Arts at CERN

Julius von Bismarck’s multidisciplinary practice explores contemporary dialectics of nature and civilisation, knowledge and cultural imagination, individuals’ behaviour and social norms.

His visual vocabulary widely transposes encounters with elemental forces that exceed human perception and reason. Employing a diverse range of mediums including photography, film, installation, sculpture, performance, and landscape, each of his works is shaped by research-driven experimentations with crossovers in the fields of physics, technology, and social sciences.

Julius von Bismarck was awarded the 2012 Collide Award, Arts at CERN’s international residency programme in collaboration with Ars Electronica (2012-2015).

Drawing from his apprenticeship at the Berlin Institute for Spatial Experiments directed by Olafur Eliasson (2013) and residency at CERN, von Bismarck’s work freely moves between science and invention, recurrently intertwining references to literature, history, film, and philosophies concerned with concepts of reality vs. perception, or nature vs. culture. Decontextualising, manipulating, ironising, and reconstructing reality in diverse modes ranging from objets trouvés found in his everyday surroundings to in situ installations in remote places, von Bismarck’s oeuvre reminds us of man’s vain relationship with his environment.