then left, and after I make sure none’s around I jump into the pool. I am neither the first nor the last to take an opportunistic approach to this art work.

By the following morning, the Waldhaus had been transformed into a DIY paradise, every inch covered with electronics, where the soldering never stopped. A quieter room in the back is set as a radio station for interviews.

Listen to Paula Pin & Alfonso Millán Omil jam session (online and on FM in Mulhouse):

In 2007 Claude built his first Atari Punk Console at SGMK. It was here he got infected by the electronic DIY virus. Ever since, he’s been building his very own synthesizers with unusual oscillations, and has deepened his interest in circuit bending. From this he evolved his current project FlipFloater.

Listen to Flip Floater jam session for p-node radio (online and on FM in Mulhouse):

In similar fashion Swiss musician Oliver Jäggi, AKA Omega Attraktor, builds his own instruments— where improvisation turns technology into an instrument of surprise.

Only once a day, and somewhat reluctantly, would the participants climb the gargantuan stairway back up to the main house for dinner. It’s even a bigger effort after enjoying night jam sessions.

Do you speak Braille?

Hugues Aubin, invited by the Archipelago Synergies project, as an advocate of fablabs and the maker spirit. In a self-sewn gown, presented ForgeCC — a bottom-up platform for sharing skills through fablabs and open-source tools. The idea is simple: propose a workshop, get it approved, carry it out, document it. No bureaucracy, just manuals and shared knowledge. Within a year, 30+ workshops popped up across 11 countries.

One of the most interesting projects presented was the BrailleRAP. Braille is a form of written language for blind people, in which characters are represented by patterns of raised dots that are felt with the fingertips.

Access to electronic braille devices (refreshable braille displays) and embossers (braille printers) can be very expensive, creating a financial barrier for many blind people and educators that need to prepare small batches of texts for the students. BrailleRAP is an open source DIY Braille embosser that anyone can build, share or even sell.The device has the potential to help since it cuts off the costs and anyone can transcode text to Braille and then emboss it on paper.

Presentation of the BrailleRAP, a DIY open source Braille embosser (2023):

The beauty of Hugues Aubin’s presentation lay in its alignment with the founding of a new board for the Friends of Linux University, established by Michel Pauli and Chanceline Ngainku Pauli in Cameroon. This project teaches programming and applied solar technology in a rural school, where students learn to code webpages, explore robotics, and build solar water pumps, among other skills. Friends of Linux also hosts an artist and maker residency, which has welcomed past visitors such as Miranda Moss and Urs Gaudenz from Gaudi Lab (read Makery’s article by Miranda Moss from 2024).

For kids and grown-ups

Every day everyone is geeking around working on their projects or attending planned and impromptu workshops or radio discussions. I am no exception—I keep working on my graphic novel Fluffy. The talks I have with everyone late at night helps my process.

At noon most of us head to the lake. Most of us enjoy a long relaxing swim but others are working on their “aviation” projects flying their handmade airplanes on the shores of Lake Constance. In a rather paradoxical episode one of the planes nearly landed on my head. For a moment the thought of dying in a plane crash while swimming entertains my imagination.

It would not be fair to forget to mention that HomeMade is a kids friendly event, and that many of the parents came with great imagination to propose fun workshops to the kids.

Many musicians, many spirits

As the week draws to a close, the final event unfolds—music performances spanning from the early afternoon until the next morning. Monica Pocrnjić, our head chef for the closing night nicknames the dish “trauma therapy,” as we gather to mercilessly chop 22 kilos of onions. Tears flow amongst laughter; this isn’t a job for one person, which is why every cooking team had five members — plus the occasional spontaneous volunteer.

There’s no fixed stage for the concerts; instead, we drift through the forest and between the two houses, guided by the schedule. Each musician has built their own setup, turning every corner into the next concert.

Some say HomeMade week is the shortest week of the year—but even ten days of the Supercamp feel far too short for many of us. As our trunks pile up in front of Gasthaus Wartburg, we can’t help but feel a little… HOMELESSMADE.

At the end of the day it is all about making PCB’s not War.

More on HomeMade and the Archipelago Tour.

HOMEMADE Camp Timeline (2003–2025)

Origins (pre-SGMK)

• 2003 — Robotic Workshop, Romainmôtier (Swiss Jura). Considered the predecessor to HOMEMADE, it gathered cultural and scientific tinkerers for DIY robotics prototypes and playful exploration.

• 2005 — Romainmôtier (VD). First official HOMEMADE week (Migros Kulturprozent). A small but intense gathering with self-built electronics and early synth experiments.

• 2006 — Romainmôtier (VD). Second HOMEMADE week, growing in participants and scope, reinforcing the spirit of the DIY community.

Early SGMK years

• 2007 — Lenk-Simmental (BE). First mountain edition, marked by rugged outdoor labs and late-night soldering sessions.

• 2008 — Les Pontins, Berner Jura (BE). Expanded workshops in sound, biology, and open hardware.

• 2009 — Vico Morcote (TI). First camp in Ticino, remembered for its lakeside setting and cross-cultural exchanges.

• 2010 — Romainmôtier (VD), L’arc. Return to origins with more structured workshops, now under the umbrella of SGMK.

• 2011 — Gais (AR), Lagerhaus Schwäbrig. A milestone year, remembered for its collaborative projects and packed communal living.

• 2012 — Vico Morcote (TI). Beloved repeat venue, strengthened ties to the local art scene.

• 2013 — Wildhaus, Toggenburg (SG). Famous for its buzzing energy—and lots of flies.

Expansion & special locations

• 2014 — Château de Fougerette (France). First international edition. A castle setting that inspired new performances, large-scale installations, and sonic experiments.

• 2015 — Berghaus Birchweid, Eggberge (UR). Remote alpine retreat with strong focus on hacking nature-inspired systems.

• 2016 — Pfäffikon (ZH). SGMK 10-Year Festival edition, celebrated with etching stations, DIY robotics, and a large public program.

• 2017 — Waldhaus Tenna (GR). A packed, high-energy week with intense soldering jams and shared meals.

• 2018 — Ostello Adula & La Fabbrica del Cioccolato, Dangio (TI). Extra workspace in a former chocolate factory; legendary for synth-meets-Tesla coil performances.

• 2019 — Villa Kunterbunt, Schwanden (GL). Remembered for colorful workshops, open labs, and communal hacking.

• 2020 — Le Chandelier, Saint-Ursanne (JU). Closed with a public night of experimental synth performances at the historic lime kilns (Fours à Chaux).

Recent years

• 2021 — Petit-Vivy Castle, Villars-sur-Glâne (FR). First “castle camp” in Canton Fribourg, blending medieval spaces with futuristic tinkering.

• 2022 — Alp Wäng, Unteriberg (SZ). High alpine mechatronics camp; solar panels and off-grid systems pushed to the limit.

• 2023 — Berghaus Girlen, Ebnat-Kappel (SG). Collaborative research labs, PCB etching, and cross-disciplinary workshops.

• 2024 — Guesthouse Obere Wechten, Solothurn Jura (SO). Stunning alpine setting, workshops stretching late into starry nights.

• 2025 — Wartburg, Salenstein (TG, Lake Untersee/Bodensee). 20-Year Anniversary Edition, with expanded facilities, lakeside access, “All-Stars Super Party,” and a double collaboration with ArtLabo Retreat (Brittany, FR).

Interaction, improvisation and transdisciplinarity: interview with Simon Berz at Home Made 2025

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 12:21:14 +0000

We met Simon Berz this summer in Salenstein-Mannenbach, on the Swiss side of Lake Constance, where SGMK was organizing the 20th edition of its Home Made summer camp. Makery and PING set up a radio studio there. Simon, a long-time companion of SGMK, spoke to us about his career as a musician and multidisciplinary artist, and the projects he is developing at his art center, Combination Space. Interview.

la rédaction

Makery: Can you introduce yourself?

Simon Berz: I’m Simon Berz. I’m finally a drummer. I played in punk jazz bands, improvised music first. Then I started to be more interested in electronics and amplifying drums. I was in bands like Apparat in Berlin, we played electronics with live instruments 20 years ago. This had a deep impact on me to extend the drums in this way. At that time in Berlin it was really common to play with the computer. You didn’t know what the DJ or the musician was doing behind the screen. As a drummer, I was bored about that. But then I found an album by Apparat in a record store and I wrote him an email saying: “I’m a drummer and I look for electronic musicians.” It turns out he was really looking for a drummer and we started a band. It was a very nice experience finally to intertwin acoustic instruments and electro-techno.

But it was more and more boring for me to have the headphones on. I realized I was not “an apparat” – funny enough there is this book written by the former drummer of Kraftwerk Wolfgang Flür when he left the band, entitled “I Was a Robot” (laughs).

Then I involved myself more in the DIY scene. I met SGMK and started to make self-made instruments. I had a really nice workshop with Nic Collins. He came also once at Home Made. I will never forget this moment when a battery, a loudspeaker and some paperclips changed my life. I realized I can do that by myself: playing these electro-acoustic interactions with a battery and a loudspeaker. I was freaking out and I realized I was – and I am still – a little boy deeply influenced by Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple. I accepted this and it came to my mind there was a missing link. We did have electric guitars, electrified instruments but we did not have the electrified drums. It was the time I had my own music school and I realized we just had these MIDI drums. I said to myself: “Now, what happens if I start to amplify stuff with piezo microphones and making feedbacks?” So I started to build this rocking desk. I had a normal drum set with amplified drumsticks and a lot of punch from piezos on the drums, and effects and amplifier behind.

