Technobiological Futures Co-Laboratories

Overview

Planning and execution of two Co-Laboratories, in Thailand, including a regular series of regional Workshops in South East Asia; Residencies, Networking and Fellowships in Switzerland; Consolidation and Research of Hackteria’s Collective and Transdisciplinary «do-it-with-others» Methodologies.

What we plan to do

Co-Laboratories: mutual learning and knowledge exchange with shared fascination with biology, from ecological science to synthetic biology merging with digital technologies. Linking the Global Hackteria Network & SGMK (Swiss Mechatronic Art Society) with tomorrow.Lab in Thailand and a network of partners in Southeast Asia and India, “Technobiological Futures” emphasizes DIWO participation and experimentation across diverse perspectives through networks of people across disciplines. Co-Laboratories opens a liminal space to question how ecosystems, bodies, and machines evolve together, and how these shifts ripple into politics, culture, and ethics. Participants co‑develop low‑cost instruments, bio‑sensing device art, performances and media works; publish open‑access documentation and hold public hands-on workshops.

Over 18 months, we will:

• Establish two intensive "Co-Laboratories" (10-14 day collaborative residencies) in Thailand, bringing together 25-30 artists, makers, scientists, and cultural organizers from across the region to develop new methodologies at the intersection of bioart, DIY science, and open source digital tools

• Host 4 Swiss-based fellowships for key Asian artists/facilitators, creating deep bi-directional exchange rather than one-way knowledge transfer, and connecting them to Switzerland's vibrant maker and hackerspace communities

• Expand the network regionally through satellite workshops and events in India and Indonesia, catalyzing South-South collaborations that bypass traditional North-mediated routes

• Produce open-source outcomes including documented prototypes, workshop curricula, digital toolkits, methodological handbooks, and a living network map—all freely accessible for others to adapt and implement

• Generate public engagement through exhibitions, performances, workshops, and an online symposium that brings our collaborative research to wider audiences

• Consolidate 15 years of Hackteria practice into transmissible knowledge: documenting techniques, philosophies, and ethical frameworks for equitable international collaboration in art-science-technology fields

Conceptual Framework

Our present moment demands precisely the kind of collaboration Hackteria has been cultivating. We face converging pressures:

**AI and biopolitics:** as tools like ChatGPT and proprietary genomic databases and closed scientific publishing consolidate within corporations, placing fundamental research capabilities behind paywalls while open alternatives struggle for resources—artists and communities need pathways to engage critically with these technologies as builders, not just consumers.

**The acute environmental crisis** in the global south- as we face unprecedented droughts, and species extinction accelerates—communities need accessible tools (DIY sensing, citizen science, bioart) to document or actively slow vanishing ecosystems and imagine alternative futures beyond technocratic solutions or passive victimhood.

**Destabilizing persistent colonial knowledge structures**, where Bangkok-Bangalore exchange still routes through Zurich or Paris rather than occurring directly, and where South Asian/Southeast Asian scientific and artistic production requires Western validation—this project deliberately builds South-South infrastructure with Asian partners leading methodology while Swiss partners provide resources, inverting typical extractive patterns.

**Post-pandemic lessons** about distributed networks' resilience over centralized systems, and normalized hybrid formats that make sustained international collaboration feasible.

**The methodology gap** in transdisciplinary practice, where rhetoric outpaces genuine co-creation and Hackteria's 15 years of tacit knowledge urgently needs documentation at a moment when institutions increasingly seek such models.

**The crisis of technological determinism**, where mainstream discourse oscillates between utopian boosterism and dystopian fatalism, leaving little space for communities to assert agency in shaping technologies that serve their values and contexts. In this landscape, Hackteria's commitment to open science hardware, radical transdisciplinarity, grassroots knowledge production, and equitable collaboration isn't just relevant—it's a model urgently needed, and this project allows us to strengthen, document, and transmit it precisely when alternatives to extraction, enclosure, and determinism are most critical.

Background of the collaborations

This project is nurturing networks in the global hackteria activities that have proven their value over 15 years, giving them the resources to flourish and scale. Founded in India and Switzerland in 2009, and many projects in Indonesia and across Europe. Since OkiWonderLab, 2020 we started to collaborate with Henry Tan (FreakLab) and Weeratouch (Wave) Pongruengkiat (tomorrow.lab), who organized events on bioart with very overlapping networks, which were the first of its kind in Thailand and Singapore attracting a lot of interest across Southeast Asia. It combined 3 months residencies and 1 week of public participatory events. Marc Dusseiller had the opportunity to deepen this partnership through Pro Helvetia’s research trip granted in 2023, which serendipitously led to the co-organizing of a prototype co-lab Laab Lu Lao in January 2024, and now led to this larger partnership programme of “Technobiological Futures”.

Presentation slides of background by dusjagr

RöstiBrücke2025 is an initiative by SZKMD production, with the support of FSRC/SRKS, Swiss Perform, Oertli Stiftung, Landis & Gyr Stiftung, Stadt Zürich, and the Republic and Canton of Geneva.

We were invited to present our programme at the RöstiBrücke Symposium - SCIENCE IS ART (OR THE OTHER WAY ROUND..) on 22. March 2026, hosted at Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zürich.

CoLabs Chiang Mai

Overview

Craft + Art + Tech + Bio — Exploring the Future of Chiang Mai

For the Chiang Mai chapter, we introduce "Lannafuturism" — a speculative framework that asks: What happens when centuries-old Lanna craft knowledge meets open-source technology, biological materials, and experimental art practice?

Chiang Mai sits at a unique intersection. It is home to one of Southeast Asia's richest living craft traditions — textiles, ceramics, metalwork, bamboo, woodcarving, lacquerware — practiced by communities whose techniques predate industrial manufacture by centuries. It is also a growing hub for digital nomads, maker spaces, and creative technology. Lannafuturism proposes that the future of this region is not found in choosing between tradition and technology, but in the creative collision of both.

Schedule

Phase 1: Research Residency (6 weeks)

20 April — 31 May 2026

A focused period for invited artists, researchers, and makers to develop new work in response to the Lannafuturism theme. Residents are embedded at Pa Rang Cafe & Art Stay in Chiang Mai with access to fabrication tools, local craft communities, and academic partners.

Phase 1: Co-Laboratory (2 weeks)

15 — 31 May 2026

An intensive period of collective experimentation, public workshops, and knowledge exchange. Additional CoLabs participants join the residents for hands-on collaborative work culminating in a public Showcase Weekend.

Background

See our previous activites from 2023/24, Chiang Mai Cheese Fest and เหลู้าบ - Laab Lu Lao CoLaboratory

SGMK Homemade Summercamp 2026

See more info on the SGMK wiki

The Homemade summercamp is a week that is open for beginners as well as experts and everyone in between interested in exploring ideas in art & technology or creating objects for sound, light or movement. The participants can bring their individual projects or work in groups and get inspired by related topics from all other participants. During this self-organized research week we will do workshops and talks, run experiments, cook & eat together, go hiking and there will also be time for party and relaxing.

Artist / Hacker-in-Residence

More info on the SGMK wiki.

For the last couple of years, and especially since we moved into our new space at Bitwäscherei Hackerspace Collective in 2020, we have developed a truly global Residency Programme for hackers, artists, activists from all paths of life. As we share the premises of the MechArtLab together with other great initiatives such as the Hackteria, who runs the Hackteria ZET – Open Science Lab, a local public biolab in Zürich as part of their global network activities.

The Hacker-in-Residence Programme is organized and funded on individual basis, always searching for synergies with other local organisations and events, and is primarily co-ordinated by dusjagr aka Marc Dusseiller, CEO of the Center for Alternative Coconut Research, in his role as as co-founder and board member of both the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society (SGMK) and Global Ambassador of the Hackteria Network in collaboration with Maya Minder, fermentista, artist and currently president of SGMK.

The current CoLabs programme, supported through the Synergies grant from the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, gives us now a unique opportunity to professionalize, establish and grow this residencies and be able to invite artists/hackers from Southeast Asia to join us during Summer 2026 and later on in our schedule in 2027!

Call for Support

You want to support our "Hacker-in-Residence"? Cos as always,... Money is never enough, and to be able to properly host our guests from Indonesia or Thailand, we would love to have more resources to be able to make everybody happy and not rely on self-exploitation.

• You want to donate some finances to our programme
• You have access to an appartment / room in Zürich?
• You want to host a short period of the residency in your art-space / hackerspace?

Contact us!!

South2South Workshop / Exchange Programme

Acknowledgements and Support

Technobiological Futures Co-Laboratories (CoLabs) is a format of mutual learning and knowledge exchange rooted in a shared fascination with biology — from ecological science to synthetic biology — merged with digital technologies and traditional craft. Linking the Global Hackteria Network and SGMK (Swiss Mechatronic Art Society) with tomorrow.lab and Pa Rang Art Company in Thailand, CoLabs emphasises Do-It-With-Others (DIWO) participation and experimentation across diverse perspectives.

The "Technobiological Futures" programme (February 2026 — August 2027) is a multi-phase initiative spanning Thailand, Switzerland, Indonesia, and India. Co-funded by “Synergies”, by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the Co-Laboratories catalyse South-South collaborations that bypass traditional North-mediated routes, building sustainable networks for art-science-technology exchange across the Global South.

See our full proposal "as submitted" on our cloud. We received 80k CHF (of 98k requested), co-financed with an additional 50% of in-kind contributions, third party fundings (still in process), and a high level of volunteer work that has been put in. You can see our in-process to be revised budget as submitted here.

