Rosa Menkman (*1983) is a Dutch art theorist, curator, visual artist specializing in glitch art and resolution theory. In 2015, she launched iRD, the Institutions for Resolution Disputes, to bring more attention to the compromises created by the resolutions that are part of our media. American artist Sarah Oppenheimer (*1972) uses her architecture-based interventions to explore the perceptual mechanisms of people in built and digitally imprinted space. Gary Zhexi Zhang (*1993) was born in China, grew up in Birmingham, and is currently based in London. As a visual artist and writer, he explores social infrastructures, technical histories, and conceptual systems. 

As part of EPFL-CDH’s AiR program Enter the Hyper-Scientific, launched in September 2021, all three artists are developing a project at the intersection of art, science, media, and technology in dialogue with EPFL scientists and laboratories. The three-month residency allows them to access the technologies, infrastructures, materials, and science developed or made available at EPFL to foster intensive experimentation with new forms of expression. AiR residencies culminate in exhibitions in the EPFL Pavilions on the Lausanne campus. In this conversation with Le Foyer, the residents of the current season provide insights into their ongoing transdisciplinary research and work processes. Taking their prompts as a starting point, we reflect on the promises, challenges, and potential pitfalls of the residency program together with AiR curator Giulia Bini.    

In collaboration with EPFL-CDH AiR program “Enter the Hyper-Scientific.”  

Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist and researcher. Her work focuses on noise artifacts that result from accidents in both analog and digital media. As a compendium to this research, she published the Glitch Moment/um (INC, 2011), a little book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts. Menkman developed and highlighted the politics of resolution setting further in a second book titled Beyond Resolution (i.R.D., 2020). In this book, she describes how the standardization of resolutions is not only a process that promotes efficiency, order, and functionality but also involves compromises and the obfuscation of alternative possibilities. In 2019, Menkman won the Collide, Arts at CERN Barcelona award, which inspired her recent research into what makes things im/possible. 

Sarah Oppenheimer earned a bachelor’s degree in semiotics and a master’s degree in Fine Arts in painting. Beyond two-dimensional or media limitations, her work is situated as installation art on the border between architecture and sculpture. She has developed her approach over the past decade in the context of various solo exhibitions in galleries and institutional contexts, including Kunsthaus Baselland (2014) and Kunstmuseum Thun (2020). Most recently,  Artforum dedicated an extensive article to her work.  

Gary Zhexi Zhang studied at the Glasgow School of Art, Cambridge University, and MIT. His recent projects explore financial fiction, weird temporalities, and catastrophe. Dead Cat Bounce, an oratorio he made in collaboration with Waste Paper Opera, premiered at Somerset House, London, in July 2022. Recent solo and group shows since 2021 include Cycle 25 (solo), Arts Catalyst; Liquid Ground, UCCA Dune; Death Ray on Coral Island, Power Station of Art; Rehearsing the Future; Alien Art Centre; The Principle of Hope, Inside Out Art Museum. 

Giulia Bini PhD works at the intersection of visual art, media, science, and emerging technologies in curatorial practice, theory, and writing. She is head of the program and curator for Enter the Hyper-Scientific, the newly established artist-in-residence program of the College of Humanities (CDH) at EPFL, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne. Previously curator and producer at EPFL Pavilions (2018–21) and a member of the curatorial team of ZKM Center for Arts and Media| Karlsruhe (2014–17), she has curated and co-curated numerous collective exhibitions and solo presentations, among them Nature of Robotics. An Expanded Field (EP, 2021) and, as part of the project Beyond Matter, Spatial Affairs and S.A.Worlding (Ludwig Museum Budapest 2021). She authored “Media spazio display. ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe | HFG Hochschule für Gestaltung” (Mimesis Edizioni, Milano 2022) and is a lecturer at HEAD-Geneva Work.Master.