Collide@CERN

CERN, the multi-national super-collider that straddles the Swiss-French border near Geneva, is a pioneer of institutional art-science collaborations.

Beginning in 2009, they took a typically Swiss engineering approach to structuring their new effort, and funded a 4-month feasibility study.

The result is a program that is better organized and documented than most. To identify promising proposals, CERN has partnered with leading art-world luminaries, including Beatrix Ruf, director of Swiss art exhibition centre Kunsthalle Zurich, and Serge Dorny, director general of the Lyon Opera House in France.

Collide@CERN is driven by a four strategy cultural policy for engaging with the arts:

1. To create expert knowledge in the arts...by setting up the honorary Cultural Advisory Board for engaging with the Arts (CABA) that will include arts professionals at the highest level.
2. To create clear entry points for artists to visit CERN...The most obvious and clear entry point for artists will be the Collide@CERN Arts Residency Programme.
3. To instigate Collide@CERN, the arts residency scheme, to encourage dialogue and exchange between arts and science...
4. To provide...professional cultural expertise and advice to already existing homegrown arts activities at CERN – CinéGlobe, for example – to enable them to fulfill their cultural potential.

More information about CERN's art program:

• Press pack;
• "CERN: where art and science collide", article by program founder, Ariane Koek;
• "Art and science collide at CERN".