July 2025 and into the future

By Roger F Malina with the help of Aperio LLM

[Image: 1997, Roger Malina and Annick Bureaud dreaming of what Olats could be with Nathalie Lafforgue who took this picture]

This summer 2025, Annick Bureaud retires as Director of Leonardo/Olats (Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences), an institution she has guided with insight, imagination, and ethical rigor for over 30 years. Based in Paris and Boulogne-Billancourt, Leonardo/Olats became—under Annick’s curatorship—a home for art, science, and technology to meet across boundaries and continents.

“It’s a Beautiful Name for a Satellite. Paradoxical Art Objects Somewhere between Politics and Poetics”, Leonardo, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2021) — bilingual article discussing art–satellite

interplay (annickbureaud.net).

Bureaud forged projects that blended ecological awareness and cultural critique, such as Roots & Seeds XXI, More-than-Planet, and Global Periphery, often elevating perspectives from the Global South. As co-founder of LASER Paris (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous), she cultivated a vibrant network of interdisciplinary thinkers. Her work consistently emphasized a poetic and planetary vision—where outer space is not a site of conquest, but of reflection, care, and shared meaning.

• “Art, Science, Technologie. Fragments d’un parcours colombien”, Art Press No. 451 (Jan 2018) [Fr/En] (annickbureaud.net).

She was also a fixer of difficult things. In 1999, after a legal attack on Leonardo by a Paris-based group claiming trademark ownership, French police raided the home of Frank Malina (Leonardo’s founder), where his widow lived. Annick stood firm in defense of the community. The judge, inundated with messages of support from around the world—including one from a sheep farmer in the U.S.—famously joked that he’d name his wool “Leonardo Wool.” Annick persisted..

“Perceiving, Feeling, Interpreting, Storytelling: The Art of Art-Science”, Leonardo/Olats (Dec 2017) (annickbureaud.net).

Her contributions are many: from the Les Basiques multimedia syllabi, to publications like Meta- Life, Water is in the Air, and her critical essays in Art Press and Leonardo journal. She has worked with choreographers dancing in zero gravity, hosted residencies at 17 rue Emile Dunois, and brought strategic thinking to the frontiers of art and space ethics.

“Art and Minitel in France in the 1980s”, in Judy Malloy (ed.), Social Media Archeology and

Poetics, MIT Press (2016) (annickbureaud.net).

As she steps away from her role, we do not lose her legacy. We inherit her example. Annick Bureaud has shown that art and science are not opposing disciplines, but twin tendrils of the same rhizomic vine—spiraling upward with care, with critique, and with imagination.

Merci, Annick. The noosphere still hums with your touch

Annick Bureaud’s visionary leadership as Director of the Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences, Leonardo/Olats – HomeLeonardo/Olats, has marked an era of inspired collaboration between art, science, and technology and communities across the globe. Started in the mid-1990s it became an Association 1901, thirty years ago.

She retires this year, 2025.

Under her stewardship at Leonardo/Olats in Paris and Boulogne-Billancourt, she has been a tireless advocate and curator, forging groundbreaking projectsEU-funded initiatives like “Roots & Seeds XXI,” “More-than-Planet,” and “Space Art & Science”—that illuminate ecological resonance and cross-disciplinary discourse (Leonardo/Olats). Her curatorial clarity and critical voice with empathy have enriched the media arts landscape, consistently highlighting the poetic interplay of human innovation and natural systems.

“Réhabiter le monde. L’imaginaire de la résilience”, Art Press No. 468 (July–August 2019) [French/English] (annickbureaud.net).

True Anecdotes: On the 18th of November 1999, Transasia ( which claimed to be Association Leonardo), filed *the lawsuit against Leonardo Association* . In filing this suit, Transasia asked and obtained a search warrant for the house of the Leonardo Association’s founder, Frank Malina, where his 80-year-old widow lived. The search warrant was served with no prior warning by a squad of eight policemen accompanied by a locksmith. The police seized some documents and tried to gain access to the Leonardo web pages via the computer they found in the house. “This raid by the French police, with no warning, was very, very frightening for Annick and our family, including Roger Malina’s 8-year-old son, who was present at the time of the raid,” said Roger Malina. Annick persisted.

