Julia Ihls

SurrealLabor is a Karlsruhe-based art and research collective founded by Andreas Hölldorfer, Julia Ihls, and Marius Probst. Working at the intersections of art, biodesign, digital media, and spatial staging, the collective develops speculative objects, installations, and experimental setups that make alternative futures sensorially tangible.SurrealLabor’s works combine artistic research with technical development, material experimentation, and spatial interventions. Their practice encompasses mycelium-based artefacts, kinetic light installations, bio-based textile structures, and media translations between biological and digital systems. Responding to current ecological, technological, and societal transformations, SurrealLabor asks how new forms of coexistence, production, and perception can be imagined. Between speculative fabulation, material research, and installation-based practice, the collective explores the boundaries of the status quo — creating artistic situations in which biological, technical, and social systems enter into unfamiliar relations.

Julia Ihls is a Karlsruhe-based interdisciplinary designer and researcher, and head of the Bio Design Lab at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe. Her work explores the intersections of Biodesign, posthumanistic discourses and scenographies of coexistence. Drawing on artistic, academic, and curatorial practices, she investigates convivial forms of living and designing with new (bio)materials, and engages with collaborative modes of knowledge production. She is a co-founder of SurrealLabor—an art and research collective that works at the interfaces of art, bio-design, and digital media. In her ongoing PhD project Labmospheres at the Technical University of Munich she examines transdisciplinary lab structures through international case studies and practical prototypes.