I realized I haven’t to do anything. I can put the drum sticks on the skins and it started already a party time. I started to play solo shows and bands: Fell is one band, it lasted 10 years, also the band Superterz which was touring with Nils Petter Molvær and Kondo Toshinori, and some others.

This had a deep impact but I also then realized after 15 years that it was over. I wanted to dig in deeper: I decided to study transdisciplinary fine arts in Zurich. I started by making wireless drumsticks to get rid of all these cables. I worked with two universities where I had the chance to get a carbon stick that can really smash hard and detect the movements. I ended up again with Ableton Live. I knew Ableton from the beginning, because Apparat was close to the inventors, Gerhard Beles and Robert Henke, aka Monolake. It was clear to me that the software was good. I was able to play beats, and also get the data. With the sticks for example, you can retrieve the X, Y, Z data of a movement. We had a working prototype. But eventually I got not anymore interested, because a lot of these new instruments came quickly to the market that year, from the SuperBooth in Berlin.

I had already founded my own school and I did not want to be a producer of new instruments at the SuperBooth, I didn’t want to go into this music business. My brother founded the first green party in Switzerland, it also influenced me to say no. And the studies of fine arts had led me completely to another way. I put my sticks in ink – I went many times to China and Japan on tour – and I started to draw pictures with them. Then I came back to SGMK where I met all these freaks (laughs), this culture of sharing.

You have stones on your drum set. Is it a usual artistic practice of yours to mix natural things and technology?

Absolutely. A very simple thing happened to me once, when I was on holidays in the French Alps. I was cycling home and suddenly a Steve Reich’s score played on my wheels. I stopped the bicycle, took 30 kilos of stones, and back to Switzerland I started to build a sound installation. After different iterations, I amplified the stones wich had this really soft sound. And I learned a lot with that. I made this little instrument called Tectonic now, thanks to a grant I got from Zurich city to go to Husafell, Iceland, where Pall Gudmundsson build this kind of instruments, for Sigur Rós, Arvo Pärt, Evelyn Glennie…

This was very crazy. I found these five stones which I have here right now in ice storms. You have only five minutes of survival in the middle of an ice storm, you know. Artistically it was very interesting to me, it’s like meeting a beautiful partner in a party over there, falling in love immediately and then working together on this love. They are just found stones. It was all about this very short harsh moment in the Icelandic landscape to say “ding dong dong dong dong. This is it.” Only after you start to think about what they can do. And it’s so funny, these stones are now touring between Cuba and Japan. For example in Indonesia it fits perfectly in the gamelan music, because it’s naturally tuned. We are transdisciplinary. It opens so much perspectives for me as a white man to come to Indonesia and say : “let’s collaborate together, I come with five million years old stones. Nobody knows how they sound. Me neither. We just experiment, to find out how you sound and how you are, to communicate.”

Let’s talk about your place, Combination Space, where you develop the concept of “permacircularity”. What is it?

I was touring a lot and I had my space in Berlin, and my school in Zug, but I felt at home nowhere, I didn’t find my stuff. I had the desire to have an atelier, where I can keep and watch my art, it’s really important to sediment this. I found this old chocolate company, Cima Norma in Val de Plenio, and I got by accident their old wood factory. I started to renovate it, I also had access to the garden. And the pandemic happened. During the lockdown, I started gardening, I had no idea about permaculture, but instantly I thought about that, read a bit on it, and started to make a biotope. What happened was insane : so many animals, snakes, lizards, crazy big insects, new flowers, new plants showed up.

I had the idea to make an event in the permaculture garden about diversity. We know that we have a huge problem in the world with monoculture : we lose spaces, we lose creativity through Spotify, we lose original expressions from humans, and to me it is similar, it relates obviously with the concepts of mono versus perma culture. I started what I called Kombinat sessions, while I think it’s very interesting just to ask people what they think, how we can develop diversity. For example what we witness here is a biotope of craziness (laughs), but seriously we must ask ourselves how to protect this in this really crazy world of Spotify and artificial intelligence and commercializing. My background comes from pedagogy, I studied pedagogy towards disabled people. I developed my own school. I think what matters today is the environment, and psychologically, personal empowerment. I see a lot of young people coming from the sound world, from the art schools, who are extremely lost, highly educated, highly skilled, but with no orientation. We must take care of all the different generations and find out what we need together.

I was already teaching music at primary school first, then in music classes. I studied pedagogy towards handicapped people, but unfortunately only the theoretical part, I can’t have been able to get practical on this because I got a grant to go to New York to study drums. I had a very hard moment there, very dangerous, but I survived. When I came back to Switzerland I decided to really dig in, I was convinced we need another education, an alternative to the actual education system. I founded a school in Zug, the most expensive and richest place in Switzerland. Glencore, as well as Shell, for example, are there. It was a very funny experience to see CEOs in my school playing blues together with Syrian refugees, and then talking about gasoline. I realized what matters is to bring human beings together to share. It’s a very idealistic idea, but it works, and we have experimented with this creative transdisciplinary music pedagogy for 25 years now. I’m not anymore a teacher, I teach the teachers now, so I go mostly with energy, creativity, and chaos with the kids on the drums. I’m perhaps a cultural navigator, certainly not a coach. My credo would be : “let’s see together where we are, who we are, what you would like to do. We cannot predict what will happen between people, it’s a constant interaction.” And we come back to the permaculture idea.

You do projects and performances that involve sometimes hundreds of people. Can you speak about one or two of these?

I did many projects with kids of all generations, nationwide. Once in Zurich, we built shopping cars, put trash in and on the shopping cars, and we had a parade just to show we were using a trash sound machine and playing together. 30 000 people showed up. This was deeply influenced by my experiences in Africa.

Another one: I was on tour in New Orleans five years after the Katrina storm. I realized that people were still traumatized, there were mountains of fridges and stuff on the streets. We found instruments, radios, tons of stuff. I already had a project in Berlin and Zurich to build and hack instruments from trash. In New Orleans, it was insane. We invited famous jazz musicians to play with us. This was completely mind blowing. We had the best, most incredible improvisers. It’s a project called Liquid Land.

LIQUID LAND Documentation film

I think we in Europe are now at a turning point. There is a wave of creativity and knowledge coming from Asia and Africa, because people from there know about handling disasters, handling recycling. We can learn a lot from them.

Do you have specific mediation processes to make people from different backgrounds and cultures to meet and collaborate?

First we have to get out of stigmatization. Some people are too quick to assume that because you work with someone, you think like them and share the same political views. Or that you don’t really belong where you live, that you look down on the local population because you travel a lot and are not often at home. I want people here and around, I am interested in their ideas, but we do something together, we do sound, we do visual interactions (I am thinking of what we do with Andi Hoffmann who runs Combination Space with me). Eating and cooking together is also very important. Having walks together… In a word, to interact for real, which is more and more difficult in big cities, and in general everywhere, because of social media. At Combination Space, we have hanged second-hand socks on the doors, we ask people to put their phones in. I am very into digital detox, I read a lot on brain science, pedagogy and education…I would say the important thing is to share and remain as aware as possible of what transdisciplinarity entails in the times we live in.

Listen to the interview on P-Node radio:

Simon Berz website

Combination Space website

Find out more on Rewilding Cultures and Feral Labs Network in Makery

Legal battle against political abuse of art: interview with Maja Smrekar

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 23:05:47 +0000

Maja Smrekar’s acclaimed K-9_topology series has, for over a decade, explored the entangled kinship between humans, dogs, and technology through a deeply embodied eco-feminist lens. Her work has gained international recognition, but in recent months it has also been severely misused in a far-right political campaign, exposing the vulnerability of artists when their practice is appropriated for ideological battles. In this interview, Smrekar reflects on the broader context of her artistic research, the challenges posed by political abuse of art, and the need to build collective resilience against censorship. These pressing issues will be addressed on 11 September in Ljubljana, Slovenia, at the 2025 conference Taboo – Transgression – Transcendence in Art & Science (TTT).

Ewen Chardronnet

Ewen Chardronnet : Could you recontextualise the origin of this research on the co-evolution of humans and dogs, humans and wolves, how did you start 10 years ago?

Maja Smrekar: Back in 2013, I was talking with my producers at Kapelica Gallery about what direction I should take next. We had been working together for a few years already, but at a certain point, I didn’t really know where to go from there. This is when curator, Jurij Krpan, asked me a very simple but powerful question: What is the one topic that never stops pulling you in?
And without thinking too much, I said: dogs. I’ve always been fascinated by them—especially by their relationship with humans. I kept wondering: when did this bond begin? Why did they stay with us? Why did they allow us to shape them the way we did? And why do they always seem so grateful, so loving, and so willing to collaborate with us?

So we decided: okay, let’s work on that. But I felt I needed to start at the very beginning—with the history of domestication. How, why, where, and when did it actually happen? Since dogs come from the wolf—I wanted to firstly talk to people who study wolf ecology. Eventually, I connected with the biologist Miha Krofel from the University of Ljubljana, who specialized in wolves and other large carnivores. At the time, he was involved in a big project called LIFE WolfAlps EU, focused on coordinated wolf conservation. I ended up spending almost a year with him, following his work.

