Arts at CERN announced today that Dutch artist Joan Heemskerk is the first recipient of the Collide Copenhagen residency award, following a March international open call organized in collaboration with Copenhagen Contemporary.
Collide is the flagship initiative of Arts at CERN, which invites artists of all creative disciplines from around the globe to submit proposals for a research-led residency based on interactions with the scientific community at CERN. The eleventh iteration of Collide and the inaugural event of Collide Copenhagen drew 592 project proposals from 90 countries.
Joan Heemskerk’s initiative, Alice & Bob after Clay +=-> Hello, world!, seeks to develop a new universal language, referencing Tim Berners-Lee’s proposition at CERN that all scientists should be able to communicate ideas.
This year’s winner is web-art pioneer Joan Heemskerk.
Through a reevaluation of the cryptographic characters Alice and Bob, the material clay, and the computer program Hello, World!, the produced message would transcend galactic and life-form boundaries in the form of a light-beam, a radio signal, or something else entirely.
Joan Heemskerk will conclude a two-month residency devoted to artistic inquiry and exploration, which will be split between CERN and Copenhagen Contemporary. She will collaborate with physicists, engineers, and laboratory personnel.
With the assistance of the curatorial teams of Arts at CERN and Copenhagen Contemporary, the residency will be followed by a phase of designing and producing a new artwork for an exhibition at Copenhagen Contemporary in 2025 that will investigate the impact of technology on humankind.
CERN has a long history of innovation and is a distinct environment for the creation of new forms of science and art. It is in keeping with the mission of Arts at CERN to invite an artist who has persistently pushed our collective understanding and imagination of the digital domain.
“We are delighted to support Joan Heemskerk in her exploration of the possibility of a new language, in dialogue and with the support of our community,” says Mónica Bello, the director of the Arts department at CERN.
“At Copenhagen Contemporary, we view artists as the foremost researchers of contemporary culture. Joan Heemskerk, a pioneer of digitally based art, has challenged our conceptions of technology since the early days of the internet, and we are beyond thrilled to collaborate with her on a new project, says the director of Copenhagen Contemporary, Marie Laurberg.