Earlier projects & collaborations

เหลู้าบ - LLL CoLaboratory (Laab Lu Lao) 2024

A do-it-with-others Art&Science CoLaboratory

A Night-Market of Ideas and Interactions

A Gathering of Enthusiastic People to Share and Experiment Together

LLL CoLaboratory (เหลู้าบ แลบ) คืองานที่จะชวนทุกคนมาทดลองร่วมกันในธีม ศิลปะ และวิทยาศาสตร์ ทั้งการเล่นกับนาโนเทคโนโลยีในชีวิตประจำวัน การตัดต่อพันธุกรรมด้วยอุปกรณ์บ้าน และการหมักดองจากจุลชีพ เป้าหมายของเราคือการรวมกลุ่มผู้คนที่สนใจในการทำงานแบบสหสาขา และการทำโปรเจคที่สำรวจอนาคตของเรา กิจกรรมนี้จะมีขึ้น 5 วัน ที่เราจะได้มาใช้ห้องทดลองเปิดด้วยกัน เราจะมีอุปกรณ์ และองค์ความรู้จาก opensource เพื่อให้ทุกคนได้มาทำงานร่วมกัน เราจะมีทั้งกิจกรรมที่เราจัดขึ้นทั้ง เวิร์คชอปหรือการฉายภาพยนต์ และมีส่วนที่เปิดให้ผู้ร่วมได้ร่วมตัดสินใจร่วมกัน

17. - 21. Jan 2567 (2024)

LLL CoLaboratory (เหลู้าบ แลบ) is a "do-it-with-others" Art & Science open laboratory. Our goal is to gather the enthusiastic people and work on various multidisciplinary and speculative projects. We organize a 5-days "OPEN LAB" session for everyone to access. We are providing a space for share equipment, material, consulting, workshop and opensource for learning and working on projects. There will be workshops from the organizer. However, there also a flexible session for participant to decide. The session has no limit to creativity - let's see how the opensource community bring us to the next level of imagination.

Intimacy with Nature - BioArt workshop series, Thailand & Singapore, 2022-23

Intimacy with Nature explores our socio ecological system, as well as how human civilisation affects and changes biodiversity and climate. What role does biotechnology and life sciences play in protecting and restoring nature that has been lost or creating future nature?

https://freaklab.org/residency-program/

Media article: https://www.matichon.co.th/mic/news_3413904

HackteriaLab 2014 - Yogyakarta

Info about the HLab14-Book"Reflections on HackteriaLab 2014 - Yogyakarta"

Watch the full movie / documentary: "SENI GOTONG ROYONG: HackteriaLab 2014 - Yogyakarta"

Citizen science has long contributed to the health of local communities by making people aware of their environment in the form of oral histories and traditional wisdom. Recently, international open source and maker movements have been actively engaging with the life sciences to focus on the environment. This brought a revival of the tradional knowledge as well as an opportunity for innovation and a model for public participation in science. These activities are becoming influential policy forces changing how we produce and share knowledge as an iterative and collective process. Yogyakarta, Indonesia, has been one of the most active hubs in this movement.

HackteriaLab 2014 – Yogyakarta was held in April 2014 as a two-weeks making-oriented gathering of researchers, artists, scientists, academicians, hackers and whatevers in Yogyakarta. It expanded on ideas and methodologies about BioArt, DIY biology, DIWO (Do-It-With-Others), appropriate technology, art and science, and biohacking, developed during the previous versions of HLab10 - Dock18, HLab11 - Romainmotier both in Switzerland and HLab13 - Bangalore, India. HLab14 was hosted by LIFEPATCH - citizen initiative in art, science and technology and co-organized together with HACKTERIA | Open Source Biological Art in collaboration with various regional partners.

This book tried to assemble a collection of essays written by the participants, asked to reflect on their own experiences, individually or collectively, which only gives a glimpse into all the projects and exchanges that happend during HLab14. With a short overview of the programme and activities, selected photo impressions and the exhibition manual the book is rounded up and can be an entry point to explore further our online resources and serve as an inspiration for transdisciplinary collaborative practices.

Find all info about the HLab14-Book"Reflections on HackteriaLab 2014 - Yogyakarta"

Oki Wonder Lab - ハクテリア 合宿 Documentation / Reflection 2020

ハクテリア 合宿 – Oki Wonder Lab was a concentrated gathering of people working transdisciplinary who are interested in creative biological fields and any other areas which intrigue the critical interaction across art and science. Held in Spring 2020 as a local and globally connected series of events, co-organized by Hackteria, dusjagr, Toru Ryu Oyama, Andreas Siagian and many other friends and collaborators

(* ハクテリア 合宿 - Ha-ku-te-ri-a Gasshuku translates to "hackteria camp")

Video footage: Toru Ryu Oyama (and other participants) Video editing: Yoshimoto Azusa

SGMK Homemade Summercamp 20 years!

The Homemade summercamp is a week that is open for beginners as well as experts and everyone in between interested in exploring ideas in art & technology or creating objects for sound, light or movement. The participants can bring their individual projects or work in groups and get inspired by related topics from all other participants. During this self-organized research week we will do workshops and talks, run experiments, cook & eat together, go hiking and there will also be time for party and relaxing.

See an Overview of 20 Years of Homemade

TTTlabs BioFeral.BeachCamp (BFBC) 2024

https://avarts.ionio.gr/ttt-labs/2024a/en/media/