The project itself lasted several years and aimed to regulate wolf populations in Slovenia. It brought together everyone who has to deal with wolves—hunters, livestock farmers, dog breeders, shepherds. Before that, wolf numbers had only been estimated in very rough ways: a hunter might spot a pack here, another a lone wolf there, and based on that they’d say something like, well, we probably have 80 to 100 wolves, let’s kill 15 this year. The LIFE project changed that by introducing a rigorous, systematic count, which then informed legal decisions about culling.

I joined the biologist on many of his trips through the Slovenian wilderness. He was constantly on the move, checking tracking devices, collecting wolf scat to study DNA, and mapping out family lines. I was fascinated by the whole methodology of population tracking. I’d spend time in the car while he disappeared into the forest, wearing special clothes he kept hidden there for weeks so the wolves wouldn’t catch his scent.

Those long drives became my chance to ask endless questions. Since he didn’t have much spare time, the car became my classroom. I would interview him about everything—wolf ecology, taxonomy, biology, behavior. Then I’d go home, read more of his recommended literature, and come back with new questions. It was almost like having my own private seminar on wolves for nearly a year.

EC: And you were asking about wolf-human relations?

MS: Yes, but I wasn’t only asking scientific questions. I was also curious about the cultural, humanistic side. For example, I asked him why the wolf is always the villain in fairy tales—like Little Red Riding Hood. We also talked about the mythology of werewolves, and how wolves, like eagles, owls, snakes, rats, spiders or tigers, belong to that group of “charismatic animals” we either fear or revere. He told me something fascinating: he had never encountered any reliable scientific or historical record of wolves killing and eating a living human, except in extremely rare cases of sick or abnormal animals. But he did point to many medieval texts describing wolves and bears feeding on human corpses during pandemics and plagues. In those times, when sanitation protocols didn’t exist, bodies were often discarded outside city walls. Wolves, being both hunters and scavengers, would feed on them. The sight must have been horrific, and that collective memory likely shaped the image of the wolf as a dangerous, almost demonic creature in human culture.

These conversations, blending science with cultural history, were incredibly enriching for me. I was reading a lot about the parallel evolution of humans and wolves at the time, so every discussion opened up new layers of understanding. It wasn’t just about biology—it was about mythology, fear, kinship, and the long, entangled history of our two species.

EC: You could also relate this to your personal story?

MS: I first came to this subject from a sentimental place. I grew up as an only child in a family that bred dogs, so for me “family” always meant living with many of them. My earliest memories are full of dogs, and my emotional connection to them was very strong. But I never really knew why this bond between humans and dogs was so deep—or how it went all the way back to humans and wolves cohabiting 35 to 40,000 years ago, long before the agricultural revolution, when humans were still nomadic.

Researching this was fascinating, especially learning that it wasn’t humans who colonized wolves, but rather wolves who came to us. Human groups would throw away scraps—mostly bones and leftovers that weren’t edible to them. For wolves, whose entire survival strategy is based on conserving energy, this was a perfect opportunity. Their ecology is about investing the least energy possible, which is why they usually hunt weak or sick prey, stabilizing the ecosystem in the process. So of course, they would take the food that humans discarded—it was the most efficient survival strategy.

Fast forward thousands of years, to about 12,000 years ago, when the agricultural revolution began in different parts of the world. Some wolves stayed close to human settlements, living on the edge of villages while still keeping the structure of wolf pack dynamics—their incredible sense of smell, hearing, and vision meant they became early-warning systems for danger. Over time, this changed humans too. Gradually, our bodies began to produce less adrenaline and cortisol—the hormones of stress and threat—because wolves were taking over that role of protection. In parallel, humans started producing more refined levels of serotonin, the hormone that supports tolerance and social cohesion.

This shift freed up energy for humans as well: instead of being constantly on alert for predators, they could invest more attention in agriculture, and eventually in culture—developing art, rituals, and technologies. In a way, the presence of wolves co-created the conditions for human civilization to flourish. Slowly, over many generations, some wolves never went back to the wilderness. They remained at the margins of human settlements, and through this long cohabitation, they became dogs.

And eventually dogs themselves began to adapt to us. They discovered that by making their eyes look larger and their bodies less threatening, they received not just food, but also affection. Humans welcomed them into homes, into beds, into the intimacy of everyday life. This mutual gaze and closeness raised oxytocin levels in both species—the hormone of bonding and love. That’s where this extraordinary reciprocity comes from. Dogs give us love because we give it to them, and this exchange has become biologically embedded in both species.

So what really struck me is that dogs and humans co-evolved together. We didn’t just domesticate them—they also domesticated us. Living side by side created a kind of mutual selection pressure that shaped our biology, our emotions, even our culture. That’s why I often say: no matter what cultural hierarchies claim, in a very real sense, we are equals.

EC: It was also around this time that you developed the Ecce Canis project on the co-evolution of serotonin between humans and wolves, consisting of an olfactory installation that the public could experience at the bottom of a cornucopia-shape environment covered in fur, evoking the caves where humans lived at the beginning of the relationship between wolves and humans. At the time I was working as a curator at the Antre Peaux in Bourges and I wanted to work on an anniversary project of the Kapelica Gallery, and Jurij Krpan told me about your work. Shortly before that, we had met Jean-Philippe Varin from Jacana Wild Life Studios in the Sologne forest near Bourges, a zoologist, wildlife photographer and renowned animal trainer for the cinema, who had worked on Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Bear, the deers of Hannibal Lecter, or on Harry Potter’s snowy owl and eagle-owls, among others. Varin, who has since passed away, was nearing the end of his career and wanted to work locally with us, so I told him about your work and ideas and he agreed wholeheartedly with what you just said about the co-evolution of humans and wolves, even mentioning the special role of women in this process during the cave era. He was enthusiastic and even told me that your ideas reminded him of when he worked with packs of wolves for video clips of french pop singer Mylene Farmer. The idea of inviting you to work with him then emerged. And you came in residency to prepare an exbibition and performance at the Bandits-Mages Festival 2014 in Antre Peaux.

MS: Thank you so much for making that possible! Coming to Jacana Wildlife Studios felt like arriving home. We worked hard there, but I was so happy, probably full of oxytocin (laugh). What struck me most was being surrounded by animal ethologists, people who truly know how to communicate with other living beings. We came to work with wolves and wolf-dogs, but Jean Philippe showed us—sometimes in person, sometimes on video—that you can actually communicate with any form of life. Not just with the big, charismatic animals like tigers or bears, but also with bees, with birds even while they’re still inside their eggs, with worms, fungi, bacteria. Communication can happen through behavior, through food, through light, through vibrations and frequencies—it’s about tuning into the right channel.

I had already understood, in some way, that human language is a system, an institution. It helps us enormously, but it can also trap us inside our own expressions. With other living beings, you first have to learn their language—their behavior, their biology, because everything is connected. Behavior is always tied to physiology, to biology, even to technology, which is of course true for humans as well. This way of seeing the world has helped me so much when communicating with people. Sometimes, when I don’t understand someone, or when I find myself lost in a group, I pause and simply observe. I ask: what is their language? How are they communicating, and why? Then I try to meet them there, to speak in their terms, if it’s possible. And – that’s also ethology.

So the time I spent at Jacana was not only invaluable for my project—it was deeply important for me as a person. I grew there, I learned something essential. That’s why, whenever I talk about this project, especially about the preparations, I always return to that experience. Because it wasn’t only research; it was a lesson in how to live and how to connect with the other.

EC: Can you describe your first encounter with the pack?

MS: I arrived with a certain confidence about communicating with the pack of canines. I thought: well, I know dogs, this won’t be a problem. But of course, I quickly discovered that even though their DNA is almost identical, wolves are not dogs—they are something else entirely. When we first met with the wranglers—Jean Philippe, Véronique Gérault, and Christophe Gaudry—they explained the chain of command, the ways of communication, how we would approach the animals. And honestly, at that moment, I thought to myself: yes, I know this already. But when I actually stepped into that enormous enclosed space with two wolves and three wolf-dogs, I realized I knew nothing.

The largest one leapt at me immediately, pinned me to the wall, and nipped me on the cheek. It wasn’t aggressive—he bit very gently—but it was so fast, and I was terrified. I didn’t show it outwardly, but of course they felt it, because instantly the whole pack withdrew. And that’s when the wranglers explained something crucial: it’s not enough to hide fear, you have to not feel it. Because the pack doesn’t respond to fear with attack—it’s not about danger—it’s about energy. Nervousness, insecurity, tension: they simply don’t want that energy in their pack. They won’t attack you, they’ll just exclude you. And I thought: how wise. What a lesson for life.

So the wranglers encouraged me to claim the space in a calm, relaxed way. To walk into the center, to settle myself, to be still but grounded. Slowly, the animals became curious again. They began to test me—brushing past me, bumping into me lightly, circling me. Not aggressively, but persistently, to see whether I would lose my calm. My task was simply to stay steady, to hold the space without resistance or nervousness. And at some point I realized: I have to trust the wranglers completely. They were my translators, between me as the newcomer and the animals who lived by an entirely different set of rules. So I surrendered to their guidance.

Véronique then told me to kneel on the ground. She explained that the alpha female’s acceptance would be decisive—the whole pack would follow her lead. And indeed, it was the alpha female who came forward, took my hand gently in her muzzle, and led me to the center. This was the moment the wranglers had prepared me for: I was told to stay low, to look the others in the eye—but never the alpha male, because my gaze could mean a challenge to him. So I met the eyes of the others, and one by one they approached. Soon, they were licking my face, circling, brushing their bodies against me. They never stopped moving—it was so different from dogs, who might eventually settle down into calmness or cuddle. The wolves and wolf-dogs remained in motion, but their movements were full of touch, contact, curiosity, inclusion. And I had to reciprocate, to respond to their generosity with my own. I felt incredibly privileged to be accepted.

