We Need to Be More Human than We Are: Smart Hybrid Talks

Alice Smits1, Raoul Frese2 , Špela Petrič3 & Miha Turšič 4 We Need to Be More Human than We Are: Smart Hybrid Talks

A conversation held on 14th April 2021 at Zone2Source in the Rietveld Pavillion Amstelpark.

There is a lot said about transdisciplinarity, but for a publication subtitled “How to Do Transdisciplinarity”, we decided to stay with the active verb and contribute with a dialogue between collaborators in an art-science project in which we explore the starting positions and expectations which underlie this undertaking of collaborative doing. Applying a specific format of questions, developed explicitly to remove possible hurdles and to manage expectations within transdisciplinary collaborations, we explore each other’s specific practices and backgrounds, passions and approaches that we bring to a collaboration, realising this never simply tallies up to “1+1=2”, but at its best changes each and every one in the encounter.

‘Smart Hybrid Forms’ is an art-science project exploring plant-machine relations that brings together two educational institutions, the VU Amsterdam and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and three cultural institutions: V2, de Waag Society, and Zone2Source, while engaging two artists, Špela Petrič and Christiaan Zwanikken, to work within the Vrije Universiteit Art Science lab, ‘Hybrid Forms’, under the direction of Raoul Frese.5 Scientific and art research is carried out concomitantly by two researchers, Eda Yilmaz, a scientific postdoc at the Biophysics of Photosynthesis lab at the VU, and Alice Smits, an art theoretical researcher at the Art and Public Space research group at the Rietveld Academy under direction of Raoul Frese and Jeroen Boomgaard respectively.

Exploring relations between plants and technology in our current scientific societies, the artists working

together with scientists and students raise fundamental epistemological and ethical questions about how knowledge is being produced and which voices are represented, interrogating both the sciences and the arts. The conversation was facilitated by Miha Turšič according to a method for guiding transdisciplinary projects, following a series of basic questions to explore the motivations, interests, and expectations with which each researcher enters this collaboration, in order to discover common ground. Entering the space of art-science, what participants seem to be looking for in one way or another seems to align with what Isabelle Stengers calls a “Slow Science”, whereby a scientist, as a producer of knowledge, undergoes constant transformation from an ethical and public engagement with her research.6 Exploring what an eco-political understanding of research practice can be, our discussions moved between thinking about hybrid spaces where knowledge is produced, modes of power shifts, and the ethical discourse embedded in doing research.

Transdisciplinarity is at the heart of calling for a shift in science to recognise itself as only one of many epistemic cultures, and brings responsibility, care, and ethics into what is usually seen as a disinterested form of doing research and producing knowledge. When we move from scientific fact to meaning, knowledge comes to matter as public engaged issues that are created in this transdisciplinary space that one could call “art-science”. The discussion below presents an extract of our first in-depth exploration of thinking and working together as artists, cultural theoreticians, and scientists.

Alice Smits Welcome everybody. In order to develop a sort of ‘baseline’ as to where everybody stands, we have asked Miha to facilitate 114

this talk between the three of us using a framework which he is developing as a tool for hybrid collaborative projects. Miha, can you introduce the format?

Miha Turšič At the Waag, we work in what you could call “collaborative research and innovation”. It’s rather post-disciplinary, since we also work with citizens that bring in their situated knowledge. We also work with animals and plants, and take them into account as collaborators. We bring together companies and communities, artists, scientists, and engineers in different setups. We developed a discussion framework to achieve a better mutual understanding of how to get from A to B. So, my role here is for you to establish a shared understanding and agenda of what you are all doing in this process. This conversation is quite pragmatic, mainly focusing on what I call the “materiality of calibration”; so not just on ideas you have about art-science projects, but really about material collaboration.

Let’s start by introducing how you have met each other?

AS The first time I met Raoul was during his collaboration with Ivan Henriques on the ‘Symbiotic Machine’ project, which I presented in 2014 at Zone2Source. I am always interested in showing not just results, but also processes of research. For ‘Symbiotic Machine’, we built a large basin of water in which a ‘symbiotic robot’ swam around for two months while the artist, scientists and students were working on testing and developing the work while also involving the audience. Raoul, I believe this was the project which

inspired you to establish together with Ivan Henriques the Hybrid Forms Lab at the VU, right?

