Past Residents Aga Pokrywka
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Super Eclectic, Golden Trash. Future Past (collaborative gold mining from electronic waste at Taipei Contemporary Art Center), 2019. Photo by Aga Pokrywka
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Aga Pokrywka, Reuse Yourself (making Chicha together at apexart, NewYork), 2019. Photo by Justin Tyler Tate
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Aga Pokrywka, Microbioreactors (taking care and being taken care of by cyanobacteria while simulating life on Mars at Mars Desert Research Station, Utah Desert), 2022. Photo by PJ Marcellino
Aga Pokywka’s work merges interdisciplinary art and science practices, including fermentation, speculative design, and participatory approaches. She is fascinated by how we comprehend the invisible and capture it with our senses, whether it be microbes, celestial bodies, or systemic structures. She is currently working, among other things, on Ferment Radio, an experimental podcast series on micro and macro transformations. Together with artists, chefs, activists, researchers, scientists, bakers, hackers, and people of the most diverse cultures and backgrounds, she explores the microworld as a metaphor and inspiration for a multispecies co-living.
Aga Pokrywka will reframe Ferment Radio’s main topics to develop a learning kit for teenagers. It will contain tutorials for hands-on experimentation, including DIY bacteria incubation, microscopy, basic identification of bacterial colonies, and fermentation. Each step of this learning kit will be a metaphor and a guideline to reflect on broader issues: the notion of good and bad bacteria, interspecies relations, and the role of microorganisms in ecological regeneration. Aga believes that art happens via collaborative encounters; through manual tasks, abstract topics become embodied. Her aim is to utilize the potential of the metaphor in comprehending complex dependencies and hard-to-grasp transformational work.
Aga Pokrywka’s residency is realised in context of Empowering Tools, a residency collaboration between RIBOCA (Rīga International Biennial of Contemporary Art), HIAP (Helsinki International Artist Programme) and NAC (Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts).