ritcs-winter-school-2022
SEADS

RITCS Winter School 2022: Climate Change and the new Space Race

resources
	Documentation of SEADS Workshop for Winter School 2022
	RITCS Winter School 2020
	RITCS Winter School 2019
	Presentation on RITCS Winter School 2022 during Convergence 2023 Seminar

Every year, the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound (RITCS) organizes the Winter School. Over a period of two weeks in January, a common moment is created across the different departments of the school for an interdisciplinary research module. This takes the form of a mini-festival, built around a central theme, where people from outside the school are invited to work on that theme in a number of parallel workshops.

For the Winter School 2022, the interesting tension between the climate crisis on the one hand and the new space race on the other will be explored. SEADS will be leading one of these workshops. We proceed from the assumption that while it might seem that confronting climate change and investing in space exploration are strategies opposite to each other, they are really both concerned with survival and with the search for humanity’s place in this universe. We invite art and performance students at RITCS to act as radical agents and to develop multisensory expressions and imaginations beyond what we can ordinarily see, in order to address our lack of connection with nature and the universe. Can we create a multisensory performance in which audiences really, deeply experience the complex and invisible forces that are shaping the planet’s climate? What about designing a technology where we can feel deep in your muscles what it’s like to be a lizard or some other non-human living being? Can we craft an experience that helps the audience feel in their body the vastness, emptiness and incomprehensible age of the universe? SEADS Collective members will work with the workshop participants to explore creative questions like these in this workshop track. We invite them to use their skills and tools they use as artists, combine them with knowledge and technologies borrowed from other disciplines to hack the brain and the body, and devise ways of profoundly transforming the audience’s (or the performer’s) understanding of the self in relation to the universe.

RITCS participants: Ade Bormans, Alice D'hondt, Bram Spooren, Brecht Mertens, Ditmar Goes, Elena Brea Sandín, Felix Maesschalck, Fiona Desmet, Isaak Roeland, Laura De Baudringhien, Leon Decock, Luna Glowacki, Mike Neyens, Pauline Augustyn, Suzanne Versele, Vanda Tollas

Participating SEADS members

Diego Maranan

Diego is an artist, academic, and activist who works in the area of human-technology interaction. Through technology research and intermedia artistic practice, he investigates, critiques, and reimagines the relationship between humans and the world we inhabit. He holds a Marie Curie fellowship at Plymouth University; teaches at the University of the Philippines Open University; advises for WeDpro, a feminist nonprofit that empowers marginalized women and youth in the Philippines; and co-founded Curiosity, a Manila-based design strategy firm. As one of SEAD’s core members, Diego worked on an extensive range of Biomodd projects in the Philippines, New York and Europe.

visit Diego's page

Ulrike Kuchner

Ulrike Kuchner is an astrophysicist, artist, curator and creative producer publishing both in astronomy and in the inter- and transdisciplinary context of ArtScience. She (simultaneously) studied Astrophysics at the University of Vienna, as well as Fine Arts/Paintings at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she was born and raised. Today, after Masters and Ph.D. degrees have taken her to Australia, Chile, the US and Germany, she is a postdoctoral researcher in astronomy at the University of Nottingham, UK, as well as a visual artist. In her research into Astronomy, she studies how mass is assembled in the Universe and how galaxies form and evolve over their lifetime. To do this, she bridge simulations (specifically, cosmological hydrodynamical simulations) with observations of world-class telescopes. As an artist and interdisciplinary researcher, she operate where art, culture, and science intersect, using both backgrounds to find or reject interdisciplinary answers to overarching questions. Her art often deals with the themes of humanity and imperfections in data, something we tend to strip away from science. Ulrike also joins the creative process of other art-scientists and science-artists as curator and mentor to integrate different approaches and knowledge systems, challenging the frontiers between the two cultures without imposing a hierarchy.

