Intimacy with Nature
Biology, Art & the Technological Drift
A symposium — March 4–7, 2027
Bangkok Art and Culture Center & Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
The third phase of a journey that began in a rice-farm laboratory in Phitsanulok and grew through the workshops of Singapore — asking what biotechnology means for the natural world, and what art can see that science alone cannot.
What role does life science play in protecting, restoring — or reinventing — nature?
Technology is constantly redefining our understanding of life, bringing biology to a pivotal turning point where humans and machines collaborate to engineer new forms of existence.
Intimacy with Nature invites us to reflect on our interconnected relationship with the natural world, animals, and technology — to recall forgotten lessons, and consider which mistakes we must not repeat.
FREAK Lab
The Futuristic Research Cluster — an anti-disciplinary research cluster exploring the symbiotic relationship between human, art and technology.
Founded in 2017 and based at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), FREAK Lab prototypes and researches while leveraging art and installations to reimagine possible realities — bringing scholars, artists and technicians together to transform ideas of the future into practical, feasible applications.
It travels across continents to find new encounters in different natural environments.
Three phases of intimacy
Phase 1 — The Lab
A one-week residency at Naresuan University. Seven artists go inside the life-sciences laboratory: DNA, PCR, rice farms, slime mold.
Phase 2 — The City
A five-day public bio-art workshop at Singapore Art Museum — botanic gardens, community farms, kitchens and maker spaces as laboratories.
Phase 3 — The Symposium
March 4–7 at BACC & Chulalongkorn University: the network returns to Thailand to think in public — bio-aesthetics, quantum biology, curation.
Going inside the laboratory
Co-hosted by Prof. Pakpoom Subsoontorn and the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM), the first iteration of Intimacy with Nature brought seven artists in residence into a working research university — with a one-week public workshop alongside.
Learning the instruments of life
Participants were introduced to synthetic biology and learnt to extract DNA with their own hands — then trained on PCR and gel electrophoresis, the everyday tools of molecular biology.
Alongside bench work, they met faculty members and researchers from the Medical Science and Agricultural departments — science as conversation, not lecture.
What was learned: the materiality of biotechnology — that DNA is a substance you can hold, amplify, and read.
Biology as it lives in the province
From fungal dyes to research rice fields to village fermentation — what was learned: biotechnology already lives in farms, kitchens and local crafts.
Slime mold, artists, and seven new questions
Artist Hanna Saito led a slime-mold workshop — working with an organism that thinks without a brain, and remaps how we imagine intelligence and growth.
Seven artists in residence left the week with laboratory literacy: extraction, cultivation, observation — and a shared vocabulary between art and science.
- Synthetic biology demystified — hands on real lab protocols
- Local agricultural science as a living context for biotech
- Art + science as one studio practice, not two fields
Inside the week — a photo wall
BioArt Residency Phitsanulok 2022 — Naresuan University · 17–23 July 2022
The city as a living laboratory
A five-day BioArt workshop, open to the public, hosted by SAM Residencies as part of FREAK Lab’s EX-SITU residency — lectures, hands-on seminars and off-site tours, connecting participants with local Singaporean practitioners and initiatives.
Edible ecology of the urban tropics
What was learned: genetic transformation on a salad plate — and the herbal knowledge woven through the modern city.
Biotech from the ground up
What was learned: a community lab movement across Southeast Asia — biotechnology democratized, in farms, kitchens and maker spaces.
Five days in the city-lab — a photo wall
BioArt Workshop Singapore 2023 — Singapore Art Museum · 15–19 March 2023
From bench to garden to city — a network forms
Phase 1 gave artists laboratory literacy. Phase 2 opened the laboratory to the city — and showed that labs already exist in gardens, farms and kitchens.
Across the two phases, one community formed: biologists, artists, curators and makers from Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea and beyond — sharing the principle of the Global Community Bio Summit: democratize biotechnology, build an inclusive commons of knowledge.
The question that remains: what should this network become? Where does the conversation go next?
Speakers
Oron Catts
Pursuit to Understand Life & Bioaesthetic
Hideo Iwasaki
metaPhorest to SymbioticA
Georg Tremmel
Biology, Art, Society
Stacy Switzer
Curating in the Technological Drift
Henry Tan
Opening · FREAK Lab
Esther Lu
Human – Non Human · Echo Location
Pakpoom Subsoontorn
Biology, Art, Society · Live Forever?
Elaine Regina
Foldscope Talk + Workshop
Thanakrit Wongsathit
Moderator · Human – Non Human
Live Forever? — Spiritual Drug Discovery
From molecule to mind: what the spiritual doctor, the local herbalist and the synthetic biologist share when discovering a new drug — the ritual of processing, and of delivery.
A 3-day trip into the discovery of the elixir of life — by FREAK Lab Thailand.
Join us — registration opens soon.
Art Residency at the Botanical Garden Network, Thailand
How does local ecology adapt to changing environments — shifting climate, industrial expansion, the pressure of growth?
This residency invites artists and researchers to work across Thailand’s botanical garden network: to explore the pace of change, and to revisit the idea — and the ideal — of nature.
- Fieldwork inside living collections across Thailand
- Artists and researchers in shared residence
- Revisiting what “nature” means under anthropogenic change
Organized by FREAK Lab Thailand