Connect
A programme of residencies to foster experimentation in art and science in Switzerland and worldwide in partnership with Pro Helvetia.
Connect is a residency programme launched in 2021 by CERN in collaboration with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. It serves as a platform for experimenting with new formats that bring artists in connection with fundamental science.
Connect offers two residency formats: the first consists of a three-month residency at CERN for Swiss artists; the second, the international strand, is a combined residency at CERN and at an international location in collaboration with prestigious scientific and cultural organisations – in Chile, South Africa, and India.
Each year artists from Switzerland and from one of these countries are invited to take part in these research-led residencies to explore ideas and to develop new work.
Connect India
Following an open call for applications launched in November 2022, a jury of cultural experts awarded Swiss artist Elisa Storelli and indian artist Rohini Devasher the dual residency Connect India. The Swiss and Indian artist are invited to carry out a four-week residency at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) in Bengaluru, followed by a three-week stay at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva. The Connect India residency will expose the artists to two unique scientific organizations and the fundamental research conducted there. While CERN offers a wide range of experiments in particle physics, the ICTS engages in research areas that include statistical and condensed matter physics, physical biology and mathematics.
Connect South Africa
The winners of Connect South Africa, the Swiss artist Ian Purnell and Kamil Hassim, a transdisciplinary artist from South Africa, spent three weeks together at CERN, followed by five weeks in the group of astronomy observatories connected to the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).
Read more about their residency in South Africa
Watch interviews with the artists about their experience at CERN
Connect
The Swiss collective AATB, selected for the first edition of Connect, experiment with industrial robotic systems and automation processes. With their project, they aim to explore representations of space and time using industrial robotic arms, bringing both small atomic events and massive cosmological events into a human-scale format. AATB will spend two months at CERN in 2023, followed by a remote residency of one month in dialogue with scientists at CERN and with the curatorial support of the Arts at CERN team.
Johanna Bruckner is a multimedia artist whose work focuses on the performance of the human body and the technologies that affect it. Bruckner was the artist selected for the second edition of Connect. Her residency at CERN will be dedicated to artistic research and exploration in dialogue with scientists, engineers and laboratory staff based on her proposal Ekphrastic Motion: Like One Hundred Electric Leeches. She will develop her research into the impact of technology on the human body and the microorganisms that inhabit it, as well as to explore the possibilities for agencies in a technologised world.
default
Swiss artist Elisa Storelli is dedicated to the artistic investigation of time, which she calls Chronomorphology.
Ian Purnell (b.1988 in Basel) works in the intersection of visual arts, documentary filmmaking and performing arts.