Raoul Frese Ivan Henriques was my first collaboration with an artist. What I really liked about it was that we moved the entire lab into Het Glazen Huis in the Amstelpark. We were doing experiments there not yet knowing the outcome that would lead to the artwork. It was like we actually became the artwork as we were doing the experiments while people could see us: it was almost a lab as performance art.

AS I think you are right that the specific aesthetics of performing living material in bio-art is an important but somewhat overlooked topic. So what was it like for you as a scientist to be involved in this art project?

RF At first, what you see is an artist that is playing with science, right? So you have scientific findings which normally happens in a lab. And now we have an artist that is basically appropriating that science, moving it into an exhibition space, almost “stealing science”, I would say. But with Spela it is different, because she is a trained scientist and I know she has a PhD. If I didn’t know, I would probably also look a little bit differently at her. Which is also performance, we are performing our beings.

AS I’m curious how her being a scientist changes the relationship for you in relation to artists who only have an arts background. Do you feel more trust in the way the work will be carried forward?

RF First of all, it is about knowing she has the skills to actually do it and to understand the science and technology behind it, whereas other artists may want to play with the scientific outcomes, but don’t have a real feeling for the science behind it. Sometimes you feel like an artist is basically appropriating your science without respect for the amount of work that went into it, which can be a decade of research not only by you, but by multiple people and students. Then they take it, put it in an exhibition space, and suddenly, it’s only their name on the poster. I think with Spela I would have that a little bit less, first of all, because she is actually doing her own research. She’s quite autonomous, more than I know of other artists that I work with.

AS It is through working with Spela that I realised that crediting everybody you work with is a very generous gesture, which is common in theatre or film but not in visual arts. This made me aware of how strong art is still tied to this idea of the individual autonomous artist, which, of course, has always been a myth, but is clearly still persisting more than we think, even while we are developing these collaborative practices.

Špela Petrič This practice of crediting everyonte that is part of the team does not only derive from the culture I brought from my background in science, but also from a practice in the Slovenian bio-arts scene with its own cultural heritage in Eastern European communism. With Alice, I also worked together at Zone2Source on developing the project ‘Ectogenesis: Plant-Human Monsters’, which was actually the first major exhibition that I did here in the Netherlands. It was a refreshing framework coming from the Slovenian

art scene which is always hypercritical; I feel there is a particular sphere of explorative thinking, that is quite specific for the cultural context here.

MT Can you describe how you understand your role in this project, personally and as part of your institution?

RF This project serves as a way of finding common ground between the Rietveld Art Academy and VU Science Department. What can these two institutes from opposite disciplines offer to each other? Is there anything that connects them? Two artists are employed at the VU Amsterdam within my research group where I facilitate their research, including Spela as a postdoc researcher, as well as Alice’s presence there as an art theoretical researcher, so she can observe and reflect on the whole process between artists and scientists. I also supervise students that contribute to the work of the artists. From November, there will be a public art gallery connected to the university that is also accessible from the street; this will be interesting for the project since the VU Art-Science Lab collaborates with the VU Art-Science gallery. As a member of the VU art committee, I am leading its curator into the wondrous world of art-science! So, for the VU, I see it as my primary role to facilitate connections within the university for the artists.

SP My role in this project is to bring specific knowhow on navigating these privileged spaces of “access” to the scientific institution in this hybrid field, call it “art-science”, “bio-arts” or “hybrid art”. In this opportunity the funders have provided us, all of us involved together have a huge responsibility to make this 118

culturally and societally significant. Everything I do is burdened by this responsibility. So it’s figuring out not only what can be done, but what the most urgent thing is that needs to be done. I come from a background of working with plants. I’m interested in how the relationship between plants and technology reflects the general condition that we, as people, find ourselves in, being part of technological societies. I see my role as bringing in this urgency, developing the art project while also expanding the horizon of how knowledge is produced.

AS If you say “bringing in these urgencies”, do you mean transforming scientific facts into public issues? Or expanding horizons of the scientists in the institution you work with?

SP My primary motivation is the urgency of bringing these matters for discussion, and the way we do this is by working together. Only by working together are we able to validly address questions and urgencies. The scientific institution plays a major role, but so does the philosophical context. So it’s actually addressed from multiple perspectives throughout this process, which cross-pollinates concepts rather than keeping them separate.

AS I see that my role is to reflect on what kinds of new practices and processes are being developed in this collaboration, and what this contributes not only to arts, but also to science. What is this space which is created? Is it artists working with scientists, or does it propose a new space: art-science, that is creating its own methodology? Working with you, Spela, I really feel your enormous commitment to pressing the

urgencies you want to bring to the table, questioning what it is you are creating beyond the realisation of an artwork. It’s very exciting to think along with that, and to explore the philosophical ramifications of this particular kind of art-science exploration.

The other hat I am wearing in this consortium is my role as curator: developing different ways of interaction between the projects and audiences. Zone2Source is collaborating with ‘Machine Wilderness’, an artist-in-residency programme at Artis, a zoo in Amsterdam, in which the artists participate in a very contested environment of humans, other animals, and plants, as well as in a final exhibition at Zone2Source in Amstelpark. For me, these are not two different things. For me, curatorial practice is also very much a way of doing research, and it’s a central focus in this consortium that, in testing art-science research, connects knowledge institutions and cultural spaces by involving audiences in specific public encounters.

MT A question to Raoul: if I understand correctly, on the one hand you’re stepping in with the institution, but on the other hand you are driven by your own curiosity about these kinds of art collaborations. It is not the university who asks you to engage in this, right?

RF As scientists, we are free to choose our topic of research as long as it remains within biophysics, and these kinds of art-science projects resonate with my section. Spela recently gave a presentation to my student group, the first artist to do so, since she is also the first postdoc. If it was just a hobby, the university would not have liked it, but I explained to my colleagues that it is important for the development of education 120

programmes, and even for research methodology. So this methodology is not spielerei (just play), right? I’m looking for new methodologies so that students, and also PhD students, can do research in art-science.

MT The next and main question is: What is the motivation for this collaboration? There’s a kind of scale from curiosity, being challenged, being concerned, seeing urgencies and questions, of why you enter into these kinds of efforts. I will start now with Spela. What drives you?

SP I’ve been working with plants for quite a while, exploring why we, as people, tend to consider them as a living resource. Even when we tackle ecological adversity, we still frame them as bio-system services. This is, in one way, positive, because it offsets some of the detrimental things people have been causing. On the other hand, it follows this specific type of framing of what a living being is, a principle which is applied to people as well. So I am questioning the implications of this gaze that is facilitated by techno-science, science as a way of knowing, and the ontology that it creates. The case study that I use involves plants and technology. I’m approaching this from both a critical and hopeful perspective, by proposing that the current understanding and use of technology to create these relationships can actually be subverted or made different. In doing so, we would not only come closer to a sort of ecological justice, but, in the same vein, we would also consider what kind of justice would be possible in the relationship between people and technology. Because it’s not an isolated system: whenever you

invoke technology, you evoke the whole history, of politics, of power, of economy.

I would like to add that this is actually a very dangerous relationship. You’re playing with scientific paradigms that have immense power, relatively high societal standing, strong hierarchy, and they’re economically quite well-funded. And within this, you’re trying to coax out the mistake and make the mistake resonate. You’re always on the edge of actually adopting the principle that you’re trying to rethink. These are the insidious ways in which tools tend to tell their story over and over, regardless of what you’re trying to do with them. So it’s a risky relationship. The urgency I feel is that we have to engage; there is no possibility for us to refrain from engagement right now, even if we end up actually not liking the result.

AS My motivation in both my research and curatorial work is in exploring different kinds of knowledge practices that reconnect us to a sustainable life on earth. I see a considerable concern in natural sciences, which is based on separating yourself from what you’re studying, isolating things from their relational contexts and meanings. Science has become the basis for our way of living, and we forget it is only a specific method of knowledge: there are many different epistemic cultures, but within our scientific worldview these are posited as “not knowing” or irrational. Can we imagine a world of multiple epistemologies, as different ways to create meaning without falling into relativism? The ecological crisis presents us with enormous urgency to rethink how we do science and technology, shifting ideas of how we know ourselves and the world around us. This implies finding a new basis of what rationality is, 122

not as something which just happens in your brain, but as an encounter with the world as embodied, sensorial and relational beings. I believe this is something that art can bring to the sciences, and is why so many thinkers at this moment are interested in the arts as a place to experiment with sensorial knowledges.

