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The Lab

The Lab lifts the lid on the secret world of the lab by pairing artists with labs and project teams from across Queen Square Institute of Neurology

The Lab: Krystle Patel x Plun Favreau Laboratory

Sound and art installation at Cubitt Gallery

Krystle Patel has spent the last few months as artist-in-residence with the Plun-Favreau Lab in a project that aims to demystify the lab. She’s been documenting her process with a series of events that will culminate in an installation in summer 2023.

Hélène is doing something quite special – she's equally nurturing and pushes her group to do their best and to do wonderful things. Science is about risk-taking, magic, and trial and error, not lab coats and bunsen burners

Krystle said:  “I could not have anticipated this unravelling in the way it has. Hélène is doing something quite special – she's equally nurturing and pushes her group to do their best and to do wonderful things.  The welcoming atmosphere of the group as well as their overall energy pushed me to share my research through these events. The essence of the lab are their relationships. Science is about risk-taking, magic, and trial and error, not lab coats and bunsen burners”

Closed Circuit Systems

Krystle Patel’s residency with the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology Plun-Favreau lab, as part of UCL Public Art commisson, The Lab, which aims to lift the lid on the secret world of the lab by pairing artists with labs and project teams from across Queen Square Institute of Neurology  

Krystle’s 18-month residency with the Plun-Favreau lab focuses on demystifying the lab, navigating the distance that exists between scientific research and its public perception. 

Through spending time with the lab’s members both individually and as a group, she has developed an intimate understanding of the physical and emotional architecture of the space, including ideas around extensions and limitations of ‘knowing’; systems of control and dissemination; the dynamic of the group and the fear and beauty associated with science. Her research findings will be presented as a series of ‘nodes’ – events or installations exploring the space between science and the public and these fragments will go on to form a portrait of the members of the lab, a way of knowing at the edges. 

Mapping, Magic and Matriarchy 

A programme of three radio audio works exploring relationships between scientific research and its public perception.

In the first episode, Krystle looks at ideas around proprioception (the sense that lets us perceive the location and movement of parts of the body) signalling and rhythm, questioning our relationship with science and the comfort its existence brings with vocal exercises performed by individual members of the lab themselves. The second epsiode explores magic, how it connects with science, and what a ‘theory’ of it would sound like and the final episode looks at matriarchal structures through the monotony of care, guilty pleasures and the chaos of shared spaces.

Listen here
 

Conspiracy @Cubbit Gallery, October 2022

The control of information exists both within scientific research and as a consequence of it. A live two-hour performance/DJ set, at Cubitt gallery with Cubitt Community Radio and the Plun-Favreau Lab, the event explored the languages of conspiracy, dissonance and belief in relation to transparency,  exposure and the bureaucracy that governs the information we are kept from and given access to.

Viewers were invited to sit in the intimate space of a ‘living room’ and experience the varied and conflicting material that washed over them, which featuring verbal accounts from members of the Plun - Favreau lab, personalised mixes and appropriated material, alongside visuals exploring the aesthetic of conspiracy, animated radio telescopes, murder mystery programmes, animals, animation and science/medical visuals.

Watch again here

Slime, Sublime, Sublimation, The Horse Hospital, November 2022

Writer and artist Fiona Glen, Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London Esther Leslie, and artist and filmmaker Maybelle Peters join artist in residence in Plun Faverau lab Krystle Patel to talk about the Sublime. 
The Sublime is a concept that has been in flux over the years. Fear, beauty, boundlessness and the inability to contain a thing are centred within this mutable term. This dynamic is exciting and, historically, has placed the individual in the seat of power in an attempt to contain the liquid. However, we can also approach these themes through the action of the uncontainable. What happens when we step away from a constructed position of power and rather open ourselves to a reception of boundlessness?

About Krystle Patel

Krystle Patel is a London-based Asian artist born in Texas. Her practice exists across writing, sound and textile to create moving image works and site-specific installations that investigate relationships. She gained a degree in Dentistry and has recently completed her MFA at Goldsmiths University. She has worked with The Florence Trust, Eastside Projects (The Exchange), Deptford X, Air Space gallery, TACO, We Are Superfluous and Hundred Years Gallery, as well as a radio residencies with Aaja music, RTM FM and Cubitt gallery. She was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021 and has work acquired for the Government Art Collection.

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