Studiotopia 2
Selected Emerging Artists
We are thrilled to announce the selection of our Open Call for Emerging Artists, who will be joining us for the second edition of the STUDIOTOPIA Residency Programme which aims to break down barriers between disciplines by encouraging innovative cross-disciplinary approaches.
Selected Emerging Artist: Denisa Pubalova & Dr. Lea Luka Sikau
Denisa Pubalova and Dr. Lea Luka Sikau have collaborated as a duo since 2020, co-creating at the nexus of media arts and experimental sound. Their works have been commissioned by Ars Electronica Festival, Transmediale, Impakt, Ligeti Center, Earth Institute and Ensemble Modern.
Denisa Pubalova, a media artist and creative coder, investigates environmental philosophy, critical posthumanism, and interspecies communication. Her work engages with technological infrastructures to craft visionary, post-anthropocentric narratives.
Dr. Sikau, an artist-researcher with a PhD from Cambridge and a Fellow of Harvard University’s Mellon School for Performance Research, specializes in posthumanism and rehearsal ethnography. Having collaborated with luminaries like Romeo Castellucci, Rimini Protokoll and Marina Abramović, she currently works as curator for sound art at ZKM Hertzlab.
Problem Statement: The residency aims to promote research into inter-species collaboration in the pursuit of healthy eating. Participants are encouraged to present these processes and the Asturian context and its biodiversity.
Hosted by: LABoral
Selected Emerging Artist: Justyna Górowska
Justyna Górowska (she/they) is a hydrofeminist and performance artist engaged in interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of art, technology, and social activism. In 2017, she adopted the pseudonym WetMeWild, focusing on environmental challenges related to water and utilizing AR and VR technologies in her work. She collaborates with collectives such as Nerdka and the duo cyber_nymphs (with Ewelina Jarosz), with whom she released the Hydrosexual Manifesto in 2023. She also curates the BHA (Blue Humanities Archive) project, an online platform combining art and ecological education about water. Her work has been exhibited in Berlin, Jakarta, Warsaw, and New York. In 2020, she earned a PhD from the University of the Arts in Poznań. Currently, she lives in Kraków and teaches at the Intermedia Department of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Interdisciplinary Department at SWPS University.
Problem Statement: Often, we are not aware of the footprint of our digital world. Can we measure the environmental cost of data centres, streaming platforms, posting and scrolling as well as digital art or our everyday digital life? Are there any other solutions?
Hosted by: Laznia Contemporary Arts Center(CCA)
Selected Emerging Artist: Ânia Pais
Ânia Pais, a Portuguese visual artist, lives and works between the village of Atalaia, in Covilhã, and Lisbon. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Painting from FBAUL. Her work focuses primarily on installation, with a diverse and experimental field of research, through the use of textiles, ceramics, photography, and performance.
“I consider my work a response or a testimony of a conversation with the land, with the space and time that welcome me. I am interested in space as the main influence, allowing the landscape to guide my exploration. I am intrigued by how space generates motivation and necessity in the body and spirit, and this sensitivity to the landscape plays a crucial role in my creative process.”
Problem Statement: We are looking at the access to waterways and green spaces as a social and political priority in the Cluj area. We have high discrepancies in our services/privileges and access to fundamental environmental rights: with peripheric neighborhoods facing challenges of clean water and access to green spaces, as opposed to central areas with sandy beaches and newly designed parks.
Hosted by: The Cluj Cultural Centre
Selected Emerging Artist: Masha Patsyuk
Masha Patsyuk is a multidisciplinary artist from Moscow, currently based in Europe. Her work spans performance, installation, digital art, and film, emphasizing bodily experiences and the transformative potential of participative art. Her practice critically reflects on the interrelation of people, institutions, and non-humans both in physical and digital spaces. It encompasses verbal and non-verbal communication tools, Incorporating diverse sets of vulnerabilities and privileges, along with the positions that are used to speak from. Her recent work delves into the impact of wars and seeks pathways to live together on our damaged planet.
Problem Statement: We need to become judges, lawyers and legislators to enter the symbiocene and invent a new right to transport and move, whether by ourselves – on foot, horseback or bicycle – or by means of air, land, rail, sea or river. It would mean rethinking a right to walk the earth that belongs to humans, as well as to free or rewilded horses, to wild grasses, or even to waters and minerals. Finally, it would lay the foundations for a right to travel across borders, and for the rights of nature.
