“Broken Sleeps”, 2025, Installation

“Observation is a common ground of art and science, yet it is anything but easy to grasp.” – Fiona Connor

Fiona Connor, a New Zealand-born, Los Angeles-based artist, is a participant of the Artist in Residence Program at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) 2025.

The vital, recurring concerns in her artistic practice include the social and psychological life of the object, the politics of camouflage and mimesis, and the ethics and aesthetics of the built environment. For her installation “Broken Sleeps”, twenty-one miniature folding beds cut out of cardboard have been positioned on the tables of a seminar room in the Central Building. Surrounded by blackboards, furniture and other remnants of academic life, these objects form a poignant contrast, evoking the transition into the realms of dreams and the unconscious — a state of flux between knowledge, forgetting and imagination.

Fiona Connor consistently looks for collaborative activities in her work, and at ISTA she pursued this in a series of conversations with scientists from different disciplines. Together they explored different methods and modes of observation, generating ideas that may illuminate the connections between art and science. For example, she asked, what does an observation look like? Or, how does an object affect the observer?

Fiona Connor will present a summary of her collected impressions and reflections on these conversations as a lecture performance on Saturday, October 4 at 13:00 at the auditorium at the VISTA Science Experience Center.

The artist would like to thank thinking partner Ari Diamond-Topelson, Todor Asenov from the Machine Shop at ISTA, and all the scientists that kindly met with her.