Pro Helvetia supports new artistic projects that focus on current social issues and approach them with new methods.
This support offers the opportunity to engage in new forms of collaboration between artists and experts from various social or scientific sectors such as ecology, technology, politics or anthropology.
Discover project examples that give an idea of the range of possibilities in which artists and social or scientific experts can work together.
Project examples
de secret
Olga Generalova
Visual arts + cultural anthropology and theology
The project “de secret” aims to collaborate with communities that hold traditional knowledge and protect intangible heritage practices in Switzerland, Poland, Belarus and Chile. It invites artists and scientists to work together and jointly document living heritage using contemporary art, media and digital community archives.
Meet Olga Generalova, initiator of “de secret”:
Future of Materials – Inspire Invention
Nadya Suvorova
Game design + material science
Future of Materials is a web platform introducing materials research to artists and society. It aims to do so by curating and presenting emerging materials in a compelling, playful and accessible way and by stimulating new ideas and creating opportunities for transdisciplinary dialogue. They make complex scientific knowledge accessible to non-experts and promote scientific discoveries of new materials and systems to all curious minds, open a dialogue and actively contribute to shaping what future materials can and should be.
More information: futureofmaterials.com
IN BETWEEN
Julie Semoroz
Music + neuroscience and sociology
IN BETWEEN is an artistic proposal that is the result of more than two years of exchanges between artist Julie Semoroz and scientists from the Centre Interfacultaire en Sciences Affectives (CISA) at the University of Geneva and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Evolving LanguageI.
IN BETWEEN presents multiple works of art, all of them questioning the way in which humans interact with their non- human surroundings. The public is immersed in a space of sound and light, inviting them to contemplate and question the way they are connected to each other and their environment. Throughout this project, scientists and artists are invited to exchange and share knowledge on these topics.
arvae
Alexandra Müller Crepon
Visual arts + environmental sciences
Founded in 2020, arvae is a research platform focusing on finding and cultivating grounds for transdisciplinary collaboration together with artists, scientists and local experts. Some of their activities are collective reading sessions, exhibitions, symposiums, gatherings, exchanges with students, joint meals, meetings and plannings as well as experiments and critical reflection with the goal of finding new ways to implement sustainability.
Meet Alexandra Müller Crepon, initiator ofarvaespeaking about the collective of artists, scientists, and local (environmental) experts for arvae in Arosa:
Knowledge is Biography
Marcel Schwald
Performing arts + gender- and migration studies
«Knowledge is Biography» is an art-based biographical gender research conducted in discursive and in scenic form. The project accompanies the process leading to the theatre performance «Introducing Living Smile Vidya». During this process, the theatre practitioners engage in regular exchange with scientists from the fields of gender studies, sociology and history. The participants share information on topics common to all these disciplines, such as mental health, migration and racism.
About Art+
Under Art+, Pro Helvetia promotes artistic collaboration between artists and experts from social or scientific fields.
Funding opportunities for practitioners:
