SIERVA is an interdisciplinary team formed in 2017 by Lucía Kuschnir (electronic artist), Viviana Ramos Di Tommaso (visual artist) and Josefina Schmipp (biologist) that aims to work at the frontier where art and science meet.

The members of SIERVA are part of the teaching staff of the Bio-Art Laboratory course of the Electronic Arts Degree at UNTREF. In addition, Eduardo Sardi, a student who is doing a TFA (Trayecto Formativo Alternativo), recently joined as an assistant.

Minimal Landscapes

Director: Lucía Kuschnir (UNTREF)

Research team: Josefina Schmipp (UNTREF), Viviana Ramos Di Tommaso (UNTREF)

Past Researcher: Diego De Benedetto (UNTREF)

Lathe operator: Jorge Orallo

Collaborator: Diego De Benedetto (UNTREF)

 

“Minimal Landscapes” recovers the act of looking at and recording the nature of the history of art on a microscopic scale: a landscape mediated by a device.

This project is divided in two stages. The first stage, already completed, consists in the construction of a low-budget microtome. The second stage, which is still in progress, involves making histological preparations and cutting ultra-thin films with the device to make photomicrographs.

This project received support from the National Arts Fund – Creation Scholarship 2018.

 

Archeology

Director: Lucía Kuschnir (UNTREF)

Research team: Josefina Schmipp (UNTREF), Viviana Ramos Di Tommaso (UNTREF) y Maximiliano Perez (Universidad de Morón)

 

Photographic series of 10 devices used in a biology laboratory. The portraits, made in large-scale Fine Art printing, pay tribute to them.

 

This project received support from Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero.

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Treatise

Director: Lucía Kuschnir (UNTREF)

Research team: Josefina Schmipp (UNTREF) y  Viviana Ramos Di Tommaso (UNTREF) 

Collaborator: Diego De Benedetto (UNTREF)

 

Inventory of daily used instruments in a laboratory with museographic purposes. Photographs were taken from the researcher’s point of view, in 10 x 10 cm. backlight boxes.

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Permission to look

 

Director: Lucía Kuschnir (UNTREF)

Research team: Josefina Schmipp (UNTREF) y Viviana Ramos Di Tommaso (UNTREF) 

Collaborator: Diego De Benedetto (UNTREF)

 

Composé of 36 offset printed posters forming a large scale image (300 cm – width / 420 cm – height). Accompanied by posters so that the public can take away with the total image in small scale.

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Inclusions

Director: Lucía Kuschnir (UNTREF)

Research team: Josefina Schmipp (UNTREF) y Viviana Ramos Di Tommaso (UNTREF) 

Collaborator: Diego De Benedetto (UNTREF)

 

Photographic series of dehydration processes of elements of various origins printed in square format.

 

Presentation of the project Sobre la fragilidad del nacimiento y sus pormenores
October 2024

Visual artist Viviana Ramos Di Tommaso presented her project “Sobre la fragilidad del nacimiento y sus pormenores” at MUNTREF. The work reflects on the human species, its reproduction and its ethical and moral limits. The project proposes a future possibility about interspecies gestation in a not so distant future. The artist makes visible current questions about gestation.
Through a discussion with the public, questions about the multiple imaginaries of a dystopian future and how we think about technology in this context were also addressed.

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Exhibition in Berlin

2024

The eggshell biomaterial developed by Viviana Ramos Di Tomasso as part of the SIERVA project was exhibited at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the exhibition “Matter of South – Biomaterial Cultures from Latin America”.

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Presentation of the Oráculo Vivo project at MUNTREF

April 2024

The SIERVA team held a presentation and discussion on the project “Oráculo Vivo” by the argentine-spanish artist Ce Quimera. Artists, anthropologists, art historians and professors debated about the species, the ways of operating with “the living”, ethics in bio-art and the current conditions of production in Europe and Argentina.

 

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Paper by Lucía Kuschnir 

October 2021

“The journey of technical devices on the border between the work and the invention. A study on the creation of three works, devices or inventions”. A paper presented at the XI International Congress of Art Theory and History – XIX Meeting of the CAIA UTOPÍA│DISTOPÍA. Imagining, thinking and acting other worlds”.

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Dialogue between SIERVA and the Art+Science project

2021

The SIERVA team participated in a dialogue table with the project Arte+Ciencia (https://www.artemasciencia.org) in the framework of the symposium Symbiosis. Interdisciplinary Art Meetings organized by FRONDA (https://www.fronda.mx / @fronda_arte) – Mexico.

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FNA Lab

November 2019

The members of the Minimal Landscapes project participated in an exchange between artists and a series of talks with artistic referents within the framework of the Creation Scholarship 2018 winners, granted by the National Arts Fund.

Credit: María Della Bella 

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SIERVA at Electronic Art Sessions – CAECE University 

October 2018

SIERVA members of the SIERVA project gave the lecture “Technoscience at the service of optical aberrations. Instrument Domestication” at the conference sponsored by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e innovación Productiva de la Nación.