Organismo 2027 | Art in Applied Critical Ecologies
Organismo | Art in Applied Critical Ecologies is the applied research program of TBA21–Academy and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Since its pilot in 2024, it has brought artists, scientists and institutions together to address urgent challenges facing our societies through specific case studies. Each case study is led by an artist or collective, known as the pulso, and hosted by a partner organization. Past editions have featured The Otolith Group, Walid Raad, Laure Prouvost, Paulo Tavares and Domestic Data Streamers, among others, alongside thinkers such as Orit Halpern, N. Katherine Hayles and Keller Easterling, in partnership with Barcelona Supercomputing Center, BC3 Basque Center for Climate Change, FECYT, the Museo de Altamira and many more.
The program starts from a simple and rare idea: art should help design change, not just illustrate it. Over six months, interdisciplinary working groups prototype tools, spaces and policies with the institutions that can put them into practice.
The 2027 edition takes on three pressures reshaping public life. Universal Basic Agency (pulso: Nicolay Boyadjiev) asks how power can be shared as AI agents multiply faster than institutions can adapt. Thermal Futures (pulso: Kent Chan) treats extreme heat, which hits the poorest hardest, as a question of justice and community. Radical Soundness (pulso: Mayte Gómez Molina) imagines the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza’s future extension as a public health space for an aging society.
Organismo 2027 runs from January to July 2027 and asks for about five hours a week: two online sessions (Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 6–7:30 PM CET) plus some independent work. It opens with a research phase (January–March), which starts with a three-day kick-off at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid (27–29 January) and continues with the Critical Encounters online study module and weekly case study sessions. A prototyping phase (March–July) follows, with a five- to seven-day research trip and a three-day closing meeting and public presentation in Madrid. From September 2027, an optional incubation phase can give the most promising prototypes extra funding to be put into practice. Each researcher will receive a certificate after completing the full program.
Researchers join Organismo 2027 through an international open call. Successful applicants join one of the three case studies’ working groups for the whole program, paying a tuition fee (550 €) and covering their own travel, accommodation and meals for the in-person meetings—see if you're eligible for a grant. A wider audience can also apply through a separate call to join only the Critical Encounters online study module paying a tuition fee of 190€.
Universal Basic Agency
Composite assemblages for a trillion-scale para-society
Within a few years, the world's eight billion people may share the planet with hundreds of billions of AI agents capable of human-level reasoning. Schools, companies and governments were built around human intelligence, and they aren't ready. Universal Basic Agency asks what happens when the power to act no longer belongs to individuals alone. Instead, it may sit with hybrid networks of people, agents, tools and shared knowledge. Working with Barcelona Supercomputing Center and its MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, the case study uses diagrams, simulations and human–AI workflows to sketch a new social contract. In that contract, taking part and being rewarded would no longer depend only on time and labor.
Pulso: Nicolay Boyadjiev
Nicolay Boyadjiev is an architect and creative director based between Sofia, London and Montreal. He is design director of Antikythera, a think tank on the philosophy of AI incubated at the Berggruen Institute. He also directs Composite™, an initiative that trains and funds new hybrid human–AI economic units. He previously led the Practice Lab in Copenhagen and Mexico City, which prototyped alternative models of philanthropy in architecture. At the Strelka Institute in Moscow, he co-directed the design research program and ran the think tank The Terraforming. He also co-edited The New Normal (Strelka Press / Park Books, 2020).
Facilitated by: Antikythera, a research lab on the philosophy of AI that treats planetary-scale computing as a philosophical, technological and geopolitical force. It publishes a book series and an online journal with MIT Press.
In collaboration with: The Creative Intelligence Lab at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS). It was the first art-and-science lab built into a European supercomputing center.
Thermal Futures
Communal blooms in the face of climate threat
Heatwave days in Spanish towns and cities are expected to triple by mid-century, and their toll falls unevenly. Thermal Futures looks at how cities are adapting to extreme heat, from climate shelters to summer energy poverty, and asks whether these measures could also build community. The case study is rooted in Granada, one of Spain's cities most vulnerable to urban heat. There, it works with Parque de las Ciencias, which is considering opening part of its grounds as a "climate commons": a public refuge from the heat that is also a space for civic life. It draws on the histories, crops and cultures of heat.
Pulso: Kent Chan
Kent Chan is an artist, curator and filmmaker based between the Netherlands and Singapore. His work moves between art, fiction and cinema, with a particular focus on tropical imaginaries and on how heat and art have shaped each other. He has held residencies at Gasworks, Art Explora, Pivô Research, the Jan van Eyck Academie and MMCA. His work has been shown at Tate Modern, MMCA Seoul, the Liverpool Biennial, Videobrasil and the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Facilitated by: Parque de las Ciencias.
In collaboration with: BC3 Basque Center for Climate Change; The Directorate-General for Sustainability and Environmental Control, Madrid City Council; Habitat, Energy and Architecture in Transition - HEAT- Universidad Politécnica de Madrid; The Spanish Office for Climate Change (OECC), Ministry for the Ecological Transition (MITECO).
For the development of the research and prototyping process for the Thermal Futures case study within Organismo 2027, the Parque de las Ciencias will collaborate with a range of local and regional stakeholders: the Regional Government of Andalusia, the Provincial Council of Granada, Granada City Council, the University of Granada, and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
Radical Soundness
Restorative infrastructures for long-life
Spain is aging fast: by 2030, more than 23% of its population will be over 60. In October 2025, the Ministries of Health and Culture also agreed to bring the arts into public health policy. Radical Soundness starts from both facts and asks whether a museum can work as part of public health. Its testing ground is the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza's new venue in Madrid's former Palacio del Hielo, which will house works from the TBA21 Collection. The case study looks at how sound, light, architecture and programming could support longer, healthier lives, with input from neuroscientists, architects, demographers and artists.
Pulso: Mayte Gómez Molina
Mayte Gómez Molina is a writer, researcher and new media artist whose work moves between poetry, fiction, digital film, 3D and virtual reality. Her audiovisual work has been shown at the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, Documenta Madrid and FILE São Paulo. Los trabajos sin Hércules won Spain's Miguel Hernández National Young Poetry Prize in 2023, and her first novel, La boca llena de trigo, came out in 2026. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is now a PhD candidate at the Academy of Art and Design Basel, where she also teaches.
In collaboration with Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales - CSIC
Organismo 2027 general collaborators: Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), Caja Negra and RAICEX | Network of Associations of Spanish Researchers and Scientists Abroad.