It was such a profound lesson: that true calmness is a language in itself. A state of being. And that nonverbal communication—being together in silence, in trust with another species—was extraordinary.

From there, we began rehearsing the performance. The wranglers were very serious about preparing the animals, ensuring they would feel at ease in another space, in front of 200 people. My role in the performance, I decided, was to become a landscape. I wanted the animals to carry the action, while I remained still, as a surface, a presence. Of course, there were references—Beuys, Kulik—artists who had performed with canines. But I felt my position was different. Beuys had used the coyote as a metaphor; Kulik had embodied the dog itself – as a symbol. For me, in 2014, it felt essential to approach it from a posthuman perspective—not as metaphor or paraphrase, but as coexistence. The human and the animal on the same level, both part of nature, both entangled in culture, in biology, and history.

So I wanted the wolves and wolf-dogs to eat directly off me—food made from starch and meat, reflecting our co-evolutionary pressures of digestion (dogs digest starch, not wolves, ed.). But of course, to make this possible, we had to rehearse carefully. In a pack, food can trigger tension, even conflict. The wranglers worked tirelessly to ensure the animals were relaxed, to curate the situation, to make sure no fights broke out. And I had to be consistently kind, consistently trusting and calm, while they ate from my body.

What mattered most was trust. If they didn’t trust me, they wouldn’t stay with me on stage, especially not under the eyes of 200 people only meters away. But because of the preparations, wranglers’ care and the animals’ willingness, it became possible. And for me, it was not just a performance. It was a lesson in calmness, in generosity and trust.

Maja Smrekar, performance “I hunt nature and culture hunts me”: making-of at Jacana Wildlife Studios (Philippe Zunino & Ewen Chardronnet, 12’45”):

EC: Another important factor was the context in which the work and discussions with Jean Philippe took place. He belonged to an older generation of filmmakers and, during the process, he often mentioned the criticism he was currently receiving for his methods. On the one hand, more and more filmmakers were using digital special effects to create animals, and he complained that it looked so fake and that actors and directors were no longer building real relationships with animals during filming. He felt that working with real animals required specific skills and dialogue, which disappeared when everything was digital. On the other hand, he was also criticised by some animal welfare organisations, which considered the methods of his generation to be exploitative, both in his films and in his workplace, which functioned in part as a zoo. At the time, he was under intense media pressure regarding animal welfare, and I remember questioning certain practices, such as placing beepers on birds’ eggs, as you mentioned earlier. I remember hearing his frustration with this new wave of criticism at the end of his career, directed at both his work and his workplace. Yet at the same time, his knowledge and close relationships with so many species were truly impressive, and I was in awe of that. I think in a way this project allowed him to rise above the controversies; I think he enjoyed collaborating with you because you were genuinely committed to the animals, not just interested in capturing an image. For him, it was important to show, at the end of his career, that he valued communication with animals, as well as the care, love and knowledge that can only be acquired through direct contact, and not just through conceptual ideas about human-animal relationships. I think this was a key element of Jean Philippe’s commitment to the project. How do you address the issues he may have faced in your artistic strategy?

MS: Working with Jean Philippe and his team of wranglers taught me a great deal —precisely because his approach was rooted in direct contact. No matter which dogs are my companions at a given time, we always engage in what we call training. Because this is where a real bond is formed, much deeper than when we are just taking a walk. Taking a walk is beautiful, of course, but when you work with a dog—when you train to communicate with each other – learn a sport together—that’s when the dog and the human truly feel part of the same pack, and that’s when communication becomes much more profound. It’s not just about commands, or learning new skills and tricks, but about discovering each other. Both humans and dogs are about community—we like to be together, we like to cooperate. It’s simply what we are – social animals. Donna Haraway has written the bible on this in When Species Meet.

When I had the immense privilege of working with an ethologist—someone who was not merely preparing animals for film and performance, but who carried a profound, practical knowledge of animal behavior —I realized this was something I wanted to keep exploring in my work: these parallel evolutions and shared histories with other species. I also understood that if I was to continue collaborating with animals—as I later did, not only in K-9_topology—it would always have to be in collaboration with professionals. I would describe what I sought to achieve artistically, and they would define what was possible—always within the framework of the well-being of both human and animal. Later, when working with different canine collaborators, we always began with a period of simply getting to know one another, and only then, we decided together whether we were truly a good match. Nothing was ever forced.

Maja Smrekar, “I hunt nature and culture hunts me”, performance at Bandits-Mages festival, Antre Peaux, Bourges (Fr), 2014, with the wolves: Chaar’ey Charushila, Black Pearl, Hu’nass, Ankhara; voix: David Legrand; film: Philippe Zunino:

EC: By organising the performance we knew in Bourges there was a provocative dimension to it, for a so-called “mature audience”. Even Jean Philippe knew there was, but he was never having any problem, and even saying it was making a lot of sense, knowing your statement on co-evolution. Do you think what happened recently is because people have prejudices when it is in the realm of contemporary performance art, as it triggers some taboos because it requires engagement, and doesn’t remain on a theoretical level, or at distance in a film or a video clip? I mean, this led these extreme right politicians, with zero consideration for your private life, to just instrumentalize some of the images, in a populist manner, as a weapon to trigger reactionary voters.

MS: What has happened recently is nothing less than a reflection of the current Zeitgeist. Society is in regression—we all see it, feel it, know it. The right is thriving, becoming increasingly aggressive, while conservative ideas steadily creep into everyday life. In many countries, abortion rights once thought secure must be fought for again. Censorship and conservatism are resurfacing even in the art field, where moralism pours through, disguised as a return to “roots” or folklore—often just masked nationalism—or dressed up as seductive technology with no real depth behind it. Even ecology has become an overused and abused term – too often reduced to little more than greenwashing.

What troubles me most about the rising tide of the far right was revealed in my own local case —by how timidly the cultural scene responded to the referendum campaign on pension reforms for awarded artists. In February, Slovenia’s right-wing SDS party, currently in opposition, escalated its long-standing culture war, branding contemporary art as “degenerate” and weaponizing my work to fuel moral panic. They stole a picture of my photo performance, altered it, stamped it with their logo, and turned it into a propaganda poster, conveying a message entirely opposed to my artistic and personal beliefs. For more than five weeks, these posters were displayed daily at booths across the country, while right-wing members of the parliament relentlessly amplified them on social media. It was brutal.

Meanwhile, the media presented my name and work in distorted ways. Television repeatedly showed the propaganda poster in debates, often alongside insults, straight lies and without context. On social media, I faced threats, waves of offensive comments, ridicule, misogyny, and outright hatred. I received threatening emails and phone calls late at night, even my mother received humiliating texts. Journalists contacted me repeatedly without consent, often invasively. In the neighboring street, a protester shouted into a microphone, calling me a “bitch.” Graffiti appeared in the city stating opposition to “dog breastfeeding,” and on election day, the Catholic Church in collaboration with the right-wing party displayed posters in front of churches depicting elderly citizens suggesting that their pensions would “surely be higher” if they had “breastfed a dog” instead of working hard. People consequently began recognizing me everywhere—on the street, in shops, at the post office. This constant exposure, combined with the saturated atmosphere of hatred, created a profound sense of lost control and security. Even everyday tasks became exhausting, leading to chronic fatigue.

During these months, I did receive a few private messages and calls of sympathy from colleagues —but while kindness existed behind closed doors, in the public space where the attacks were taking place, compassion was almost completely absent. There were exceptions: a few individuals spoke out publicly, and institutions like the Academy of Fine Arts and Design issued letter of support, and 44 other cultural organizations issued a collective public letter. A few media outlets stood by me. But the attacks were highly organized, relentless, and carried out daily for three months—and in some forms, they continue even now.

In public space, the Minister of Culture was the only one that defended me loudly and consistently —and I am deeply grateful, but still, it was profoundly troubling to be a ping-pong ball between the left and the right while most of the cultural scene stayed silent which I don’t really understand.

This campaign was not about me—it was about humiliating art and culture, all of us. As cultural workers and artists, we are the first to defend fundamental civil rights through our work—freedom of speech —which we exercise in the public sphere. If—or when—the right wing comes to power again, it won’t only be a few that are always targeted. We will all be. These past months have been a chance to strengthen ourselves collectively for the struggles ahead, because there are no systemic platforms that protect us. We have only each other.

EC: Don’t you think that even the producers or curators, including us in Bourges, tend to take an image that is a little bit more provocative as a communication tool when bringing you to a festival?

MS: As professionals, we have to prioritize context above all, rather than fixating on what might be perceived as merely provocative. For me, provocation was always secondary in my work. Honestly, I never considered it particularly provocative —my reference points are the Russian avant-garde, the Vienna Actionists, and body art that had already been thoroughly explored by the turn of the millennium. In that perspective, I felt my work was just a drop in the ocean compared to what had already been done—and continues to be done—across many art fields.

I also think my work simply landed in the wrong place at the wrong time to become co-opted into a political PR strategy. The attack wasn’t because my work is so utterly provocative — but because it became useful in a very specific political context here in Slovenia, and similarly before the 2017 elections in Austria.

