Art and Science in Dialogue:

How does the future taste? And what happens when machines have a say in what we do?

Artist Xenia Snow and cultural anthropologist Dr. Katharina Graf explore these and other questions in a special lecture performance on June 26, 2026 at 6 PM at the MGGU – Museum Giersch of Goethe University, inviting the audience to participate and think along.

As part of the exhibition „Multispecies Members Club. New Alliances between Living and Artificial Systems“ (running until 9.6.2026 at the MGGU), they combine art, science, and technology into a sensory experience.

A central part of the lecture performance is the collective cooking and eating of a risotto. The starting point is a conceptual engagement with genetically modified organisms, in which human genes can be introduced into biological systems so that they produce certain proteins or enzymes normally found in the human body. This creates hybrid or chimeric constellations that challenge the clear separation between human, nature, and technology.

This raises questions about genetic modification, biotechnological „human“ components, and legal frameworks. The regulation and societal debate surrounding such technologies make tangible the boundary zones negotiated in the exhibition – between nature and culture, human and non-human, and science and governance. Eating together offers a physical and social way of engaging with these questions and invites reflection on identity, biotechnology, and ethics.

Technology also plays an active role in the performance – almost like a cyborg connecting human and machine: a Thermomix gives instructions during the cooking process and guides its course. The audience is invited to participate and follow the machine’s directions. At the end, terms are collected together – such as „Bienenstich“ or „Maultaschen“ – words that can be ambiguous for an AI. In this way, the audience is actively drawn into the prompting process and directly shapes the resulting outcomes. This gives rise to surprising new meanings and associations, showing how creative – and sometimes idiosyncratic – machines can be with language.