‘Let us finish what we started’. This is how the UN introduces its first Sustainable Development Goal – to end poverty in all forms and dimensions by 2030. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their 169 targets have been described as a sprawling, misconceived mess of grandiose intentions. The title of the development agenda itself – ‘Transforming our World’ – oozes utopian ambition. It was adopted by 193 nations in 2015. Five years later and with ten years left, how do you think our world will transform?
Will there be no poverty and zero hunger across the world in ten years? Is this planet to be populated in ten years by billions of healthy and educated humans? Is comfortability or autonomy more important to well-being? Can you be comfortably autonomus?
These are the questions scientists were asked who applied to an open call to collaborate with artists in the STUDITOPIA residency program. Over the course of almost two years, artists and scientists will undertake a creative journey together that addresses these questions and explores sustainable development across Europe through the converging views of art and science.
The artists and scientists will kick-off their collaboration at the Ars Electronica festival with a Creative Question Challenge (CQC). The CQC is a new brainstorming format in which speakers explore and present creative questions in a 30-minute dialogue.
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Project Credits / Acknowledgements
This project is presented in the framework of STUDIOTOPIA and co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Biographies
Hypercomf (GR)
Hypercomf (GR) is a multidisciplinary artist identity, materialized as a fictitious company profile, founded in Athens, Greece, in 2017, by artists Ioannis Koliopoulos and Paola Palavidi. Based between the city of Athens and Tinos island in the Cyclades, Hypercomf has developed an international practice, producing location, site and time specific projects and activations. The team focuses on targeted collaborations with individuals, communities and locations ranging from musicians to scientists and community choirs to urban rooftop pigeon keepers.
Marko Digenis (GR)
Marko Digenis (GR) is a marine biologist who has collaborated across scientific fields to answer scientific questions according to benthic communities of different marine areas, alien species and phylogeny. Previously he has worked with the Museum of Natural History of Crete to analyze DNA samples of an endemic species of lizard Hellenolacerta graeca. Previously at the Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research he studied polychaetes communities and benthic communities of both soft and hard substrates of marine caves. Recent research with the Institute of Oceanography at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research examined the bacterial DNA of environmental water samples.
Christos Carras(GR/UK)
Christos Carras was born in London (UK) in 1962. He read philosophy at Cambridge University and then at the Sorbonne where he earned his PhD. From 1990 to 2000 he worked in the organic food and wine sector, among other things co-founding the Wine Roads of Northern Greece.
From 2000 onwards, he has been working in the cultural sector, initially as the Project Manager of the EU funded MediMuses network. In 2006 he became General Manager of the B & M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music.
In 2009 he joined the Onassis Foundation as the Executive Director of the Onassis Cultural Centre. He is responsible for the music program and other interdisciplinary projects, developing European networks and the overall coordination of the Centre