And furthermore, my concern is not whether the public dislikes my work —there will always be audiences who strongly agree or disagree—but when politics abuses art as a weapon. When a well-funded political machinery, backed by a network of right-wing media and followers, launches a coordinated attack on a single artist or artwork—dismissing it as “not art”—it undermines the legitimacy of the entire professional art field. Once art is taken out of context, altered, or misrepresented, political exaggeration becomes necessary—precisely because, it seems to me, the original work was never radical enough to sustain their narrative. This was particularly clear in Slovenia, where the rhetoric even invoked the zoophilic taboo—an extreme, deliberate distortion revealing just how far these misogynist narratives can be twisted and weaponized.

EC: Well, there is still a nakedness question, being naked with an animal, which seems taboo for them.

MS: (Laughs) In the end, it really comes down to people’s own biases —their personal issues that get triggered the moment they see someone – especially a woman – naked with an animal, without bothering to consider the context. Isn’t it striking that such a depiction can provoke outrage, yet the same people can drive past a billboard with a naked female body selling products, or watch images of massacred children in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan on the news, and feel almost nothing? That, to me, is what is truly perverted. But this whole situation also reflects the Zeitgeist: conservatism is on the rise everywhere, and it’s frightening how quickly it is being normalized. The female body is once again under attack—tolerated only when framed as a reproductive object. In my work I am always interested in the universal meanings a certain act can carry —especially now, at a time when the female body is increasingly being claimed by certain discourses as the property of the state, the law, or even the church.

Consider, for instance, the cradle myth of Ancient Rome —the cradle of humanism itself. Rome, as the story goes, was founded because a she-wolf nursed two abandoned infants who later built the city. In my work, I simply reversed the myth: instead of a wolf nurturing humans, a human nourishes a self-domesticated wolf. From there, other statements emerged: that nature will always outlast culture, and that the future may well belong to other living beings, even when humans bring about their own destruction.

The K-9_topology series was both universal and intimate. Of course, this came from a deeply personal place too —from my own emotional memory of growing up as an only child in a family where love was not much expressed, and where dogs became my true companions, my family. They gave me what I needed to survive psychologically —oxytocin, touch, love and presence. So in Hybrid Family, I wanted to claim this parallel evolution with dogs and wolves, the first animals to live alongside humans, thousands of years before horses or cats.

I also wanted to show that milk is not exclusively tied to pregnancy, the womb, or a “female” body. Milk can be produced by many kinds of bodies, including those identified as male, or those that don’t conform to binary definitions at all. In this sense, the project proposed an expansion of family structures—not as a rejection of the nuclear family, but as a way of opening it up, of extending its possibilities.

Later, in the fourth project —which became the final exclamation point of the entire series— I created what I call a molecular sculpture: not only in form, but in process, a sculpture of co-evolution. My intention was to symbolically return the DNA of human, wolf, and dog into the same ecological relationship they once shared, when all three species co-regulated their environment and maintained a natural equilibrium. Today, however, humans and dogs stand as the two most invasive species on the planet. Against this backdrop, the act of combining my oocyte with the fat cell of a dog—fully aware that the cell could not survive beyond a few days because of biological incompatibility —was conceived as a gesture of a temporary cohabitation on the molecular level.

This was an ecofeminist statement: a choice to use my reproductive material not for what conservative part of society expects of it, but as an artistic medium to imagine shared futures and relationships. And this is precisely where the problems began. Right-wing groups, unwilling to engage with these ideas, saw only an attack on the nuclear, white, heteronormative family. They refused to contextualize or acknowledge the extensive exhibitions, lectures, books, articles—even documentaries—that had already framed these works. Instead, they reduced the entire series to a single emblematic image, stripped of context, and weaponized it as a patriarchal warning about what art—especially when created by a woman—must not do, and what statements must not be made.

EC: There’s a full directive of the EU parliament voted last year about improving the professional status of artists in the European Union, saying we should, the cultural sector, work on harmonizing the artist status, because some countries have better status than others in the EU, etc. And it’s actually the year of implementation, because they voted in 2024. Yet, during the winter, when cultural organizations were overwhelmed with tight EU funding applications, another paradox became clear: while institutions were busy working within EU frameworks, the far right, unable to act on the EU level, was mobilizing attacks locally. How do you see this gap between EU-level promises and the realities artists face on the ground?

MS: It’s nice that the EU Parliament voted to improve the professional status of artists, but my experience shows that, in reality, there is no platform to protect artists from far-right campaigns utilizing them and their work for political propaganda—neither locally nor at the EU level. Similar attacks have targeted artists in Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Slovakia, Croatia, Austria, and Slovenia, yet no one in the EU Parliament addresses this. We are left on our own, in a society fragmented into small interest groups, each chasing the next gig in order to survive.

The situation you mentioned also reveals how many individuals and institutions —both governmental and nongovernmental—are forced to compromise constantly, constrained by EU rules, global capitalism, and underlying conservative ideologies. This was particularly evident in the fragmentation of the scene before the referendum: some criticized the government’s proposed new criteria for artists’ pensions because they excluded certain important fields, even though the criteria would be revised and updated every five years. While the referendum ostensibly concerned these criteria, it was in reality about disciplining leftist politics by smearing the cultural scene as a whole. Many others hesitated to participate at all, following the coalition’s call to ignore the vote entirely. Ironically, the entire referendum campaign unfolded while many were fully absorbed in EU applications, seemingly oblivious—or deliberately oblivious—to what was happening locally.

In any case, all kinds of compromises inevitably result in self-censorship. I believe compromise is not an option. What we must do is confront the system from within, united as a pack—a community—subverting it from the inside and resisting together.

EC: And it’s not the end of the story. Unfortunately for you this is going to be lasting for some time, as the justice procedure will take time. What should you say to the community that will receive this?

MS: The legal action will take at least five years, during which I expect to spend at least €12,000. If my lawyer were not working pro bono —we agreed that in case of success he would receive a percentage of the compensation— the costs would be about three times higher. This amount covers only court-related expenses: fees for the court appraiser and expert, and documentation costs, such as collecting and archiving more than 300 media publications mentioning me since February 20. In short, this will be a long and exhausting fight, but one I feel is my duty.

But not everything has been negative. After an article in The Guardian in May, I was contacted by a group of curators, theorists, and producers —among them you from France, Jens Hauser from Germany, Dalila Honorato from Greece, Tatiana Kourochkina from Spain, and later Uroš Veber from Slovenia and François Robin from France. You generously offered expertise and resources to help launch the online platform artkinship.org, through which we are now gathering signatures and donations for the lawsuit. Since then, individuals and art organizations have joined —contributing signatures, sharing newsletters, and donating— including Slovenian artists and institutions, as well as members of civil society. For this, I am deeply grateful, as it restores a sense of agency that is incredibly important in my situation. Through their response, parts of the cultural community showed that it can still unite and resist attempts to delegitimize artists and their work. At the same time, I understand it as an exercise to remain vigilant and connected, as such political pressures are often only the first step toward broader efforts to control and discipline culture—a reality that has become very evident to me.

This is why your solidarity in proposing the artkinship platform has been profoundly meaningful. It represents not only support for me as an individual, but also a clear stance against attempts to restrict artistic freedom and impose political pressure on the cultural sphere internationally. If I win the lawsuit and the SDS party is required to reimburse the court costs, I will donate those funds to an international platform supporting artists persecuted by autocratic governments. I will do the same if I raise more than what is needed for this case. I will also keep the public fully informed about all proceedings on the platform, because the fight for freedom of speech is essential.

Art has always been a vital force in shaping public debate—within politics and beyond. It provokes critical thought, and only through critical thought can society defend its most fundamental rights and freedoms: peace, security, dignity of the vulnerable. Art carries the power to ignite social change—and this is precisely what the far right fears most. Let’s use our power!

Sign the Open Letter

Donate at Artkinship.org

Join the debate at the 2025 conference Taboo-Transgression-Transcendence in Art & Science (Ljubjana, 9-13 Sept)

More on Maja Smrekar’s work

ArtLabo Retreat, from blue to green

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 17:42:02 +0000

ArtLabo Retreat 2025 was a two week-long camp organised by Makery in West Brittany, France, bringing together artists, scientists, designers, performers and mentors students to explore fashion, sound, gastronomy and storytelling—from the shores near the Colonie du Phare of Île de Batz with La Gare, Centre d’art et de design, to the grounds of Château de Kerminy in Rosporden. Chrysa Chouliara, the 2025 Makery summer chronicler-in-residency, reveals her chronicle of the two weeks spent at the ArtLabo Retreat.

Chrysa Chouliara

Since 2022 Makery welcomes in the summer a chronicler from the Rewilding Cultures project, a network of residencies and summer camps, schools, and retreats co-funded by the European Union. In 2025, through the Archipelago cooperation supported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss fondation for culture, Makery welcomes Chrysa Chouliara, also known as KAASCAT, a member of the Swiss Mechatronic Arts Society. Chrysa Chouliara is a visual storyteller in love with science. Obsessed with alternative printing mediums, she weaves personal narratives using experimental formats—exploring memory, media, and identity. Working across media, analog and digital, she treats each subject as a playground for visual experimentation. Originally from Athens, she has been based in Switzerland since 2016 and in Luzern since 2019. Onboard log.

An island is more than a mere geographic formation—it is a metaphor, a symbol of possibility. As a fragment of land surrounded by water, the island embodies separation, self-sufficiency, resilience and reinvention. Disconnected from the mainland and its dominant systems, the island becomes a space where alternate realities can emerge—a laboratory of sorts for new values, aesthetics, and ways of living.

