About the SciArt project
SciArt mission
SciArt was established in January 2016, with the objective of triggering innovation in research and bringing together science, art and society. Hosted by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s in-house science and knowledge service providing independent scientific advice to inform EU policy, the programme enables scientists, artists and policymakers to meet and work together.
We discuss, investigate and explore the wide intersecting plains between art and science, with a shared drive to generate insights that can meaningfully influence our collective life and policymaking.
SciArt process
We broker, curate, and communicate transdisciplinary exchanges among scientists, artists, and policymakers around topics of shared interest. Every two years, these actors meet to explore, dialogue, and sometimes disagree, yet through this process, they discover unexpected affinities in intent, method, and scope despite their differing approaches. Together, they experiment with ways of questioning, investigating, and representing reality.
SciArt outputs
SciArt outpts include a wide range of activities, artefacts, and experiences emerging from collaborations at the intersection of art, science, and policy within the SciArt initiative. They include exhibitions such as NaturArchy, art-science residencies, performances, installations, collaborative projects, and multimedia works, alongside documentation and reflection through catalogues, media archives, and publications that capture the creative and conceptual processes behind them.
More than just final products, these outputs embody a spirit of experimentation, offering a safe haven for speculative exploration, testing ideas, embracing possible failure, and developing new ways in which art and science can jointly engage with and address contemporary societal challenges.
Latest news
On 28/09/2024, 18:00-19:15, JRC SciArt curator Caterina Benincasa participates to Trieste Next discussing artists intermingling in research sites.
Upcoming LASER talk on economics, microbiology, groundwater and raw materials in Antofogasta (CL) stemming from Penelope Cain's NaturArchy project.
Since it's launch on 10/04/2024 at the 2024 New European Bauhaus Festival, the eBAU book by artist Roberto Paci Dalò (produced by JRC SciArt and published by Quodlibet Editore) on artists' perpectives towards the New European Bauhaus, has been presented to a wide network with events across Italy, and generated reactions in the press.
Keep up with these events and news on the dedicated page of the JRC SciArt website.
In the context of the NaturArchy exhibition, and as part of its public engagement programme, the Le Biais Vert collective presented Nos Futurs Radio. Joining forces with Radio Campus, broadcasts took place throughout June and July 2024 on Saturday afternoons, giving voice to artists, collectives, associations, activists, and all people located in Belgium who concretely work to rethink ways of inhabiting the city and the world and believe that we can rebuild relationships with living things without harming them.
You can find information about these broadcasts on the dedicated page of our website as well as on iMAL's website.
Recordings will be accessible on the JRC SciArt Media Archive as they become available.
These (toxic) relations are forever – PFAS Pollution as a threat to water resilience in the EU - @ iMAL/La Vallee Rue Adolphe Lavallée 39, 1080 Bruxelles on 27/06/2024, 17h30-20h. Please register using this link (deadline 24 June)
On Thursday 20/06/2024 at 09:00 AM CET, JRC SciArt project leader, Adriaan Eeckels and Resonances IV artist Penelope Cain will take part in Special Session 127 titled Art and Science in Degrowth: A ManiQuesto as part of the the 10th International Degrowth Conference and the 15th Conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE) in Pontevedra (Galicia, Spain). The session will probe the importance of the arts for degrowth, the points of tension, contradiction and possibility.
On Friday 14/06 at 19:30-20:30 PM CET at iMAL (Brussels), by the Nos Futurs Radio station, a panel discussion titled Belonging to Land & Country in the Anthropocene will be held, engaging with the role of vernacular, local and indigenous knowledge in transforming our food systems.
On Friday 14/06 at 10:50 AM CET at the Citizen Participation and Deliberative Democracy Festival the session and panel titled, Epistemologies of the North. Why do we need to work across different ways of knowing in the Arctic? , featuring a music and visual performance, will engage with the question:What does it take to bring notions of care and cognitive justice into policymaking?
On Thursday 13/06 at 17:30 CETResonances IV artist Jemma Woolmore will be giving a participatory performance at the Citizen Participation and Deliberative Democracy Festival, organised by the European Commission’s Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy titled I/We/They: Rhythm and Ritual for public space.
On 13/06/2024 , in the framework of the public programme adjoint to the NaturArchy exhibition, a panel will be held on What is the role of arts and science in European forest resilience against wildfires? from 10:00 - 13:00 CET at the CDMA building in Brussels (21 Rue du Champ de Mars / Marsveldstraat 21, B-1050). This panel follows the collaboration of artist Margherita Pevere with FIRE-RES Europe for the work Lament, which will be exhibited at the NaturArchy exhibition starting from 12/06/2024.