Another thing art can do is create societal meaning around scientific facts and developing an intelligent ethical discourse around it, which science urgently needs to engage with from within. So how art-science transforms not only the spaces and methodologies of art, but also that of science, which I am eager to explore within this collaboration. Like Spela, I also see a danger here. It is not just artists anymore looking for scientists to work with, but increasingly artists are invited into scientific institutions as well. Since these universities have their own agendas, and artists are working with scientificallyproduced technology and tools which embody an ideology they also criticise, this creates uneven relations. How can art be brought in as a critical methodology? I am interested to explore how these collaborations can create a third space: art-science as a different kind of knowledge creation altogether.

RF I have been working in science for twenty-five years. So I can say I contributed to science, to the generation of knowledge, to new ways of looking at specific topics within science. There are certain aspects that are missed in science: critical reflection is one of them. I see science as a complex system that is very much designed to maintain itself, to find ways of being relevant and attracting interest from society in order to attract funding. I see it as a system that is very well adapted to capitalism, with scientists

operating in an almost warlike competition. On the one hand, you could say it is a way of striving for excellence: only the best survive, and that’s why they get the resources and you’ll get the most interesting findings. But it also creates a selection pressure on a specific mindset of people that are willing to do that, who have that specific way of looking at society and reality. As science is producing more and more technologies, which have a greater and greater impact on society, it is time to take a very critical look at the role of that complex. As Spela mentioned in her presentation, art provides meaning to knowledge. I think science is very good in providing value to knowledge: that is the capitalistic aspect as well. I think that artists and the world in which they are embedded – now I’m talking about humanities – as citizens acting within society, can more easily bring those societal issues into the realm of science. So I think we have quite some common ground actually, if I listen to you both.

AS And was this your motivation to start an art-science lab at your faculty?

RF My personal motivation was to have a critical reflection on what I am doing. Working in biotechnology, I find that, in science, there’s hardly time and space for that. So I created that space for myself. But also to add this to the curriculum of students, so that they learn that there’s a different way to approach nature. Especially in the biological sciences, it is interesting that we hardly have a connection with the actual organism where your material comes from. As physicists, we talk about particles but don’t touch, see or smell a plant. I just get a file containing the particles and that’s what I investigate: how do these 124

particles respond to whatever stimuli I give them? So there’s a strong disconnect both to the organism and to the place of the organism within the world. I find this to be a loss for a scientist. You’ll get alienated as what we could call a “knowledge factory worker”. And especially with the combination of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, it is time to start to reflect on that.

AS Does working with artists in your lab make you also reflect on the methodologies that you use yourself?

RF It is very difficult, because I have been, of course, fully trained within that system. That’s why I keep emphasising the younger students, because I think if you make it part of the curriculum, we can train scientists with a more holistic view on their topic, and not only on this very tiny “particle approach”.

AS Spela, as somebody coming from the sciences who has made a deliberate choice to work within the arts, you mentioned once that you continue to struggle with the scientific framework you were trained in as well?

SP Yes, but if you ask: what is this other type of science we aspire to? It’s still science, but one which perhaps empowers scientists to get involved in societal concerns, and the relations which are produced within scientific research. Because, instead of severing the person as a full human within society, taking that completely out of the equation when doing science is fake anyway, it’s not true. It’s a performance, right, it’s a myth. But, as long as it’s a myth, this relationship can be organised by something else, so you don’t

take control of it, you don’t feel empowered to do so. The scientists trained through this other type of education would be empowered to take other things into account, things that concern them as people in society, which I think can only lead to better science.

