SUMMER SCHOOL 
August 1st to 5th, 2016, Čiovo island (Croatia)

Kontejner and Cultivamos Cultura have joined efforts to bring you:
Practices of the Sea: experimental art on the edge of science, ecology and the coast line.

This unique five-day summer course organized in the beautiful island of Čiovo (Croatia) will allow non-specialists to acquire theoretical and practical skills in biological and environmental sciences in connection to the visual arts.
Settled for the first time in Croatia, 2016’s summer school is sort of an extension of Cultivamos Cultura’s summer courses held and organized every summer in Portugal for 4 years by recognized experts from the bio-art field of practice.
The School’s programme offers both theoretical and practical part - through experiments and hands-on exercises as well as theorizing and debating, participants will get behind the scenes of creating stunning interdisciplinary art pieces and translating concepts into practice. The activities consist out of lectures and workshops in natural environment including one-day boat trips with the purpose of exploring different locations.

Summer School will deep dive you into the universe of bioart as told by  César Sousa, one of the former participants, which can be seen from different points of view – as different as the experiences that Marta, first, and then each one of the participants and invited speakers, brought on to the table. Regarding artistic creation, Summer School allows the exploration of diverse possible forms of working with living organisms and organic substances to experimenting with fungi, bacteria, fruit-flies or moss, as well as providing step-by-step explanations about laboratorial techniques that were used and some Do-It-Yourself possibilities that did not require any particular advanced or expensive equipment.
Constant dialogues followed by 'hands-on' parctices aroused questions like: What room is there for an artist in a laboratory? Is there a behaviour conduct? Can an artist raise important questions for science? What are the ethical issues involved in working with living organisms – or, more specifically, what to do with butterflies after one uses them in an art installation? The questions multiply, and the answers depend on who’s being asked: the artist? The art or philosophy researcher? The architecture curator? The immunologist?

Lectures and workshops will be held by Marta de Menezes (http://martademenezes.com), portuguese artist and the director of Cultivamos Cultura as well as Kontejner’s longtime associate; Marie-Pier Boucher (PhD in Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Duke University) and Nigel Helyer (http://www.sonicobjects.com/).