Otherwise Residency brings together four contemporary artists and four scientific research teams in a shared attempt to rethink how knowledge is produced, circulated, and felt across disciplines, in relation to current environmental issues, from pollution monitoring and remediation to understanding anthropogenic influences on the natural habitats. Developed by Marginal in partnership with the Institute of Biology Bucharest and 2Celsius, the residency creates the framework for a sustained dialogue between artistic practice and scientific investigation, focusing on ecology, the climate crisis, and the complex interdependencies that structure the more-than-human world.
Over several months, the artists immerse themselves in ongoing research at the Institute of Biology – ranging from studies on bioremediation and avian bioacoustics to plant ecology and microbial systems -, as well as policy-oriented environmental work developed by 2Celsius.
The residency builds on four active research projects, each addressing a distinct facet of the ecological crisis, serving as both entry points and collaborative frameworks for the invited artists:
Plant persistence strategies in isolated habitats: Landscape demography of Salvia nemorosa on Dobrogea Kurgans
Scientific consultant: Dr. Roxana Nicoară
A demographic and ecological study of Salvia nemorosa and other native flora on kurgans, ancient burial mounds in the Dobrogea region, framing these microhabitats as living archives of biodiversity shaped by millennia of coexistence between nature and culture.
Bioremediation potential of native halophilic bacteria in hydrocarbon polluted environments
Scientific consultants: Dr. Simona Neagu and Dr. Mihaela Marilena Stancu
An investigation into native bacteria capable of bioremediation in fuel-contaminated, salty environments, focusing on identifying microbial strains with the potential to tolerate and degrade petrol-compounds and mitigate the ecological impact of fossil fuel pollution.
Urban noise pollution monitoring in relationship to blackbirds
Scientific consultants: Drd. Andreea Ciobotă and Dr. Mihaela Ciobotă
A bioacoustic analysis of blackbirds song as a method for monitoring noise pollution in Bucharest’s urban ecosystems and its effects on wildlife communication and behaviour.
Fugitive methane emissions from industrial sites
Policy and scientific consultants: Mihai Stoica and Théophile Humann-Guilleminot
A policy-oriented investigation of methane leaks in Romania’s energy infrastructure, examining the sources, scale, and systemic blind spots in national emissions tracking, with implications for both policy reform and public awareness.
The residency program includes individual and collective research phases, access to fieldwork and lab infrastructure (with additional support from Dr. Carmen Maximilian), and continuous exchange with scientists, culminating in the proposal of new art projects addressing the societal issues stemming from the scientific research.
The projects proposed by the researchers form the scientific core of the residency, and provide the intersection points between researchers and four invited artists: Laura Cinti (UK), Sabina Suru (RO), Andreea Săsăran (RO), and Ida Hiršenfelder (SI), working with curator Andrei Tudose (RO), and with guidance from art-science consultant Claudia Schnugg (AT).
Laura Cinti works at the intersection of art, biology, and biotechnology. Her practice often involves living systems, including genetically modified organisms, plant tissue cultures, and speculative vegetal futures. She is co-founder of C-LAB, an art-science platform exploring the aesthetics and politics of the life sciences.
More info: www.c-lab.co.uk
Sabina Suru explores the entanglements between analog and digital technologies. She investigates themes such as object-oriented ontology, identity mutation, and the ecology of memory, reflecting on how technological artefacts carry traces of care, decay, and transformation across time.
More info: sabinasuru.ro
Ida Hiršenfelder (aka beepblip) is a sound artist and archivist. Her work focuses on the politics of memory, cybernetic organisms, and the acoustic dimensions of ecological thought, relying on immersive environments starting from electromagnetic and field recordings.
More info: beepblip.org
Andreea Săsăran is a visual artist interested in hybrid ecologies, site-specific research, and the shifting roles of observation in both scientific and artistic contexts. Her work draws on historical, sensory, and material traces left behind by human and non-human actors.
More info: andreeasasaran.ro
While the residency is where disciplinary boundaries begin to blur, this publication opens up the processes, premises and outcomes. Otherwise Residency 2025: Initial Synthesis, edited by Ioana Lariu, acts as a window into this first edition of the residency, documenting and analyzing its inner workings, moving beyond the outcomes to explore the liminal spaces of co-creation where the most challenging and valuable exchanges occurred.