Hosted by: Hexagone, Scène Nationale Arts Sciences
Selected Emerging Artist: Sybille Neumeyer
Sybille Neumeyer is an interdependent artist, researcher and curator with focus on environmental issues, climate crisis and ecological relationships. Her work is based on post-disciplinary research and collaboration. Through polyphonic (hi)storytelling, multimedia installations, performative lectures, and video essays, she examines terrestrial communities, planetary metabolisms and more-than-human atmospheres while searching for transformative narratives, modes of rooting and inspirations for collective action towards social, ecological and multispecies justice. As a cultural worker she creates, hosts and organizes participatory formats of collective (un)learning, such as walks, workshops and reading groups. Currently, she is a postgraduate fellow at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences at the Berlin University of the Arts, researching on multispecies weather literacies and alternate data practices.
Problem Statement: The residency is dedicated to developing a deeper understanding of interspecies and cross-species interactions, particularly focusing on the communication between non-human living beings, AI, and their environmental contexts. Authors are encouraged to employ advanced sensing technologies to dissect, intercept and showcase the complex casual interactions occurring within and across species.
Hosted by: Kersnikova Institute
Selected Emerging Artist: Hung Lu Chan
Hung Lu Chan (Michael) is a Taiwanese artist and social designer based in the Netherlands. He holds a master’s degree in Social Design from Design Academy Eindhoven and a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from Taiwan. His creative practice lies at the intersection of interdisciplinary research, interactive installations, and participatory workshops. He is interested in exploring the diverse human imagination of the unknown, particularly looking into how humans imagine aliens throughout centuries from within. His multi-disciplinary work spans across art, neuroscience, spirituality, and AI neural networks. In his recent research project, he especially explores aliens as an internal phenomenon through a mix of guided meditation, multi-sensory neurofeedback, and embodiment. Aiming to foster more diverse and inclusive perceptions of the future, he positions his work as an imagination catalyst, re-exploring the unknown to challenge established norms and uncover humanity’s diverse imaginations. Ultimately, his work seeks to blur the borders between facts and fiction, science and fantasy, and others and selves.
Selected Emerging Artist: Cezar Mocan
Cezar Mocan is a Lisbon-based artist and computer programmer interested in the interplay between technology and the natural landscape. Using narrative generative systems—animated videos of infinite duration, real-time simulations built in game engines or other software—he creates worlds that recontextualize aspects of digital culture we take for granted, often in absurd ways, while investigating the power structures which mediate our relationship with technology. Drawing on media archaeology and art history, his research process traces the origins of our current thought patterns around (technological) progress. Some of his past works have been exhibited at Office Impart (Berlin), Onassis ONX Studio (New York), Panke Gallery (Berlin), Yale University (New Haven), Currents New Media (Santa Fe), Inter/Access (Toronto), Romanian Design Week (Bucharest) and The Wrong Biennale. His real-time simulation work, Arcadia Inc. was recognized as a 2021 winner of the Lumen Prize in Art and Technology. Cezar holds a B.S. in Computer Science (2016) from Yale University and an M.P.S. in Interactive Telecommunications (2021) from New York University, where he also served as a research resident and adjunct professor.
Problem Statement: Living Surfaces examines how data- driven models and simulations reshape our understanding of climate collapse. It questions how environmental changes and computational realities intersect and challenges the adaptation of AI and machine learning to coexist with nature, urging a reimagining of these technologies to harmonize with the natural world.
Hosted by: Digital Hub & Beta Festival
Selected Emerging Artist: Miguel Teodoro
Miguel Teodoro (1997, Portugal) is a visual artist and researcher based between Portugal and the Netherlands. His research-based practice examines the interdependencies of materiality, geopolitics, ecology and visual culture through site-responsive and media- specific spatial interventions. His most recent body of work investigates the techno-scientific transformations of agricultural land and its correlation with the political and environmental history of imaging technologies – researching the impacts on soil fertility and its material and territorial manifestations. Teodoro holds an MA in Geo-Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven (NL) and a BA degree in Fine Arts from the University of Porto (PT). Teodoro is also a self- taught forager and farmer working towards merging his artistic and land-oriented practices under the same body of work.
Problem Statement: In Cyprus, 51% of the island is facing critical danger of desertification due to changing rain patterns and excessive water usage in agriculture. Aquifers are being depleted, and erosion is accelerating. Sustainable land management practices are lacking.
Hosted by: CYENS CoE Cyprus
