Ariane Koek (UK)
Ariane Koek is an independent strategic cultural consultant, creative producer, curator and writer on art, science, technology and ecology. She is internationally recognised for initiating in 2009 the Arts at CERN programme – based at the world’s largest particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland – designing and directing the Collide, Accelerate and Guest artists programmes for the first five years.
Since leaving Arts at CERN in 2015, Koek works independently, specialising in the creation of new arts/science/technology programmes for science laboratories, museums, foundations, cultural institutions, foundations, and universities around the world, including The Exploratorium, San Francisco, USA; Cavendish Physics Laboratories, Cambridge University, UK; Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy and Technische Universitat, Berlin for the Science Gallery International Network. Curatorial work includes invited creative director of the first virtual official Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for architecture 2021; Related Realities – Art, Science and Technology for Backlight the Nordic Photography Triennale 2020; Real Feelings: Emotion and Technology, HEK, Basel, Switzerland, and MU – Hybrid Art House, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2020–21), which she co-curated; and Entangle: Physics and the Artistic Imagination, Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden (2018–2019).
Koek is on the cultural boards of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre for environmental science and policy (Ispra, Italy), HeK (Basel) Edgelands Institute (Harvard/Geneva) and AND (Abandon Normal Devices, (UK).
Keywords: world leader, CERN, art-science collaboration, policy, speaker, visionary, change maker, curator, strategist
Afternoon topic: Into the Universe
Technology enables discovery, exploration, and new understanding of the universe we are a part of. How deep can we go? How does the connection between art and science contribute to discovery? Can the Moon become our next home?
We can understand the dimensions that transcend us with the help of mathematics, physics, computing, statistics and other artificial tools. These not only give us the illusion that we understand our universe, but also the illusion of order that reflects the nightmares of perceived chaos. But we refuse to acknowledge that this illusion has gradually become law. The space we call the Universe seems to have multiple possible interpretations, and meanwhile advanced data systems are gradually building a parallel, virtual, imprint of it. Scientific models and explanations of the nature and origin of the Universe, like other theories, have naturally gone through phases of acceptance and transcendence. Do we now find ourselves once again in a similar era that, albeit without corporal punishment, is moving on to another paradigm of interpretation of the physical nature of matter and the universe? How many more interpretations and plausible theories will have to gradually fall before we finally find the answer?
