There Is No Such Thing as a Fish by Carolyn Kirschner
In the framework of S+T+ARTS EC(H)O – Challenge 3: Exploring the Physics of Life
The project
Carolyn Kirschner residency project, There Is No Such Thing as a Fish, is an artistic investigation into the zebrafish as a model organism in scientific research, examining its socio-cultural significance and speculating on interspecies futures. Working with researchers from the Physics of Life cluster at TU Dresden, the project engages with a search for the foundational principles underpinning life, and an ambition to build computational models of biological systems. One of the project outcomes is a short film, which documents a range of interconnected cultural, material, and ecological landscapes where human and zebrafish worlds collide—from research labs, to pet shops and domestic aquariums, to an industrial site in the Netherlands, to rivers in northern India. The project also leverages advanced computational methods to produce a speculative anatomical model, based on digital reconstructions of the last common ancestor between humans and zebrafish 450 million years ago, whilst extrapolating biomolecular research to consider hypothetical biological and cultural impacts of the zebrafish over the next 100 years, such as regenerative human hearts or human-like tissue grown from fish cells, which blur species boundaries.
Hosted by: Technische Universität Dresden
The artist
An artist and researcher with an architecture background who explores the growing entanglements between ecologies and machines, particularly in relation to the climate crisis. Working with scientific tools and technologies, she creates installations, objects, digital imagery, films, and writing that conjure fragments from expanded worlds, focusing on realms beyond the reach of human senses. Currently based in the UK and originally from Germany, she teaches as a Lecturer in Design at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her project, There Is No Such Thing as a Fish, is a collaboration with researchers at TU Dresden’s Physics of Life group to explore the socio-cultural significance of the zebrafish, which is used as a “model organism” due to its genetic similarities with humans. Through film and creative applications of advanced computational methods, the project will produce new interspecies perspectives at multiple scales, speculating on how the boundaries between humans and zebrafish might blur over the next century (e.g., regenerative human hearts or human-like tissue from fish cells). The final works will reflect on the interplay of living systems with computational processes, and trace the interconnected ecosystems and complex relationships between humans and zebrafish beyond the laboratory.