Featuring excerpts from the personal research journals of the participants, an editorial foreword, the curator’s note, and a post-interview analysis by Alexandra Sofonea , the publication offers insight into the journey: from the initial hopes and doubts of the artists, to the surprising moments of serendipity and unexpected failures that defined the projects. It explores how the collaboration compelled both artists and researchers to recalibrate their expectations and embrace an empathetic, more-than-human-centric view of the world. Ultimately, it documents how knowledge is created in the in-between spaces that appear in art-science collaborations, further validating the real need for this kind of profound interdisciplinary approach.
Soft Thresholds was the concluding exhibition of the six-month Otherwise Residency, which sought to redefine coexistence in a world increasingly fractured by the climate crisis. The exhibition views artistic and scientific inquiry not as separate disciplines, but as mutually permeable fields of knowledge creation. It critically re-evaluates rigid boundaries – be they disciplinary, perceptual, or physical – by framing the threshold as a dynamic liminal space: an area of potential where new forms of knowledge, survival, and interdependence can be negotiated.
The four works presented in Soft Thresholds, resulting from the active collaboration between artists and scientists in the framework of the Otherwise Residency, explore situated responses to the permeable boundaries between human and more-than-human systems, between data and meaning, between knowledge and experience. Each piece navigates a distinct soft threshold, manifesting across different scales and territories of perception: from the acoustics of the urban environment to the logic of the microbial world, and from the botanical resilience of the landscape to the shifts in Earth’s atmosphere.
[Excerpt from the curatorial text by Andrei Tudose]
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From the microscopic logic of halophilic bacteria to the planetary scale of methane emissions, Soft Thresholds opens spaces where lines blur and coexistence can be imagined differently. The exhibition features works that explore the quiet resilience of blackbirds adapting to urban acoustics , the ecological endurance of botanical life on ancient burial mounds , the self-contained meaning-making of microbial worlds , and the material archive of fugitive atmospheric traces. Ultimately, the exhibition is an invitation to accept the blurring of the lines we once drew ourselves, recognizing that the deepest knowledge often resides in the “in-betweens” – between the human language and the song of a blackbird, between the lab and the field, and between the eye and the sensor. These thresholds encourage the artists and scientists to continue reimagining our shared, more-than-human world.
Read the full curatorial text here.
Beyond the public-facing projects, the true essence of the residency resides in the less visible spaces – the moments of serendipity, the unexpected failures, and the complex conversations that occur at the intersection of disciplines. As a cultural mediation component of the Otherwise Residency, and as part of the Open Practice Society dedicated to young artists, we are sharing this ‘in-between’ world through a series of performative interventions in the public space. These events, which are based on events and experiences encountered at the nexus of art, science, and technology, offer a critical co-production of knowledge that complicates and reroutes our understanding of the world. Follow us on Facebook to discover the 8 performative interventions in the public space around Bucharest, to discover what happens when science gets creative and art gets technical.
Otherwise Residency is not about artists interpreting science from the sidelines. It is a process of co-creation – of shared fieldwork, lab time, studio research, and hybrid collaboration – where disciplinary roles remain fluid and open to restructuring. Over the course of an 8-week residency, artists and researchers work together to co-develop artistic projects in connection with scientific research.
Otherwise Residency is part of Marginal’s broader commitment to cultivating transdisciplinary infrastructures for cultural inquiry. Not just as a translator of concepts, but as a critical co-producer of knowledge. The residency foregrounds art as a liminal space of critical analysis and epistemological friction – one that complicates, resists, and sometimes reroutes our most stable paradigms of understanding.
Partners:
Bucharest Institute of Biology, 2Celsius, Atelier030202, Projekt Atol, Londohome, Atelierele Malmaison
Media partners:
Radio România Cultural, Mindcraft Stories, Zile și nopți, Propagarta, Arta, Curatorial.ro
Otherwise Residency is co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund and by the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB, in the framework of the Bucharest Together 2025 program
The project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The Administration of the National Cultural Fund is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.
The content of this material does not necessarily represent the official position of the Bucharest City Hall or ARCUB.