The Island as the Toponym of Utopia

Sometimes, an island is more than just a childhood memory. It becomes a meeting point where professionals from around the world gather to exchange ideas and forge connections. Participants in the ArtLabo Retreat 2025 include students, artists, filmmakers, fashion designers, ecosomatic practitioners, and musicians, as well as video game designers and scientists. The diversity of their skills will prove crucial during the two-week retreat, where everyone will teach each other and improvised collaborations will emerge.

There’s something special about Île de Batz—a small island of around 450 inhabitants nestled in the Atlantic. At the beginning of the 17th century, the gradual silting of the island’s eastern areas prevented the cultivation of flax and hemp, both vital for the cloth industry. Seaweed then became the island’s primary resource until the 19th century. It was used for various purposes, including as cattle feed—cows grazed on species like Palmaria palmata—as well as for soil enrichment, and in the production of glass and soap. The trade extended beyond local use, with potash (a key ingredient in glassmaking) exported to other regions.

Perhaps drawing inspiration from this history, the Artlabo Retreat is divided into different groups that are about to use the seaweed as part of their research in the island, from sound, to image, fashion, sound & media. At low tide, a rich aquatic forest is revealed as we walk among the rocks toward the sea with ethnobotanist Edouard Bal. Equipped with large yellow buckets, we learn how to harvest seaweed: only take what’s attached to the rocks—if it’s floating freely, it’s probably already decomposing. I try everything, enjoying the familiar raw taste.

Seaweeds can be broadly classified by color into three groups: brown, red, and green. Botanists refer to these as Phaeophyceae, Rhodophyceae, and Chlorophyceae, respectively. During the first week of the ArtLabo Retreat, all three types serve as sources of nourishment, raw materials for fabric-making and bioplastics, components in conductive experiments, key elements in performances, and even decorative touches throughout the camp.

The following night, as we watch Umi No Oya, we munch on seaweed delicacies. The documentary by Maya Minder and Ewen Chardronnet (chief editor of Makery) narrates the story of Kathleen Drew-Baker—the algologist whose research revolutionized nori aquaculture in Japan. The film explores her crucial discovery of the red algae life cycle, which enabled the development of modern nori farming techniques in post-war Japan. Although she had to struggle as a woman in the pre-war Western scientific world, where marrying a colleague at Manchester University prevented her from receiving a salary, Drew-Baker is now honored as a deity in the Shinto tradition in Japan, sometimes referred to as umi no oya, “mother of the sea”, without having set a foot in Japan.

Umi No Oya (2025), the trailer (subtitles at CC box):

Maya Minder is an artist based in Zurich and Paris, working at the intersection of biohacking, food culture, and speculative design. On the island together with Corina Mattner, artist, fashion designer and activist, lead a workshop where algae is transformed into fabric using glycerin. “I’m obsessed with glycerin. It’s both hydrophilic and lipophilic, making it an incredible material to work with,” Maya says as the group begins processing the collected algae. Once dried, the fabric resembles translucent leather. It’s soon transformed into unique creations, sewn together with vintage pieces. They were also supported by Violaine Buet, an experienced seaweed designer from southern Brittany.

The guiding principles of the camp are to facilitate access to one-third of students in art, design, sound and media arts, as well as postgraduate students, offering them the opportunity to learn more in the workshops in this more informal learning setting and to establish contacts and consolidate networks that will help them in their professional development.

It’s already midweek when the group heads out once again with Edouard Bal—this time to forage for edible wild plants. That night, we enjoyed one of the most exciting dinners of the week, as the freshly harvested greens were transformed into a gastronomic delight by Edouard Bal and the food design group, involving “cuisinerd” Julie Tunas and artist/designer Lorie Bayen El Kaïm who are collaborating in a long term residency and artistic project on cooking methods and eating habits with La Gare, Centre d’art et de design. This highlight of the week was introduced by a lovely conference-performance by Korean student Seungje Han freshly graduated from the Master design in transition at EESAB art school in Brest.

I swim twice a day, even when it’s cold or raining, which is not surprising in Brittany. It’s the end of the week, and while the rest of Europe has been baking under a heatwave, here the temperature has been bearable, even pleasant, and the Brittany coast is welcoming an Atlantic depression just as we’re frantically preparing for the ArtLabo Retreat open day.

The evening—the sun sets late here—is filled with shows, talks, presentations, and an exhibition about the Colonie du Phare. We move from place to place, following the events as they unfold.

Ryu Oyama ,invited by the Archipelago program, blends sound with a contemporary take on the tea ceremony, using a siphon to create espuma—a technique borrowed from modern and molecular gastronomy that introduces a delicate, foamy texture. The tea, transformed into foam, is offered hand-to-hand with the assistance of Pôm Bouvier B. It’s a strange, intimate sensation—receiving tea in the form of espuma, resting weightlessly in your palm—a gift of some sort.

Forest Frequencies

Just a day later, the landscape shifts from blue to green. With my shoes still full of sand, I lay down on the grass in front of Kerminy Castle in Rosporden, in the beautiful Cornouaille region of Brittany. A friendly orange cat is perusing the estate until it finally disappears into the thick forest surrounding it.

Kerminy is a self-managed space for experimentation, research, and creation, formed in 2020 by the artistic duo (n)— Dominique Leroy and Marina Pirot. Described as a “lieu d’agriculture en arts,” it occupies a former 14th-century seigneury, complete with a chapel, washhouse, outbuildings, and woods, nestled within a 12.5-hectare estate on the edge of a vast forest. It’s here that the ArtLabo Retreat shifts its focus to sound.

And it’s not hard to imagine why—even the greenhouse is filled with sound installations nestled among gigantic tomato plants.
Dominique Leroy is a sound artist who creates installations, exhibitions, and sound trails designed to help us listen to a place. His practice is often collaborative and rooted in the use of recycled or repurposed technical devices for sound capture and diffusion—what he calls experimental landscape instrument making.

Marina Pirot, for her part, is an artist working at the intersection of dance and ecosomatic practices. Her work explores the relationship between the body and the environment, focusing on the collection and transmission of gestural knowledge.

Kerminy is not far from the sea. Dr. Tony Robinet gives us a tour of the local marine station, and later we visit the museum (see the report by Lyndsey Walsh). As a sculptor, I’m fascinated by the taxidermy room. The skin of each fish is carefully removed and placed over a styrofoam replica. The room is filled with countless specimens in a mesmerizing array of patterns and colors.

This week, everyone is preparing for Fluxon, the castle’s annual sound and art residency and event. Daily mechatronic workshops by Marc Dusseiller, transdisciplinary workshopologist from the SGMK (Swiss Mechatronic Art Society) and the Hackteria International Society stretch into the night, interwoven with spontaneous conversations that spark even at the breakfast table.

“What’s the difference between sound and music?”

“Sound is everywhere. Music is what you do with that sound,” replies Pôm without a moment’s hesitation. Pôm Bouvier B. was drawn to music and sound from a young age but spent many years navigating across various artistic disciplines. A literal twist of fate—a leg injury—led her to create sound for a performance, reigniting her connection with music. Since then, her practice has been centered on sound for more than a decade. In musical improvisation, she found everything she had been searching for—a space where all her diverse talents could converge. “Improvisation makes me feel alive. It’s like all the skills I picked up along my journey finally find their right use.”

The experimental noise artist Jena Jang adds another layer to the dense sonic landscape. Most of their instruments are DIY, soldered into household Tupperware, producing sounds that are anything but domestic. Their music unfolds like a journey into the subconscious—heavy soundscapes pierced by intricate harmonics that ripple through the chaos.

Departing: From Green to Grey

I left the day after the festival by train. On my way to Paris, I can’t stop thinking about the people I met over the past three weeks and the ideas and projects we exchanged.

They say no man is an island, but artists and scientists often work in isolation, diving deep into their respective practices. Retreats like this one function like water—quietly connecting even the most remote.

Read also the report of Lyndsey Walsh on ArtLabo Retreat 2025.

Find out more on Rewilding Cultures and Feral Labs Network in Makery.

(Français) A Marseille, année 2 du Tiers-Lab des Transitions : s’enraciner et fleurir

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 14:45:51 +0000

Elsa Ferreira

Pour en savoir plus, le site du Tiers-Lab des Transitions

ArtLabo Retreat: a journey to the end of the world

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 18:24:59 +0000

From the 30th of June until the 6th of July, the third ArtLabo Retreat took place on Île de Batz, Finistère, France, inviting artists, designers, scientists, and students to explore the unique landscapes of the island and experiment with possible materialities of coastal ecosystems. Co-organised in Batz with La Gare, Centre d’Art et de Design, this retreat extended in the context of Fluxon at Kerminy castle, a sound art oriented week residency and one-day event on July 12 hosted by the association n-Kerminy. Artist and researcher Lyndsey Walsh reports on their journey, exploring the many facets of coastal landscapes and communities.

Lyndsey Walsh

The journey to the end of the world didn’t take as long as I expected it to. After a six-hour drive from Paris and a short ferry ride from the Port of Roscoff, we arrived on the shores of Île de Batz, a small island off the coast of Finistère, the most western “département” of Brittany and France. While sitting out on the roof of Colonie du Phare, the hosting site of the ArtLabo Retreat, it was easy to see why Finistère is called following the latin “Finis Terrae” or “the end of the world”.

