Translational Creativity

The Eureka Institute and the Borgia del Casale present: Translational Creativity

Traditionally, the link between arts and sciences is very strong. Scientists and artists alike rely on skills such as problem solving, critical thinking and networking. Visual artists today often make use of multidimensional and multidisciplinary approaches that can include international collaboration. During the upcoming Eureka course in May 2011 we will seek to explore and restore the links between arts and translational medicine. Two renowned international visual artists, Brian Goelzenleuchter (US) and Anna van Suchtelen (the Netherlands) will observe the course and report their vision on Translational Creativity in a collaboration project.

Anna van Suchtelen (New York 1961) studied Literature (MA) in the Netherlands and Visual Arts in the US. Over the years she professionally moved from literary editor to visual artist. Narrative plays a crucial role in her visual work. She gives a voice to the things around her. She researches the history of a location. What took place? And what is taking place now? Over the years she moves from written to spoken texts, from painting to film. She starts to work interactively: with questionnaires, interviews, audio recordings, story writing. Movement and sound are her new tools. Soft Voices, an installation of glass objects, film and audio which traveled to several museums during Darwin year 2009, is the outcome of a study into memory and sound. Her most recent project, Lindenduft (2010), an installation commissioned by Hein Foundation and based on a Mahler song, is a study of memory and scent. In these last projects she uses the film camera as an instrument to explore senses, memory and time.

Brian Goeltzenleuchter (San Diego 1976) earned his MFA in the Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego. He was raised in a culture that placed great value on consumption, display, and performance. Goeltzenleuchter's artwork infuses interdisciplinary research into the creation of designed environments, scripted and improvised performances, olfactory art, and multimedia presentations. While remaining very visual, his work opens theoretical questions about the role of criticism, museums, academies, journals and web sites in the attribution of cultural, historical and economic value to "art" objects. Recent projects include c (pronounced /k/) Boutique (2010), a functional home decorations store that, for three months, operated out of a gallery in the middle of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Institutional Wellbeing: an olfactory plan for … (2006-2009), an installation which has traveled to museums throughout Europe and North America, playfully exploiting the language of corporate aesthetics as well as new age healing to create and brand an aromatherapy fragrance for cultural institutions.

Brian Goeltzenleuchter and Anna van Suchtelen met in 1998 and have been collaborating since 2001.

An introduction by the artists:

“Coming May we will travel to Italy where we will be collaborating on a project called ‘When to throw a painting to a drowning man’. This is a context-specific video artwork/artist book that we will complete as artists-in-residence during the interdisciplinary conference/certificate program on Translational Medicine.

The beautiful thing about being able to participate in this project - other than it being in Siracusa - is Eureka’s educational component. The content of the conference falls well outside our knowledge base, but it completely synchs with our pedagogical interests in new models of educating advanced (graduate level) cultural practitioners.

Eureka’s organizers are comfortable with the uncertainty that comes with working collaboratively and across disciplinary borders. Our collaboration is just a small part of their program, but one which will highlight the false dilemma of considering art and science as binary opposites; instead our video will be a collection of allegories designed to position art and science as two points in a continuum, which offers practitioners in either discipline a broader set of tools with which to approach their craft.”