ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCY

SANTIAGO MORILLA

Residency periods: November 2024 & April 2025 - Barcelona & its Metropolitan Area.

Mentored by Quo Artis

ABOUT

Santiago Morilla is a multifaceted artist with a diverse skill set spanning photography, video, digital mapping, installations, and performances. He holds a PhD in Contemporary Art from Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and further specialized in New Media Art at the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland. Beyond his academic roles, Morilla engages actively in research and teaching at UCM's Faculty of Fine Arts. His art explores the dynamic intersections of aesthetics, politics, and cultural ecology, particularly focusing on environmental degradation and multispecies coexistence. Morilla's work, celebrated globally, has been featured at renowned venues like the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art and The Drawing Center in New York, and he has received numerous prestigious awards and scholarships for his innovative contributions to art and design.

RESIDENCY

Artist Santiago Morilla undertook a two-phase residency designed to support transdisciplinary exploration, sustainable practice, and engagement with local agricultural communities.

Structured to allow for both temporal flexibility and personal balance—values underscored in the project’s gender and care strategies—Morilla’s residency took place over two three-week periods: the first in November 2024, and the second between March and April 2025. This two-part format enabled an iterative research-to-production process that integrated time for reflection, experimentation, and family life.

During the initial phase, Morilla engaged in site-specific fieldwork across a range of urban and peri-urban agricultural initiatives in Catalonia. He visited locations such as the community gardens of Green For Good Project by Ferrer Sustainability Foundation, as well as Contorno Urbano in L’Hospitalet del Llobregat, the hydroponic installations of Tectum Garden, and the vegetable gardens associated with Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera—Món Sant Benet and the Alícia Foundation in Sant Fruitós del Bages. These visits served as entry points for meaningful dialogue with local caretakers and farmers, fostering an embodied understanding of ecological and cultural dynamics.

The second residency phase emphasized sensorial research and audiovisual production. At this point, Santiago Morilla visited Mint Lab at the University of Murcia, where he met with Professor Paco Calvo, a leading researcher in the field of plant intelligence and a key collaborator in the first edition of the project. The visit provided an opportunity to exchange perspectives on plant cognition, agency, and behavior, and to explore potential intersections between scientific research and artistic practice.Employing biosonification—a method that converts the electrical activity of living organisms such as fungi or soil microbes into audible sound—Morilla developed a sonic exploration of subterranean life. This approach was conceptually grounded in the work of Michael Mäder’s "Sounding Soil", and complemented by readings from microbiology, soil ecology, and environmental humanities. The residency also drew on feminist and multispecies perspectives from authors such as María Puig de la Bellacasa and the contributors to "Multispecies Futures".

Through this layered methodology, Santiago Morilla produced a body of research that bridges art and science. His work invites audiences to “listen with care” to the often-invisible ecosystems beneath our feet.

CAPACITY-BUILDING WORKSHOP

Experimental Biosonification with Saprotrophic Fungi

Date: April 8, 2025
Location: Escola Massana, Barcelona

Workshop Format: Hands-on sound workshop with bioelectrical sensors and DIY electronics

On April 8, 2025, Escola Massana hosted the workshop Experimental Biosonification with Saprotrophic Fungi, led by artist Santiago Morilla and sound researcher Joaku de Sotavento.

This hands-on session offered participants the opportunity to explore the perceptual, gastronomic, and artistic dimensions of shiitake mushroom cultivation on oak logs—a technique with centuries-old roots in Southeast Asia.

Combining theory and practice, the workshop focused on the biosonification of fungi, using custom open-source hardware designed to detect, amplify, and interpret the bioelectrical activity of living organisms.

Participants learned how to assemble electrodes and contact microphones, attach them to the fungal cultures, and record the subtle electrical impulses generated by the growing shiitake.

The aim was to co-create a series of “garden-devices”—site-specific sound installations within the Escola Massana space—that invited a participatory encounter with fungal life through active listening.

These installations encouraged reflection on symbiosis, interspecies communication, and ecological entanglement, transforming the act of listening into a form of care and connection.

By merging artistic experimentation with microbial sensitivity, the workshop contributed to the project’s broader mission of bridging disciplines and expanding the cultural understanding of plant and fungal life.

It offered a space for participants to rethink the boundaries between organisms, technologies, and human perception—through sound.