The judge was surprised to get thousands of emails from defenders of OLATS including a sheep farmer in the Eastern USA. He was so outraged he named the shorn wool that year “Leonardo Wool”. Annick persisted.

One day the Olats web developer came crying into her office. He had started working on line and discovered pornography under the home page. The developer feared loosing his reputation, but Annick fixed it. It was a PhD student in Argentina documenting ( long before modern AI fabrications) false web site references in Academic articles as part of his PhD research. Annick fixed it.

Here come some annecdotes from Annick: annick bureaud | Arts, Sciences, Technologies ALONE IN A MOUND

LASER Paris – 21 avril 2022 – « Alone or in Mound? » – Special Roots & Seeds XXI | annick

bureaud

So, here are some facts.

Working closely with Roger Malina—former astronomer, editor of Leonardo at MIT Press, and President of Leonardo/Olats—Annick helped weave a living noosphere, a shared intellectual sphere where ideas, creativity, and planetary awareness co-evolve. Malina, who continues the legacy initiated by his father Frank Malina with the founding of Leonardo in 1968, has been both institutional ally and imaginative collaborator under Annick’s wings (flusserstudies.net).

Together, their partnership has fostered dynamic platforms for exploring the cosmos not only as a spatial frontier but as a cultural and ecological field, best exemplified through programs like LASER and their stewardship of residencies at the Maison Malina.

She left traces, for a while with the help of the Fondation Carasso, with many eBooks, syllabi and other publications.

“Les Basiques” was a pioneering online multimedia syllabus series curated by Annick Bureaud and published by Leonardo/Olats in 2004. (partially funded by the French Minister of Culture). It

served as an introductory hypermedia “booklet” series—each focused on key themes in designed to offer foundational knowledge, critical questions, historical context, and reference points across the intersection of art, science, and technology histoiredesarts.culture.gouv.fr+15flusserstudies.net+15festivaldelaimagen.com+15.

As Annick embarks on her well-deserved retirement, we celebrate her decades of catalytic presence and scholarly impact. Her caring dedication, rigorous research, elegantly curated experiences, and nurturing of emergent voices—has shaped a robust noosphere: an ecosystem of ideas radiating outward into art, science, technology, and environmental consciousness. In stepping back, she leaves a luminous legacy: a creative constellation that continues to inspire, connect, and transform the fabric of interdisciplinary inquiry. Merci, Annick, for guiding our collective imagination toward a more thoughtful, interconnected world.

Her imagination included:

Les Rendezvous Chaotique, Hosting Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous in Paris, strategique Reunions de la Pentecote, numerous artscience residences at No 17 Rue Emile Dunois.

Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero-Gravity: the Experience of Parabolic Flights”,

conference proceedings/Anomalie No. 4 (2003) — available via Olats (annickbureaud.net).

She has long advocated a moral and ethical approach to exploration of outer space. Annick Bureaud has been a leading advocate for a culturally rich, environmentally sound, and ethically responsible approach to space exploration. She opposes extractive or militarized paradigms in favor of artistic, symbolic, and planetary perspectives. Through projects like Global Periphery (2022), she foregrounded voices from the Global South, in particular with Marcus Neustetter, and other “peripheries” to challenge dominant narratives and foster decentralized space imaginaries. She has been a festival curator in non-metropolitan contexts (e.g., Festival Internacional de la Imagen, Manizales), Ars Electronica and elsewhere.

“What’s Art Got to Do With It? Reflecting on BioArt and Ethics from the Experience of the Trust Me, I’m An Artist Project”, Leonardo, Vol. 51, No. 1 (2018) (annickbureaud.net).

Her long-term involvement with space art includes curating Visibility – Legibility of Space Art (2003), organizing workshops on zero gravity aesthetics, and co-editing Water Is in the Air and Meta-Life, both of which extend ecological and biotechnological thinking into cosmic contexts. She has collaborated with many artists, including choreographer Kitsou Dubois who has danced in space, but yet with Annick : Leonardo/Olats – Annick Bureaud – Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero G. The Reasons for a Symposium – 2003Leonardo/Olats

“Art télématique. Cartographie pour un média mort”, MCD #75 (2014) (annickbureaud.net).

