Arts at CERN

Arts at CERN, in partnership with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, announces the artist selected for the latest edition of Connect

Swiss artist Amanda E. Metzger will come to CERN for a two-month residency as the artist selected for the latest edition of Connect. Metzger’s artistic practice centres on network theory, authorship and the complexities of unquantifiable data. Working across installations, videos, objects and photographs, she explores how memories are created, measured, and shared.

Supported by the Arts at CERN team, the artist will meet CERN scientists and visit the Laboratory with them for two months. By engaging with cutting-edge scientific research, she will explore new artistic forms and develop Reconstructing Reality, a project that examines how collective identity and memories can be gathered, preserved and reimagined through methods inspired by experimental physics.

Drawing on the data collection, storage and lossy reconstruction processes of particle detectors, Reconstructive Reality will seek to reconstruct fragmented memories and build a decentralised, multi-bodied identity reflective of the artist’s vision. The work will culminate in a web-based platform where viewers can navigate interconnected, reconstructed memories through an interplay of text, video, audio and graphics.

“Art, with its kaleidoscopic nature, inspires shifting perspectives on how we engage with science. The artists in our programme excel at fostering new possibilities, and I am proud to host Metzger in our residencies. Her work and residency proposal truly embody this transformative quality, with CERN providing a remarkable setting for these ideas to unfold,” says Mónica Bello, head of Arts at CERN.

Now in its eighth edition, the Connect collaboration framework between Arts at CERN and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia has established itself as a vital platform for artistic engagement with physics and the scientific community at CERN. The programme has hosted artists such as AATB, Johanna Bruckner, Robin Meier and Vimala Pons for residencies at CERN, and offered shared, dual residencies at CERN and partner scientific institutions in India, Chile and South Africa to Rohini Devasher and Elisa Storelli, Shaliesh BR and Lou Masduraud, Marcela Moraga and Dominique Koch, and Kamil Hassim and Ian Purnell.

The Connect jury comprised Mónica Bello, curator and head of Arts at CERN; Giulia Bini, head of programme and curator of “Enter the Hyper-Scientific” at EPFL Lausanne; and Federica Martini, head of the CCC – Critical Curatorial Cybermedia master’s programme at HEAD (Haute école d’art et de design) in Geneva.