Since 2024, we have been curating and facilitating the Ars Biologica Independent Studies (ABIS) programme, one of the key pillars of the České Budějovice – European Capital of Culture 2028 project.

The (ABIS) is an international art-science programme dedicated to practice-based inquiry into the entanglements and tensions of living systems, technologies, and cultures. The programme consists of a yearly series of activities in a range of formats, including workshops, field trips, lectures, seminars, collaborative experiments, and a summer school. These activities are led by Czech and international tutors and take place across locations in the South Bohemian Region and in Prague, with some activities held online.

Participants can join either occasionally or over an extended period, propose their own topics for collective inquiry, and initiate new formats of collaboration. In 2026, the ABIS art-science programme focuses on five key thematic areas: multispecies research, sound ecologies, experimental AI, slow circuits, and biointelligence (regular updates on the 2026 programme are here).

In 2025, the programme kicked off with a summer school divided into four thematic tracks, including Perma~cultural thinking in multispecies research, Permaprompting with feral (ai)gents, Permacomputing and digital infrastructures, and Slow circuits.

The programme concept is developed by the Uroboros collective in collaboration with the Spanish foundation TBA21.