The (Re)Grounding programme presents the multidisciplinary research and artwork of Cypriot bio artist Marisa Satsia for the final presentation of her residency.

During her residency, Marisa collaborated and co-created with Ukrainian biohacker Dariia Dantseva of Yane Lab. Together they developed a hands-on workshop where participants were encouraged to produce alternative forms of scientific knowledge outside the walls of scientific institutions. They were guided to conduct  their own scientific experiments on the contamination caused by copper mining to the bodies of water in Skouriotissa and Lefke by using DIY biology and open-source tools and methodologies.

As a bio artist, Marisa’s aim is to produce scientific knowledge horizontally, and to decolonise scientific knowledge production. In her approach, she empowers locals, citizens, artists, and bioactivists to generate new understandings and knowledge about the current environmental state of local abandoned mines, as an alternative engagement with colonial industrial history and extractivist legacy in Cyprus, through citizen science research methodologies and DIY Biology practices.

Her focus lies in conducting experiments with site specific materials and concluded her residency with on-site explorations, empirical observations, gathering of environmental evidence and documentation. She has been working on a variety of 3D and photogrammetry scans, analysis of water samples and microscopic mineral and geological visual analysis. Using these initial experiments, she is hoping to develop a deeper understanding on the human impacts, which will then inform her to formulate further experiments in her DIY laboratory.

She forages for geological and mineral artefacts and collects and tests water samples, and documents local flora alongside remnants of abandoned copper and sulphide mines. She forages digitally in the abandoned landscapes using tools such as 3D scanning and photogrammetry in her effort to document her findings and to transport them outside the mines without disrupting or further damaging the local biosphere and the living organisms in the bodies of water, the flora, fauna and fungi of the mines, if any. 

Through her multidisciplinary practice, she integrates 3D scanning, photogrammetry, microscopic mineral observation and DIY biology techniques to develop open-source protocols, tools and resources. Her approach embraces citizen science methodologies to foster collective learning. She seeks to empower citizens through the cultivation of decolonial thinking, and the production of scientific knowledge. Her work  encourages collective, on site research beyond the confines of a studio or scientific/academic institutions. Her exploration seeks and formulates future collective based resolutions for the monitoring, restoration and [bio]remediation of local abandoned mines and aims to cultivate solidarity and action towards environmental justice through artistic production, and use of low tech open source tools and methodologies for documenting, analysing, testing, and monitoring of abandoned local mines through community exchange.

Through the (Re)Grounding research residency, Marisa Satsia had the opportunity to meet and work along with the Ukrainian artists Dariia and Alexandra Clod, the lead curator Lucy Nychai, and Dize Kukrer for group research support. Together with fellow bio artist Dariia they co-created the work ‘Atomic Number 29’, presented in the virtual exhibition (Re)Grounding: From Beneath the Ground to the Future, curated by Lucy Nychai, and launched only a week ago and which will be presented at the exhibition. 

She is also currently in discussion with artist Helene Black on a co-written text exploring mining and extraction, which will further contextualise her final work.

Images courtesy of the artist.