Ale de la Puente: Bridging philosophy and science through artistic practice

Arts Research Africa Dialogues

In this dialogue, Prof Christo Doherty, the Chair of Research in the Wits School of Arts, speaks Ale de la Puente, an independent artist-researcher from Mexico who is doing a residency in Johannesburg as part of the Goethe Institute’s international Studio Quantum programme.
Ale has studied industrial design, goldsmithing, boatbuilding, navigation, astronomy, physics, and philosophy. She is known for her poetic and conceptual explorations of time and space across a wide field of mediums, ranging from installations and sculptures to drawings, photography, and video, including art science expeditions in search of symbolic natural phenomena, how we signify them, and how, very importantly, we relate to the given meanings in art and life.
Ale is a fellow of the National System of Arts Creators in Mexico. She has exhibited her work both nationally in a wide range of international galleries from the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico to the Polytechnic Museum (Moscow) and the Bass Museum of Art, in Miami, Florida to name but a few. Her work is part of leading public and private collections.
Ale first developed art-science projects in collaboration with the Astronomy Institute and Nuclear Science Institute of National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, going on to work with the Schmidt Ocean Institute in California, the Roscosmos in Russia, and the Kosmica Institute in Berlin and Mexico City. Amongst her many collaborations with scientists are the projects "Desire", "Matters of Gravity" and "Finding the Centre" which we will discuss in this podcast, as well as the project she is beginning in Johannesburg as part of the Goethe Institut’s Studio Quantum initiative - an international events and artist-in-residence programme which is exploring emerging quantum technologies through the lens of art.
In this podcast we discuss how Ale came to art practice, beginning with her accidental discovery of Industrial Design and her first art-science collaborations with the Institute of Astronomy at the National Autonomous University of Mexica. We then unpack what went into the public space art-intervention she called "Desire" where , working with artisan firework craftsmen, she built an artificial comet that flew in the evening sky above Mexico City in 2016. We explore how she navigates the challenges as an artist engaging with the scientific lab through her experience of working at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) where she has had two residencies, We then look at her collaborative project with 6 other artists called Matters of Gravity (2012-14), where they elaborated the different implications of zero gravity using the facilities at Star City in the Yuri Gagarin Cosmosnaut Training Centre outside Moscow. Finally we discuss the lessons that Ale has drawn from her extensive engagement with scientists working in a wide variety of disciplines and how she is going about her work on her project, entitled "Is it going to rain" with the Quantum Studio project in Johannesburg.
Useful links to Ale’s project website and other information and can be found in the show notes for this podcast. Ale de la Puente - artist's portfolio website · Schmidt Ocean Institute - Ale de la Puente · Studio Quantum: An international events and artist-in-residence programme from the Goethe-Institut, exploring emerging quantum technologies through the lens of art. · Matters Of Gravity.pdf — PDF (7.4 MB)