First post

Welcome to The Arts Catalyst's blog, an opportunity for us to give some inside views on our projects and investigations, and perhaps provoke ideas and questions in response.

On Monday, we had the final public lecture of our Polar series on the art and science of climate change, organised with the Open University and the British Library. A great ending to the series with a completely fascinating talk by Klaus Dodds on the history of geopolitics in Antarctica, and Michael Bravo's extraordinary tale of his involvement in the recent media construction of the story of "the UK's claim on Antarctica", particularly relevant as the event was chaired, with great good humour, by BBC science correspondent Christine McGourty.

We recently returned from Berlin, where we were curating the exhibition The Artist as Space Explorer for the ESA/DLR (European Space Agency and German Space Agency) conference on space exploration. A strange context in which to put on an art exhibition, but we had some very strong artists involved, including Tomas Saraceno and Marko Peljhan. The exhibition has emerged from a study into cultural utilisation of the International Space Station programme, undertaken by The Arts Catalyst in 2005.

These have been the latest projects in a year of diverse activity, which has included the 2nd International Artists Airshow, Brandon Ballengee's Malamp investigation into declining and deformed amphibians in the UK, and the dawn launch of Tomas Saraceno's extraordinary solar dome, Poetic Cosmos of the Breath.

2008 is looking to be an equally - or surpassingly - fascinating year...

Nicola Triscott, Director

(Images: Kathryn Yusoff; Kitsou Dubois, Immersion-Transmission)