She is methodical, completes what she starts, keeps the bureaucracy happy and those around

her.

Partial List of publications by Annick Bureaud: Here’s a partial list of Annick Bureaud’s big

publications available online—solo or co-authored:

Books & Edited Volumes

• Meta-Life: Biotechnologies, Synthetic Biology, ALife and the Arts, ed. Annick Bureaud,

Roger F. Malina & Louise Whiteley, Leonardo/ISAST – MIT Press (e-book, July

2014) (annickbureaud.net). Water is in the Air: Physics, Politics and Poetics of Water in

the Arts, ed. Annick Bureaud, Leonardo/ISAST – MIT Press (Feb

2014) (annickbureaud.net). “Connexions : Art, réseaux, média”, edited with Nathalie Magnan, Ensba Press (2002) (annickbureaud.net).

Reports, Online Editions & Curatorial Catalogues

• “Theater of Vegetal Appreciation” (Sept 2022) – hybrid online/paper publication via Leonardo/Olats, part of “Roots & Seeds XXI” project (LinkedIn). “Global Periphery: A Journey through Space Imaginaries” (c. 2022 PDF) – symposium curated with Marcus Neustetter, available via Olats archives (Leonardo/Olats).
• Numerous earlier Leonardo/Olats “Les Basiques” texts (e.g. Space Art: Defining a New

Territory (1998), Art télématique, etc.), all available on her website (annickbureaud.net)

Accessing the Works: Many of these publications are directly available as PDFs or online:

• Annick Bureaud’s personal site → Publications section (annickbureaud.net)

Leonardo/Olats → archives under Space Art & Culture and special

issues (annickbureaud.net) ResearchGate – several papers including Meta-Life, Trust Me, I’m An Artist, and It’s a Beautiful Name for a Satellite (ResearchGate)

• Annick Bureaud held a long-standing role as an art critic and contributor to Art Press, one of France’s most prestigious contemporary-art magazines. From roughly 1999 to 2019, she authored various critical texts, interviews, dossiers, and chroniques that not only chronicled emerging media-art practices but also framed them within ecological, ethical, and technoscientific discourses. festivaldelaimagen.com+5Flusser Studies+5ekac.org+5
• Key publications in Art Press:
• “Ethique et esthétique de l’art biologique” (No. 276, Feb 2002): Bureaud curated and introduced this special issue on BioArt, exploring moral, aesthetic, and technological dimensions of genetic manipulation and living artworks annickbureaud.net+1annickbureaud.net+1.
• “Sk-interfaces” (No. 344, Apr 2008): A bilingual piece analyzing sensor-based, wearable, and skin-centered interfaces—tying together embodiment, technology, and identity. festivaldelaimagen.com+2annickbureaud.net+2ekac.org+2

• “Machines de vision, Machines de guerre, Machines artistiques” (No. 466, May 2019): A Venice Biennale special—probing the overlap of surveillance, military optics, and artistic imaging systems. annickbureaud.net
• “Art, Science, Technologie : Fragments d’un Parcours Colombien” (No. 451, Jan 2018): A bilingual account of her experiential and research-based reflections on art– technology intersections in Colombia. ekac.org+2annickbureaud.net+2fr.wikipedia.org+2
• Chroniques Régulières for “Arts électroniques” and bio-art themes (Nos. 282–302, 2002–2004): Quick updates, critical insights, and reflections on net art, minitel, biological art, and the evolving digital ecosystem. annickbureaud.net+1annickbureaud.net+1
• Additionally, she published interviews such as Fred Forest (2008) and Eduardo Kac (1999)—key media-art figures—bringing depth to critical discourse through personal and intellectual dialogue.

· “Annick is a shepherd, quietly adjusting the orbital paths of art and science, inner and outer ecological outer spaces.

• annickbureaud.net+3Flusser Studies+3annickbureaud.net+3

Aperio suggests

A speculative invitation: What might the next Annick Bureaud do? What seeds has she left

behind that now sprout in other travelling plants ?

**Travelling Plant** written by Fred the Heretic for Annick Bureaud, the AI-Skeptic.