Become a researcher-artist for a day: explore our invisible relationship to microbes through art
Workshop | Artist Talk
27.10.2026
A Participatory Art and Science Workshop at 'Maltfabrikken'.
Step into the shoes of an artist and a researcher, and explore the invisible relationship between humans and microbes.
- A Participatory Art and Science Workshop with Dr. Katarzyna Krawczyk and Mike von der Nahmer where you’ll be guided through an open experiment at the intersection of biology, art and everyday experience. Together, we will test whether changing how we pay attention can change how we relate to the living world around us.
- How do you investigate a relationship when one of the participants cannot speak to you? During their Earthwise residency, award-winning composer and transdisciplinary artist-researcher Mike von der Nahmer and molecular biologist Dr. Katarzyna “Kasia” Krawczyk have been exploring an unusual question: what happens between a scientist and the microorganisms she works with every day?
- Kasia grows, observes and studies microorganisms in the laboratory. Mike listens to her accounts, reads her scientific logbooks and asks what might be happening beyond the facts that can be measured: in her attention, language, expectations and decisions. But this is not an attempt to make microbes sound human or to claim that they are talking to us. It is an experiment in noticing what changes when we look more closely.
- In this participatory workshop, you are invited into the research itself. Working with fragments of laboratory experiences, images, sounds, words and simple creative exercises, we will explore how we describe living things that remain mostly invisible to us. What do we think we see? What do we imagine? When does an observation become an interpretation? And when, if ever, might we begin to call an encounter a relationship?
- No scientific knowledge or artistic experience is needed. You may find yourself listening differently, making a small drawing, experimenting with movement or discovering that a familiar word no longer quite fits. There are no correct answers to produce, and even a moment when nothing seems to happen may tell us something.
- No prior knowledge or expertise necessary – just a curiousity to learn how you can explore invisible things (like microorganism) through art.