Leonardo@Djerassi 2022

Leonardo@Djerassi, inaugurated as "Scientific Delirium Madness" in 2013, is a collaborative initiative of Leonardo/ISAST and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. The 2022 sessions celebrated the collaboration's seventh successful year, and the first collaboration following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with monthlong residencies for two groups of artists and scientists at the Djerassi Program's retreat in the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains in California. While living, eating, working, and hiking alone and together, residents are provided space and time for their passions and practices to explore new artistic and intellectual terrain. With unstructured time, residents transform and transcend academic and traditional boundaries of art and science, uncovering exciting new questions as they go. This Leonardo Gallery features a selection of observations and work drawn from the 2022 L@D residencies, 31 May–28 June and 5 July–2 August 2022.

Situated atop the fault lines of redwood forest, creek beds, and rolling grasslands that overlook the Pacific Ocean and California's Santa Cruz Mountains, the 583-acre Djerassi Resident Artists Program is the largest artists' residency in the Western United States. Over four decades, Djerassi has provided the gift of time and space to more than 2,500 artists of all disciplines and backgrounds from all 50 states and some 53 countries around the world.

During their weeks on the land, residents experience time that is unencumbered by structure or direction, save that which they impose voluntarily on themselves. Residency applications are evaluated by committees of peers in each discipline without requirement or reference to project, deadline, or anticipated outcome. Despite the undirected nature of the Djerassi experience, or perhaps because of it, literary and artistic works created in residency have been recognized with hundreds of nominations and awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur "genius" grants, NAACP Image Awards, and Lambda Literary prizes.

The Djerassi Program's then-Director Margot Knight explained in 2013, at the inception of the collaboration with Leonardo, that an art/science residency seemed to draw on elements of the organization's DNA, given that one of its cofounders (and my grandfather) the late Carl Djerassi, was himself an eminent scientist, playwright, and author. As the years have progressed, however, the Leonardo@Djerassi sessions have become more and more entwined with the Program's dual mission: to enhance the creativity of artists and also to preserve the land and its environs.

The participants in L@D 2022 waited through two long years of postponement due to the pandemic and subsequent pause in the Program's operations. Selected from over 200 applicants and nominees, 10 adventurous souls arrived over the course of two sessions from 31 May to 2 August. Among them were cognitive and agricultural scientists, writers, a biologist, a choreographer, a poet, a composer, an essayist, and a media artist.

They came from Seattle by way of Seoul, from London, Memphis, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Boston, as well as the Bay Area by way of Brazil. Giant "macrophones" sprouted on the hills. An audience and the land itself were enlisted as performers and cocreators in an immersive multivenue performance piece in which all were called to contemplate the nature of our connections. New site-specific installations took root, reaching up from the earth and out through the airwaves, respectively.

Blog posts from the L@D residents conveying their work and experience are available at https://leonardo.info/leonardo-at-djerassi. Please enjoy the brilliance and potential these residents shared and realized. I hope you are inspired by this glimpse into the creative process.