This workshop is dedicated to the imaginaries and investigations of a range of physical demarcations that are, literally, borders alive in and of themselves. It addresses borders made from biological material such as skin, shell, crust, membrane, hide, bark, or epidermis, but also artificially made ‘living’ skins and ecological borders. Bringing together knowledge from history and aesthetics, biology, ecology and biomedical engineering the workshop interrogates the manifold ways in which humans relate to living borders, it explores forms of imagining, visualizing and modeling living borders, and it strives to develop new ideas and practices bridging the science-humanities divide in conceiving of living borders as simultaneously scientific and cultural objects of study, with a small accompanying display of exhibits from MicroPop, an exhibition developed by the Cluster of Excellence Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections, Research Center for Science Communication, University of Tübingen, and the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart.

Program