Martyna Marciniak wins the third edition of the Collide Copenhagen residency organised by Arts at CERN in partnership with Copenhagen Contemporary
Following an international open call launched in collaboration with Copenhagen Contemporary in November, Arts at CERN has announced that Polish artist Martyna Marciniak has won the third edition of the Collide Copenhagen residency.
Collide is a residency programme organised by Arts at CERN in partnership with a leading cultural institution in a CERN Member State. Established in 2012, the residency offers artists a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the Laboratory’s environment and engage in meaningful dialogue with its scientific community. The thirteenth edition of Collide, and the third of Collide Copenhagen, attracted 774 proposals from 109 different countries.
Martyna Marciniak is a Polish artist and researcher based in Berlin. Her interdisciplinary practice combines spatial storytelling, speculative fiction and 3D reconstruction to examine how design and technology shape ideologies and social structures. Her recent work has focused on developing a methodology that integrates the aesthetics of disinformation into a semi-fictional storytelling format that ignites imagination and critical reflection.
Marciniak will complete a two-month residency, split between CERN and Copenhagen Contemporary, to develop her proposal, entitled “2.2 microseconds: an anomaly”. The project investigates the “split-second problem”, examining how micro-temporal events, such as a muon’s 2.2-microsecond lifespan, reveal the interconnectedness of human systems and cosmic phenomena. One such anomaly is the bit-flip, where cosmic rays alter a bit in a computer’s memory. These glitches expose the inner workings of technological, financial and computational infrastructures, paradoxically rendering them more perceptible.
The artist will create a sculptural timepiece and a video essay that explore the intersections between cosmic, technological and bodily timescales. Drawing from muon tomography and scientific timekeeping, the sculpture will reflect the infrastructures designed to measure fleeting phenomena. The video essay will propose new narratives and sensory modes for experiencing time’s complexity, inviting a sense of wonder about the errors that shape our world.
“At Copenhagen Contemporary, we are beyond excited to round up a successful three-year partnership with Arts at CERN by presenting Martyna Marciniak as the third recipient of Collide Copenhagen. Marciniak’s project for Collide seeks to modulate our understanding of time, offering new narratives and sensory modes for experiencing its complexity,” says Marie Laurberg, director of Copenhagen Contemporary.
Together with the 2023 and 2024 awardees, Joan Heemskerk and Alice Bucknell, Marciniak will take part in the exhibition “Soft Robots”, which will open in June at Copenhagen Contemporary.
The jury consisted of Giulia Bini, head of programme and curator of “Enter the Hyper-Scientific” at EPFL Lausanne; Vitor Cardoso, director of the Centre of Gravity at the Niels Bohr Institute; Marie Laurberg, director of Copenhagen Contemporary; Majken Overgaard, an independent curator, and Ana Prendes, assistant curator of Arts at CERN.
Collide Copenhagen has been the collaboration framework between CERN and Copenhagen Contemporary since 2023, as part of a three-year collaboration. A new partner for the Arts at CERN residency programme will be announced in 2025.