AS As I have stressed before, I think it is very much about an experiential contextual basis which is being excluded from this understanding of cognition and truth in modern sciences. The foundations of this assumption are shaking now we have become aware of the impact we have as humans on the Earth we are studying. But I also think the question of whether we can experience beyond our anthropocentric position is also misplaced: we need to be more human than we are, as we have so much more capacity to explore the world and experience these relations from our very human sensorial possibilities and empathy.

RF The problem is that many young people decide early on “Science is not for me, I’m not going to spend two years in a lab looking at this one molecule or something”. So now you lose a lot of smart people that could actually contribute, perhaps even change the way science is operating and manifesting itself in society, relating to technology and economy. So, bringing those people and topics back in is my main motivation.

MT It is great that you all have as a mutual ground a critical perspective towards how knowledge is produced in science. Because it’s not just about confrontation between arts and science. It is about how we do better research by not just looking for facts, but by also being concerned about working with them, seeing environmental urgencies. 126

The next question is about the impact of this project. Who do you want to address this?

RF For me, it is about breaking open the walls of the university. Artists and the art-science lab project are a way to get the general public inside the university. Artists have a different way of researching: they do research, but with much more emphasis on meaning than on knowledge production. To bring them into the building is very important for me, as it is showcasing to the people inside the building, my colleagues and students, that this is a different approach to nature and to knowledge acquisition. Just by being there, they already make the point that I want to make.

AS Do you feel that artists working in your lab are taken seriously?

RF People can be enthusiastic, but sometimes react with hostility towards artists because they deem it to not be “true scientific research”. I put my weight in and say, as a scientist, I find this important. Then it must be taken seriously as a scientific endeavor. That’s also the scary part for me: I cannot work with just anybody, because I have to be a bit careful on how artists are presenting themselves and the science they are using. There are more scientists who work with artists, but usually as a side project. What I try to do with the art-science lab – where scientists can also work on their own projects, by the way – is to show within the Institute that you can actually use this as a way of working, not just as a side project, but as a major research project.

SP I found in my previous experiences that close collaborations can change the partners in a project. So I am actually working towards changing one person at a time, and changing myself as this happens. Through working together for an extended period of time, I can be taken along in this world of experts, engineers, programmers, etc., and ask questions which can be difficult, sometimes uncomfortable. But we are together in this effort and time, to work on a project which does not come from this distanced critical position, but from the materiality of practices that produce this collaboration in the first place. Another impact I want to make is that I really hope this kind of artistic investigation inspires critical thought and philosophy: to be able to take theoretical concepts, put them into practice, and then re-evaluate them is a valuable experience. To be able to share those insights, not just as a paper, but as an experience of the work, whatever shape or form it might take.

AS I agree that there are different levels of impact. The consortium as the first ‘public’ is where it starts. It is a real luxury to work in a two-year programme with all these partners coming from different backgrounds. It’s as you say, you transform yourself in the process, and that is what I am also looking for: how engaging with other fields changes and shapes my ideas further, to then have an effect on others. I can read a lot about it while still staying in my comfort zone. So I would like to see more discussion amongst ourselves as well, to really use this time and space to work through this encounter. As a curator of Zone2Source, my main concern is bringing this kind of challenging project to a broad audience in public parks, such as Amstelpark and Artis. I am interested in 128

not only presenting the resulting artworks, but also creating public formats that engage people with artistic research and take them along in experiencing new imaginations of nature-cultures.

MT I’m glad you all said, “I want to have an impact on myself”, instead of the ambition to only change someone else. Because if it’s your main goal throughout this project to change some of your own practices or methodologies, then you control the success, and, at the same time, you share the responsibility of this change that you can achieve with others around you.

SP Did you see that?

AS attacking a rabbit!

SP Wow, it’s a bird

It’s just a baby rabbit!

AS Raoul, you went to the bathroom for two minutes and missed out on the real stuff, nature happening right here…

1 Research Institute for Art and Public Space (Gerrit Rietveld Academy) and Zone2Source, a platform for art, nature, and technology. 2 VU Amsterdam, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Biophysics of Photosynthesis. 3 Idem. 4 Waag Society & Technology. 5 ‘Smart Hybrid Forms’ (2019) is funded by the NWO Smart Cultural Fund 6 Stengers, I. (2018) Another Science is Possible: Manifesto for a Slow Science, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.