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Angelo Vermeulen

Angelo is a space systems researcher, biologist, and community artist. With his multidisciplinary background, he collaborates closely with practicing scientists, while also creating multimedia art installations, and building communities through design and co-creation. In 2013 he was crew commander of the NASA-funded HI-SEAS Mars simulation in Hawaii. Currently he is doing research on interstellar travel at Delft University of Technology. He has lived in many corners of the world, is a TED Senior Fellow, and loves computer games.

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Pieter Steyaert

Pieter Steyaert is an artist and transdisciplinary researcher who explores collaborations within artistic and scientific communities. His work particularly focuses on the context of astrophysics and exoplanets. Pieter is one of the co-founders of SEADS and has worked on a wide range of Biomodd, Seeker and Ēngines of Ēternity projects in Europe, the USA and SE Asia. He leads the development of tools and platforms that support the global SEADS community.

Pieter is fascinated by the possibilities, ethics, and shortcomings of the techno-realm. He shares and explores insights as an educator and researcher. His interests include artificial life, data-driven experience design, and art-science interactions. Pieter conducts research at CHAMELEON, an exoplanet research group which is affiliated with both the University of Antwerp and the University of Copenhagen. His research aims to use artistic methodologies to advance scientific ideation and research.

Links

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Jeroen Verschuren

Jeroen is a mixed media artist, and aviator interested in humanities, art, and technology and how these themes are often intertwined.

Trained as an airline pilot, his experience varies from flight instruction to flying cargo, corporate, and for airlines in the US, Africa, and Europe. As an artist, his work embodies some of the themes he experienced during flight.

Jeroen is interested in ideas that examine and rethink our existence in the universe and more specifically, the mental, physical, and philosophical relationship between humans and the different environments we inhabit or could possibly inhabit.

His current responsibilities within SEADS are to further develop data sculptures in 'Engines of Eternity' and develop a generative model for module distribution in 'Evolving Asteroid Starships'.

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Ann Peeters

Ann has a background in performance arts and has earned her spurs in the Brussels social sector, focusing on playful and engaging language learning techniques, as well as digital inclusion and social innovation.

Until 2018, she coordinated Fablab and Medialab Brussels. Her enthusiasm inspires (young) innovators to explore new technologies and take on (social) challenges, preferably through a co-creation approach.

She currently works at a local Brussels ngo TADA to enlarge impact for a more inclusive society.

She has been involved in several SEADS projects and enjoys the overlap of tinkering and social interaction, as well as the new horizons a transdisciplinary approach offers.

You could also bump into her on a swing dancing event or at a game table. Ann loves Brussels for its diversity and unexpected encounters. Her hidden agenda is somewhat anarcho-feminist.

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Ana Margarida Esteves

Ana Margarida Esteves is a Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies of the University Institute of Lisbon, ISCTE-IUL and Guest Assistant Professor of the Department of Political Economy of the same institution. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University (Providence, RI, USA). Her research and teaching focuses on sustainability transitions and regenerative development, including issues of social justice, inclusion and democratic participation, synergies between nature, culture and technology and the role of critical pedagogy and the arts in these fields. She collaborates with ECOLISE- European Network for Community-led Initiatives on Climate Change and Sustainability (https://www.ecolise.eu). She is a co-founder and member of the International Editorial Committee of the journal "Interface: A journal for and about social movements" (www.interfacejournal.net). She also co-founded the New Orleans Solidarity Economy Network and "Academia Cidadã" (The Citizenship Academy), a civil rights and urban activism collective in Lisbon, Portugal.

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Sven Kiefer

Sven Kiefer is a PhD student passionate about revealing the enigma of exoplanets. His academic journey began with observing these far-off worlds, but he has since shifted his focus to hands-on work with computer models to comprehend cloud formation in planetary atmospheres. He harbors a deep curiosity about how these clouds shape the weather and chemical makeup of exoplanets. Outside the confines of the lab, he delights in creatively sharing the marvels of space. His significant contributions to 'Exomoon Theater,' a project aimed at making the science of astronomy both engaging and accessible, cannot be overlooked. For Sven, it's all about demystifying the cosmos, making it feel closer to home, and inspiring curiosity in all.

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