Bio Art & Design (BAD) Awards – 10TH anniversary

Bio Art & Design (BAD) Award
The Bio Art & Design (BAD) Award is an annual international competition aiming to push the boundaries of art and science in the life sciences industry. Accelerating junior artistic careers, functioning as a springboard for new collaborations, grants, and publications. The BAD Awards are brought to life after synthesizing the strengths of BioArt Laboratories, MU Hybrid Art House, and ZonMw. The name Designers and Artists for Genomics Award was used in the years 2010 – 2013.

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Evolutionaries (10th anniversary) 
The exhibition at MU Hybrid Art House in the design capital of the Netherlands, Eindhoven had a festive edge: The 10 year anniversary of the BAD Awards was celebrated!

Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, on 2 July 2020, a small-scale award ceremony took place at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. The grants of EUR 25.000 were assigned to the three most original and promising research concepts. The foreman of the international jury William Myers (writer, curator, professor specialized in bio art & design) elected this year’s grant-winners: bio artists Sissel Marie Tonn, Dasha Tsapenko en Nadine Botha.

Consequently, the winning artists will insert the grant to further develop and exhibited their art projects to the general public within several months. Their final art projects were online exhibited from December 2020 till May 2021, under the theme ‘Evolutionaries: Bio Art & Design from the Sea to the Soul.’‏‏‎ ‎

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We will guide you through the individual visions of the 2020/2021 winners: Can a fashionable fur coat evolve through growth stages, leading to fertility? Can microplastics in human bodies evoke hallucinations? And what is the metaphorical power of zombies in historical films?

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Becoming a Sentinel Species – Winners
Sissel Marie Tonn
in collaboration with Heather Leslie (Department of Environment and Health, VU Amsterdam) and Juan Garcia Vallejo (Department Molecular Cell Biology & Immunology, Amsterdam UMC )
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Can microplastics stimulate extreme reactions of the immune system, even evoking hallucinations?
Sissel Marie sketches a fictional audio-visual story during which she transports the audience to a futuristic vision: Two protagonists are purposely injecting microplastics into their bodies. The film reflects on how all life on earth is fundamentally connected with each other and the environments in which they live. The human health implications of microplastics have yet to be elucidated, but their presence in our bodies and environments powerfully reminds us that we are not impenetrable entities, but rather liquid organisms – no cleaner than the environments around us.

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Fur_tilize
Dasha Tsapenko
in collaboration with Han Wösten (Microbiology Research Group, UU Utrecht)

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Agriculture and fashion intertwined: Dasha offers a speculative prototype of a value-building form of fashion, in which a single item of clothing evolves through stages of growth. Offering a critical look at fast fashion and the accelerating production and consumption activities associated with it. Dasha developed the prototype for five ‘green “fur” coats, demonstrating user cycles of the garments and how organisms support each other to the next stage. From the first cycle of reinforcement to the fifth, final cycle where the coat is fertile and ready to host almost any kind of crop.

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The orders of the Undead
Nadine Botha
in collaboration with Henry de Vries (Department of Infectious Diseases, Public Health Service (GGD), Amsterdam, and Department of Dermatology, Amsterdam University Medical Centres (Amsterdam UMC)
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Zombies!? Nadine explores the metaphorical power of zombies through four short films with video clips from historical films and televisions, and the stories told about them. Coupled with old and new stories of contamination, segregation and death. The work shows how the colonial tropes of the white rescuers complex become perpetuated by fatalistic fear of an impending apocalypse and draw attention to the warlike language and metaphors of contamination used for othering people. How is the zombie phenomenon rooted in popular entertainment culture?

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During this BAD Award anniversary edition, the winning artist were sharing their gallery space at MU Hybrid Art House with winners from previous editions:  Xandra van der Eijk, Jalila Essaïdi, Agi Haines, Charlotte Jarvis, Cecilia Jonsson, Ani Liu, Špela Petric, and Michael Sedbon. Curated by Angelique Spaninks.

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