The wide and almost borderless expanse of the Celtic Sea stretched out endlessly into the Atlantic Ocean, which continued toward the horizon without any glimpse of land in sight. As the sun set and the evening mist rolled in, the mysterious nature of Batz as an island seemingly caught falling off the edge of this world’s end sank in. As much as I squinted, I could not see past the watery expanse, even though I knew that there was, in fact, more to be found beyond the horizon, as my own birthplace lay somewhere beyond it. This was only the end of Europe, but still, there was a weight of finality in that thought alone.

The ArtLabo Retreat on Batz, organised by ART2M in partnership with La Gare, Centre d’art et de design from Relecq-Kerhuon, and this year with its new partners n-Kerminy, lieu d’agriculture en arts and Swiss Mechatronic Art Society (SGMK), held its third edition from the 30th of June until the 6th of July. Part of the Feral Labs Network and its Rewilding Cultures project, a cooperation co-funded by the European Union, the retreat brought together artists, designers, students, scientists, and more to explore the land and waters of Batz while charting and navigating the complexities and materialities of coastal landscapes. It also extended the horizon of its investigations through the Archipelago program, an international art&science cooperation with artists from Switzerland (SGMK) and Japan (Sonda Studio), supported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss foundation for culture. On local level, La Gare was supported by the Région Bretagne (international cooperation program) and the Drac Bretagne.

Joining the retreat as an artistic researcher, I found myself staggering through the uneven terrain and dramatically shifting tides that both the realms of science and culture have spent centuries in negotiation about how we know and understand coastal territories.

Even though coasts are a globally ubiquitous ecological feature of our world and operate as the most important site for most major cities and settlements for all of humanity, coastal zones are unique in how different terrains of land and water interact to shape how both non-human and human life can unfold. These areas of the world are not only facing dramatic shifts due to ongoing ecological phenomena, such as tidal variations, weather events, salinity changes, and land erosion. They are also heavily impacted by human activities, and their status has the power to shape the continuance of human life and culture.

Coastal territories have borne witness to some of the most major events in planetary history. Notably, they served as the first footholds between land and water for life stumbled upon as it emerged from our planet’s primordial seas.

One of these organisms that made the bold pursuit to climb out from the depths of the sea and onto land is lichens. The evolutionary timeline of lichens has become a contentious topic of scientific debate in the last couple of decades. However, in 2019, a paper published by Matthew Nelson and colleagues asserted that the arrival of lichens on land does not predate vascular plants, yet other scientists assert that possibilities in the fossil record may suggest earlier transitions of their life onto land. While Nelson’s study remains the current consensus, it is not based on evidence of the presence of lichens in the fossil record but rather through the use of time-calibrated phylogenies, evolutionary lineage trees, created with molecular analysis of the DNA from both different fungal and algal species that make up the holobiont we know to be lichens (1).

Scientist Dr. Tony Robinet, who is an Assistant Professor at the Concarneau marine station (Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle) and a participant in ArtLabo, has become fascinated by the origin story of lichens as a transitional point for life between the sea and land. He explained to me that the formation of the symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae allowed the algae to leave their watery homes with a new ability to survive in drought conditions under the protection of their fungal symbiont. The mysteries and complexities surrounding the origins of lichens on land are set to be the main subject of Dr. Robinet’s current film project with musician and sound artist Jean-Baptiste Masson, which they were producing in part during their time at ArtLabo Retreat.

While spending the day filming the local lichen coating everything on the island from the rocks to the trees and even the abandoned Corsaire’s House, previously used by privateers to keep a lookout over the island’s defenses, Tony translated the lively dynamics of lichen, pointing out how the depths of the tides can be read based on the types of lichen found on the rocks and the meaning behind different textures and patterns formed by the multitude of species co-existing on the island.

Serpent’s Hole

Ile de Batz is not only a site for unraveling the secret origins of the natural history of lichens, though. The island is also well known for its mythological battle occurring around the 6th Century between Saint Pol Aorelian, a Welsh vegetarian Bishop, and a dangerous sea serpent, whom Saint Pol cast out into the sea at what is now known as the Serpent’s Hole to make the island inhabitable for future residents. While this story remains a myth, it captured my attention as a potential artefact of culturally constructing information about the natural history of the island. Scholar Robert France notes that often in myths and folk tales that emerge from the sea, sea serpents represent possible real environmental threats or disasters that have taken place.

For ecological events that fail to leave a mark for science to investigate, these stories remain as small hints at wonderous possibilities for how earlier life could have been for both human and non-human inhabitants. The topic of these possibilities in light of other global cultural narratives that use monsters to facilitate knowledge on natural history and ecological traumas became the subject of my performance lecture hosted at our open day for ArtLabo on one of our last nights on Batz with a captivating re-enactment of the battle between Saint Pol and the sea serpent, featuring the retreat’s own vegetarian Welsh man, Steffan Jones-Hughes who is also the director of Oriel Davies Gallery and artist Gweni Llwyd, artist Corinna Mattner, and student Hanaé Laporte–Bruto who embodied the ferocious sea serpent by donning algae costumes made by Mattner.

Although locals see this as a metaphor for the eradication of Celtic paganism by Christianity, the myth of the sea serpent remains a mystery and finding ways to cooperate or form relations between different species is a key characteristic of sustaining coastal life. Brewer, doctor in cosmology, and local resident Tanguy Grall highlighted, during a talk and manifesto reading at the open day, the ways his micro-brewery PAB has been inspired by his pursuit into the science of fermentation as a way to, quoting philosopher Karen Barad, explore “intra-action with micro-organisms”, leading PAB to produce their beer by fermenting local wildflowers and other flora. For the people of Batz, the local flora has not been the only important feature of the island, as historically, seaweed also served as its main resource before 20th century. Many of the participants of ArtLabo found their own ways of working with seaweed, harvesting, processing it into textiles, cooking with it, and exploring other modes of material exploration.

Seaweeds are not only important historically for Ile de Batz, but they are a crucial organism in coastal ecosystems. Seaweeds play a vital role in food webs as primary producers due to their role as photosynthetic organisms that are widely consumed by other marine organisms. They are also key players in the development and health of coastal ecosystems, as they provide crucial habitat for many aquatic species, nurseries for juvenile organisms, sources of oxygen generation, and contribute to many human coastal activities, including food, pharmaceuticals, fertilizer, and animal feed (2).

From sea to land

As our time at Ile de Batz came to a close, a third of Batz participants moved inland to the castle of Kerminy, a private land housing an experimental market gardening micro-farm and autonomous artist residency combining transformative practices in agriculture with somatic sound experience. Park, the summer “parcours d’agriculture en art” is open for sound walks every Saturday during the season with artworks in the field of acoustic ecology and landart. The ArtLabo Retreat aimed for the first time to explore the theme of the earth in southern Finistère, working on sound art with the Kerminy residency and event Fluxon, as well as on watersheds and the relationship between the earth and the sea, with plans to visit the marine station in Concarneau and the rias of the Aven and Belon rivers. The impact of coastal worlding therefore remained present in our day-to-day explorations despite our shift in location.

While visiting the Concarneau Marine Station, we found shifts in the coastal landscape now on the southern side of Finistère. Nearby Concarneau lies the oyster farms of the Belon River Estuary, where its regional variety of flat oysters, known to be a delicacy of Brittany, grow alongside cultivated Japonica variety. These estuaries flow down the southern side of Brittany where they meet with the Atlantic Ocean. While in Concarneau, we met Dr. Samuel Iglesias, who shared insights from his research cataloguing and standardizing records of the diversity of cartilaginous fishes of the North-eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean (3). While the biodiversity of the coastal ecosystem that we visited was abundant, Dr. Inglesias reminded us that most of the species in his study were greatly endangered or about to become extinct.

As humans depend heavily on coastal environments for accessing resources, shipping, ports, and more, the impacts of the anthropogenic effects of these activities on the environment also put coasts at risk due to anthropogenic pollutants, overfishing, poor coastal zone management, and more (4).

L’Appel du vide

These ongoing frictions between human and non-human capacities over these coastal territories served as the inspiration for a final performance titled “L’appel du vide” of “the call of the void” created by artist Maya Minder, artist Corinna Mattner, Sound artist Pom Bouvier-b, and myself. It was fitting for us that while we were residing at the “end of the world” in Brittany, we attempted to find a way to embrace “the call of the void”, which often refers to the desire to step into the unknown despite the risks at hand.

In the performance, we invited participants to attempt to wash away their human egos and selves using soap we crafted from our own harvested seaweeds. After the washing ritual, participants were offered to find ways to engage in multispecies perspectives of self-care facilitated by the consumption of kombu and wild herb teas and wearing algal face masks, while Bouvier-b held an improvised sound performance that was followed by a meditative guiding of the possible more-than-human unknowns led by Minder’s recorded voice.

The future of coastal ecosystems is yet to be determined. It may be silly to state that this journey to the end of the world has made it ever more clear to me that we are not yet at our world’s end. It is up to us to decide how we will act and offer our hands up to forge relations with the species we share these landscapes with. We must decide together how best we can move forward into the unknown.

ArtLabo Retreat is part of the Feral Labs Network and the Rewilding Cultures program.

