We invite you to take part in the workshop ‘Creating an immortal library’ during the opening days of the Biennial!

Applications accepted until August 29 — find out more here.

The workshop of Joe Davis has been devised specifically for the 5th Ural Biennial and is a continuation of Davis’ project ‘Philosopher’s Stones’, where he studies ancient mineral salts, in which living organisms – halophilic bacteria – can exist for hundreds of millions of years.

The participants will create the longest-lasting archive that has ever existed – they will spend three workshop days implementing information into salt crystals by integrating halophiles into them. The salt crystals will become virtually an eternal archive and will be able to preserve a message for hundreds of millions of years.

In Aesop’s fable, The Rose and the Amaranth, the lowly amaranth praises the rose for its beauty and reputation and is answered, equally humbly, that a rose’s life is brief while the amaranth (the name of which means literally ‘the undying flower’) is everlasting. To learn more about Joe’s relation to immortality, we invite you to attend a public interview with him, moderated by philosopher Monika Bakke (Adam Mickiewicz University) and curator OlgaVad (art&science at Polytechnic Museum). It would happen at the “Coliseum” cinema hall on September 15th, more details to follow.