ABIS is the independent study programme of Ars Biologica, one of the flagship projects of České Budějovice – European Capital of Culture 2028. Each year, it runs a series of research modules in different formats (field workshops, studios, digital residencies, lectures, collaborative experiments and a summer school), led by Czech and international tutors in the South Bohemian Region, in Prague and online.
Rather than a course with a fixed curriculum, ABIS works as a shared research environment. Each module brings together people from different fields to try out one another's ways of working in practice and to see where these methods support, complement or contradict each other.
ABIS was co-founded by the Uroboros collective (Michal Kučerák and Markéta Dolejšová) as part of the Ars Biologica project, and its programme concept is developed in collaboration with TBA21–Academy. I co-curate the programme and co-lead its Multispecies Research module with Tamara Spalajković.
Rather than a course with a fixed curriculum, ABIS works as a shared research environment. Each module brings together people from different fields to try out one another's ways of working in practice and to see where these methods support, complement or contradict each other.
ABIS was co-founded by the Uroboros collective (Michal Kučerák and Markéta Dolejšová) as part of the Ars Biologica project, and its programme concept is developed in collaboration with TBA21–Academy. I co-curate the programme and co-lead its Multispecies Research module with Tamara Spalajković.
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In 2026, ABIS grew into five research modules:
ABIS also co-hosted the town hall meeting ArtScience X ArsBiologica: Mapping the Intangible Impacts of Art–Science Encounters at Ars Electronica Festival 2026 in Linz.
New modules will be announced during 2027. Alongside them, we are preparing the Multispecies Research Almanac: Methods from the Field (eds. Markéta Dolejšová & Tamara Spalajković, which gathers methods proposed and tested by participants of the multispecies modules.
- Sound Ecologies, an online digital residency and study group led by Robertina Šebjanič in collaboration with TBA21–Academy;
- Edge Effects: Multispecies Methods at the Boundary, a field workshop at the CAS Institute of Microbiology in Nové Hrady (Markéta Dolejšová and Tamara Spalajković);
- Agenthymia, a creative R&D studio with AI agents and uncensored language models at AVU in Prague (led by Enrique Encinas & Jojo Schütt);
- Slow Circuits: The Garden as a Web of Relations, a summer school in a garden colony in České Budějovice (with Karin Šrubařová, Nikola Brabcová and Janek Rous);
- Biointelligence: Zoom In / Zoom Out, a workshop at the campus of the University of South Bohemia and the Biology Centre in České Budějovice (led by Barbora Kleinhamplová and Tereza Čajková).
ABIS also co-hosted the town hall meeting ArtScience X ArsBiologica: Mapping the Intangible Impacts of Art–Science Encounters at Ars Electronica Festival 2026 in Linz.
New modules will be announced during 2027. Alongside them, we are preparing the Multispecies Research Almanac: Methods from the Field (eds. Markéta Dolejšová & Tamara Spalajković, which gathers methods proposed and tested by participants of the multispecies modules.
We've walked with various forest locations. For example, in Finland, the walks are situated in the highly instrumentalized Hyytiälä forestry field station that is full of sensors collecting measurements of gas exchanges between the forest and the atmosphere. These walks are guided by the station's data managers and researchers who share stories of the local technological (forest) infrastructure.
In Australia, the walkers have explored Melbourne’s Urban Forest and its associated open data maintained by the municipality. The local Urban Forest offers a complex ecosystem of more than 70,000 trees each with unique IDs that provides a peculiar context for inquiry into open and alternative forest data.
In Colombia, we've walked with forest patches in three different locations, including the Bëngbe Uáman Tabanoc – an ancestral territory of the Kamëntŝa people located in southern Colombian Andes, the Reserva El Palmar – an ecological reserve located in the buffer zone of the Chingaza National Park in the Andean Mountains, and the Cerro Seco – an informal housing neighborhood located at the southern urban limits of Bogota.
In the Czech Republic, the walks take place in Central Bohemia, in the protected landscape area Křivoklátsko and are guided by Chewie – an Open Forest Collective's member of a canine origin who holds extensive sensorial knowledge of the local forest landscape and provides a unique other-than-human perspective. Chewie’s sense of orientation and interests define what is worth exploring and his sensory capacities become key in the walk navigation.
While walking, we observe, talk, listen, and pay attention to our surroundings. These conversations and experiences become an inspiration for forest stories. In the context of our inquiry, these stories capturing diverse more-than-human forest knowledges and experiences are considered as data – that is messy, eclectic, sensory-rich, and more-than-human, or, as we call it, feral data. The feral forest data resulting from the walks – whether inspired by a dog’s forest interests, shaped as woven pictograms, or generated by sensors – are collected to help challenge dominant epistemological framings of forests; what they might be and to whom. Through the feral stories and/as data, we aim to raise questions about power, values, and structural inequalities that shape forests and their futures.
Some Open Forest walks have been guided by a set of More-than-Human Dérives. Inspired by Situationists International’s artistic strategy with the same name, the dérives invite walkers to take an unplanned journey through a landscape, drop their everyday relations and let themselves be drawn by chance encounters. We've designed an online portal that contains a set of drifting prompts to help guide walkers in their explorations.
Our drifting event, The Feral Drifting with Lonja Wetlands (2023), involved a 4-day performative investigation of multispecies relations and spatio-temporalities of care that shape the flow of life and death in Lonjsko Polje, the largest protected wetlands in Croatia. The drift took place as a field workshop within the programme of the Croatian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. Its processes and outcomes were shaped into Feral Fragments of Lonjsko Polje, a short film shown in the pavilion's exhibition Same as It Ever Was, curated by Mia Roth and Tonči Čerina.
Our drifting event, The Feral Drifting with Lonja Wetlands (2023), involved a 4-day performative investigation of multispecies relations and spatio-temporalities of care that shape the flow of life and death in Lonjsko Polje, the largest protected wetlands in Croatia. The drift took place as a field workshop within the programme of the Croatian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. Its processes and outcomes were shaped into Feral Fragments of Lonjsko Polje, a short film shown in the pavilion's exhibition Same as It Ever Was, curated by Mia Roth and Tonči Čerina.
Beyond organising walks, maintaining the Feral Map, and publishing research texts, we regularly share our Open Forest processes as an interactive installation at exhibitions and festivals. For a full list of places and spaces where our installation has been planted, see our Exhibitions.