The Festival’s Participating Artists

Alessandra Carosi (italian artist based in Paris, POUSH resident)

Manuel Bafaluy (spanish artist, based in Valencia, Pluto resident)

Alexandra Knie (German artist, based in Valencia, Pluto resident)

Hugo Dezellus (French artisan, biologist, based in Bretagne, France).

The artist's practice intertwines colors, emotions, and psychology, forming a visual poem that engages viewers both emotionally and intellectually. Primarily focused on photography, she blends visual art with elements of psychology and anthropology. Her deep interest in alchemy drives her exploration of material transformation processes, pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium to reveal three-dimensional aspects that transcend the surface. Through abstraction, evocation, and symbolism, she translates emotional experiences into "visual synesthesias," questioning how subtle elements like empathy and psychology can be conveyed through visual art. Her work re-contextualizes images, opening new perspectives and challenging traditional narratives.

In her current project, the artist conceptualizes water as a feminine living alchemical entity, capable of conveying diverse emotions. She creates a feminist geography of the sensitive by experimenting with seawater on photosensitive paper to produce photograms that represent emotional landscapes.

This experimental process materializes the connection between the individual body and the universe, inviting viewers into an abstract realm where emotions take precedence. Utilizing natural materials such as sand, algae, and rocks, she employs unconventional darkroom techniques to achieve a unique color palette. This ongoing series, initiated in 2023, includes photograms created in Italy and various Mediterranean locations, establishing a multidimensional connection between ecology and art while encouraging reflection on personal emotions and the natural world.

Manel Bafaluy (Barcelona, 1997) is a visual artist exploring the intersections between the organic and the digital. His artistic research focuses on new digital tools to express his fascination with the elemental forms of nature and the intangible structures that constitute life. Specializing in digital sculpture through 3D printing and virtual reality modeling, he shares his creative processes via live performances, revealing a unique relationship with digital plasticity through automatism and intuitive exploration. His work spans contemporary sculpture, scenography, digital art, and muralism, emphasizing meanings that emerge from abstract forms created with unconventional materials. Since 2023, he has been working with mycelium to create living sculptural laboratories, co-creating with other species and observing the new materials that arise from this interaction.

In his current project, he proposes creating a live sculpture using virtual reality, projected in the natural setting of a beach in Valencia. The piece will be modeled digitally in real-time, allowing the audience to witness its evolution while interacting with the surroundings. This project adopts an abstract and biomorphic approach, aiming to capture the organic evolution of organisms without explicit references to concrete forms.

The sculpture evolves as a constantly transforming entity, inviting hypnotic contemplation. By using technology, the work offers an immersive experience that encourages reflection on the nature of living beings, their transformation processes, and the relationship between the organic and the digital. The projection in the beach environment enhances this connection, creating a visual experience that challenges the boundaries between reality and the virtual, prompting viewers to contemplate the cycles of nature and the impact of transformation on all living beings.

Born in 1984 in Mechernich, Germany, Alexandra is a visual artist currently living and working in Valencia, Spain, and near Cologne, Germany. She graduated in Fine Arts from the Alanus University of Arts and Social Science and enhanced her studies with painting in Genoa, Italy, and textile design at the University of Paderborn, Germany. Her artistic practice investigates the intersection of art, craft, and science, utilizing various textile techniques, especially machine embroidery, alongside painting, drawing, screen printing, and installation.

Her proposed project, "Intervened Algae," for the Living Lab Festival 2025, explores the transformative potential of algae as an artistic-scientific material at the convergence of nature, technology, and textile art. The project involves manually intervening in algae collected from the Mediterranean Sea using textile techniques to reshape them into hybrid entities that blend the natural and synthetic. These organic and textile fusions create unique sculptural forms on a water-soluble film, leaving behind delicate meshes of algae and thread. The resulting works are then digitally cloned and translated into new forms through 3D printing, provoking questions about our aesthetic, ethical, and ecological perspectives when we actively intervene in nature.

"Intervened Algae" invites participants to engage in a collective laboratory, merging art and science, reality and fiction, and the organic and artificial.

Hugo Dezellus is a passionate guide in ornithology, batrachology, and wild culinary and medicinal foraging. Since childhood, he has been fascinated by flora and fauna, sharing his knowledge of plants and animals with others. Through observation in both natural and peri-urban environments, he highlights common plants across Europe that possess culinary and medicinal properties. Hugo invites groups to spend a few hours learning to identify these plants and understand the lifestyles and interactions within the animal and plant kingdoms, encouraging a deeper appreciation for the life that surrounds us.

L'Ecolieu Paimpol is a project led by Hugo, aimed at transforming a 2-hectare plot currently used for conventional agriculture into a wild space. The purchase of this farm and its land is intended to create a natural reserve, inviting nature to reclaim its rights over the land while accelerating the process of bioremediation through the planting of orchards, as well as the practices of mycology, beekeeping, and permaculture. This space, dedicated to art and experimentation, welcomes artists and individuals seeking to reconnect with nature.

In addition to his work as a guide, Hugo has been practicing stone sculpture and lapidary engraving for 15 years. With a background in craftsmanship, he has trained more than a dozen apprentices and aims to impart his understanding of the material through stone engraving, an instinctive practice that connects us to the earliest human traces and civilizations thousands of years ago. This accessible art form allows individuals to inscribe messages, motifs, and symbols that transcend time, using tools that have remained largely unchanged since the era of the pharaohs in Egypt. From the metal hammer to the chisel striking the stone, each mark leaves an enduring imprint of humanity on natural materials.

08.05.2025

LIVING LAB FESTIVAL 2025
September 6–7 and September 11 – October 5, 2025.
Valencia and surrounding region.

The International Art and Science Program (IASP) invites artists, curators, researchers, and the public to explore new creative practices and ecosystems along the Mediterranean coast through an innovative ecological art and science festival ...