Notes:

(1) Nelsen MP, Lücking R, Boyce CK, Lumbsch HT, Ree RH. No support for the emergence of lichens prior to the evolution of vascular plants. Geobiology. 2020; 18: 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/gbi.12369
(2) Cotas, J.; Gomes, L.; Pacheco, D.; Pereira, L. Ecosystem Services Provided by Seaweeds. Hydrobiology 2023, 2, 75-96. https://doi.org/10.3390/hydrobiology2010006
(3) Iglésias S.P., 2012. – Chondrichthyans from the North-eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean (A natural classification based on collection specimens, with DNA barcodes and standardized photographs), Volume I (plates), Provisional version 06, 01 April 2012. 83p. http://www.mnhn.fr/iccanam.
(4) Jean-Claude Dauvin, The main characteristics, problems, and prospects for Western European coastal seas,
Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 57, Issues 1–5, 2008, Pages 22-40, ISSN 0025-326X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2007.10.016.

Sonic Waves: Insights from the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:10:15 +0000

The United Nations Ocean Conference 2025 took place from June 9 to 13 in Nice, France. The week leading up to the conference provided an opportunity to explore multiple scientific, artistic, and cultural perspectives on the role of sound in ocean environments. From the detrimental impact of anthropogenic noise on marine entities and ecosystems to the hopeful regenerative potentials of acoustic enrichment, the impact of sound captured the attention of world officials and conference attendees.

Lyndsey Walsh

For oceanic entities, sound is one of the most crucial forms of energy. Unlike light, which barely penetrates the depths of our planet’s waters due to its rapid scattering and absorption, sound travels faster, farther, and clearer in marine environments. The acoustic ecology of our planet’s oceans is both a crucial indicator of its well-being and a fragile soundscape, highly vulnerable to external interference and noise.

During the 2025 United Nations Oceans Conference, taking place in Nice, France, the role of sound and noise in oceanic environments permeated not only scientific advocacy and collaborative world government priorities, but it also reverberated across the conferences designated Blue and Green Zone’s transdisciplinary programming and expanded out into the surrounding events and installations across Nice.

Marine noise pollution

Preceding the official presentation of the UN Ocean Conference, on the 5th of June 2025, the One Ocean Science Congress presented their ten official recommendations, as announced by the event’s designated spokespeople including the French Institute for Ocean Science Ifremer’s President and CEO François Houllier, French National Centre for Scientific Research’s (CNRS) Research Director Jean Pierre Gattuso, Friends of the Coco Island Foundation (FAICO) Executive Director Alejandra Villalobos, Michelin-starred Chef Olivier Roellinger, and Professional Offshore Sailing Team Malizia’s Skipper Boris Herrmann. Alongside nine other recommendations drafted by the scientists of the One Ocean Science Congress, the spokespeople highlighted the “importance of decarbonizing shipping and reducing the environmental impact of maritime transport”, giving special attention to the need to identify Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas that are currently at risk noise pollution.

When thinking about anthropogenic impacts on our planet’s oceans, noise is not a commonly thought-of variable. The intangibility of noise makes it an ephermeral matter, often escaping the graphic grab for public attention that other forms of oceanic pollution have in public consciousness. However, if we were to take a moment to listen to our waterscapes, it would be easy to discern how loud our oceans have become.

Interspecies dwelling

Listening is what S+T+ARTSWater II Challenge and Residency artist Stijn Demeulenaere does best. Leading with an artistic practice set on trying “to understand places by listening to them”, Demeulenaere’s current project “Saltvein” ventures out into the seabeds of the North Sea surrounding the port of Ostend, located in the Flemish region of Belgium. “Saltvein” listens closely in on the local shellfish reefs of the area, finding the ways that emerging and shifting policy-making, fisheries, climate change, and military efforts characterize and are transforming the composition of sounds and ways of living for human and non-human entities in the Northeast passage of the North Sea.

While in Nice, Demeulenaere gave a performance of his work “Sounding Lines” at Villa Arson as part of the Symposium and Live Program “POROUS — Ports as Interspecies Dwelling” curated by Maria Montero Sierra of TBA21-Academy on June 7 and 8 as a S+T+ARTS4Water side event of the “Becoming Ocean” exhibition by Tara Ocean and TBA21-Academy. During his performance we could begin to hear from the many sounds he has been collecting during his residency hosted by GLUON-Platform for Art Science and Technology in Brussels.

“POROUS” two-day program, taking place on World Ocean Day and coinciding not only with UNOC but also Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan 2025, also featured another S+T+ARTSWater II Challenge and Residency artist named Carlos Casas. In the context of the S+T+ARTS Water II Challenge, Casas is bringing to the surface an auditory map of the city of Venice’s Lagoon by exploring a speculative narrative about its origin in his project “Allied Governance. From the Venice Lagoon and Its Citizens to the Ports” in his residency hosted by TBA21-Academy in Venice. For “POROUS”, Casas presented his performance entitled “LACUNAE”, which shared some of his explorations of the Lagoon’s soundscape that transforms across the layers of the Lagoon, as the artist leads us down a descent into its unexplored benthic zones.

While port zones may share the common feature of being particularly frictional sites between humans and non-humans when it comes to sound and noise, the impact of anthropogenic noise extends beyond these complex intersects in meeting areas between terrestrial and marine entities. During the One Ocean Science Congress, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) held a screening of the Emmy award-winning documentary “Sonic Sea” at La Baleine.

Coalition for a Quiet Ocean

Tracing the catastrophe of mass whale beaching events, “Sonic Sea” reveals how whales are indicators of the current crisis our planet’s oceans are facing due to the increasingly destructive noise coming from shipping, military, and industrial activities. One of the major forms of sound pollution discussed in the documentary comes from what is called cavitation, which is the formation and collapse of air bubbles in the water due to changes in pressure changes. Cavitation not only causes disturbing amounts of noise in marine environments, but because it can occur around ships’ propellers, it also can actually lead to considerable damage to the vessels themselves.

Sonic Sea, trailer:

However, in the ocean, these forming and collapsing bubbles can send shockwaves that sonically reverberate at immense volumes and speeds. Increases in the speeds of vessels and the number of ships being used for shipping can lead to increasing noise pollution from cavitation. However, improving propeller design can not only alleviate cavitation, but it can also improve shipping efficiency and sustainability.

Other sources of problematic noise come from the use of sonar, as it can overwhelm marine mammals like whales who use their own sonar to communicate with their hunting, family, and social groups. In some cases, the noise of sonar can lead to loss of hearing and eventual mass beachings. These mass beachings are not only a problematic behavioral phenomenon, but the film “Sonic Sea” explains how often times, the whales beached also present with physiological symptoms from the impact of this harsh noise in the form of gas bubble lesions, which present in their tissues in a similar manner to that of Decompression Sickness found in divers.

IFAW explains that there is no existing global or local regulation for sound or sound pollution in marine environments, leaving vessels with no operating standards for the amount of noise that they can emit into open waters. The outstanding issues concerning noise garnered the attention of not only the One Oceans Science Congress preceding the UN Oceans Conference, but they also received active addressal in the UNOC’s “Nice Ocean Action Plan”. Under the leadership of Panama and Canada, the “High Ambition Coalition for a Quiet Ocean” coalition composed of 37 countries was launched. The signed declaration of the coalition pledged to develop a new policy for quieter ships, investigate and implement solutions toward a reduction of shipping and other maritime vessels impact on marine organisms, knowledge-sharing of tools and technology for ocean noise reduction, and further establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) with the goal of restoring and preserving the ocean’s soundscape.

Songs of corals

While our oceans may be at high risk for noise, sound also has been found to play other crucial roles in ecosystem management. Acoustic Ecology represents the field of study of the environment through its soundscape. Artist Marco Barotti, working alongside acoustic ecologist Dr. Timothy Lamont, has built up his project “Coral Sonic Resilience” by looking at the potential of what is called acoustic enrichment to save coral reefs. Unlike noise pollution, acoustic enrichment is the process of using soundscapes of healthy environmental areas to bring enhanced or restorative effects to a local ecosystem.

Barotti’s “Coral Sonic Resilience” plays the soundscape of a healthy coral reef to vulnerable corals in the hope of restoring the ecosystem back to a healthy state. The work submerges 3D-printed sculptures designed from scans of bleached corals that act as solar-powered speakers playing regenerative soundscapes of healthy coral reefs to attract new life back to degraded coral reef habitats. Listen to a Coral Sonic Resilience’s excerpt here.

Barotti first began his work looking at corals during his residency with Science Gallery Berlin in his project “CORALS” where, in collaboration with researchers at the Bifold Institute in Berlin, he interpreted datasets of oceanic conditions through sound. Fueled by his exploration of shamanistic rituals and speculative research, Barotti became then inspired by what scientists like Dr. Lamont were doing by using sound to transform oceanic environments through promoting ecosystem regeneration of coral reefs.

The short film documenting “Coral Sonic Resilience” was screened in Nice at the Institut de la Mer of Villefranche-sur-Mer. Barotti’s work has also recently received the S+T+ARTS Prize 2025 Honorary Mention with jury comments highlighting and applauding the work’s creative solution toward the restoration of one of our planet’s most valuable ecosystems. Barotti was not the only advocate for coral health at UNOC, as the One Ocean Science Congress also emphasized its ongoing interest and recommendations toward ensuring the protection of coral reefs. Indonesia, in collaboration with the World Bank, also introduced the “Coral Bond” as an outcome-based financing structure for further financing of conservation initiatives in Marine Protected Areas.

Despite the harshness of noise that can be found reeking havoc our oceans, as seen at UNOC, there remains a committed drive toward facilitating not only quieter marine spaces but also promoting a hopeful regenerative approach to sound as a means to bring about new possibilities for ocean conservation and management.