Sonic Waves: Insights from the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:10:15 +0000

The United Nations Ocean Conference 2025 took place from June 9 to 13 in Nice, France. The week leading up to the conference provided an opportunity to explore multiple scientific, artistic, and cultural perspectives on the role of sound in ocean environments. From the detrimental impact of anthropogenic noise on marine entities and ecosystems to the hopeful regenerative potentials of acoustic enrichment, the impact of sound captured the attention of world officials and conference attendees.

Lyndsey Walsh

For oceanic entities, sound is one of the most crucial forms of energy. Unlike light, which barely penetrates the depths of our planet’s waters due to its rapid scattering and absorption, sound travels faster, farther, and clearer in marine environments. The acoustic ecology of our planet’s oceans is both a crucial indicator of its well-being and a fragile soundscape, highly vulnerable to external interference and noise.

During the 2025 United Nations Oceans Conference, taking place in Nice, France, the role of sound and noise in oceanic environments permeated not only scientific advocacy and collaborative world government priorities, but it also reverberated across the conferences designated Blue and Green Zone’s transdisciplinary programming and expanded out into the surrounding events and installations across Nice.

Marine noise pollution

Preceding the official presentation of the UN Ocean Conference, on the 5th of June 2025, the One Ocean Science Congress presented their ten official recommendations, as announced by the event’s designated spokespeople including the French Institute for Ocean Science Ifremer’s President and CEO François Houllier, French National Centre for Scientific Research’s (CNRS) Research Director Jean Pierre Gattuso, Friends of the Coco Island Foundation (FAICO) Executive Director Alejandra Villalobos, Michelin-starred Chef Olivier Roellinger, and Professional Offshore Sailing Team Malizia’s Skipper Boris Herrmann. Alongside nine other recommendations drafted by the scientists of the One Ocean Science Congress, the spokespeople highlighted the “importance of decarbonizing shipping and reducing the environmental impact of maritime transport”, giving special attention to the need to identify Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas that are currently at risk noise pollution.

When thinking about anthropogenic impacts on our planet’s oceans, noise is not a commonly thought-of variable. The intangibility of noise makes it an ephermeral matter, often escaping the graphic grab for public attention that other forms of oceanic pollution have in public consciousness. However, if we were to take a moment to listen to our waterscapes, it would be easy to discern how loud our oceans have become.

Interspecies dwelling

Listening is what S+T+ARTSWater II Challenge and Residency artist Stijn Demeulenaere does best. Leading with an artistic practice set on trying “to understand places by listening to them”, Demeulenaere’s current project “Saltvein” ventures out into the seabeds of the North Sea surrounding the port of Ostend, located in the Flemish region of Belgium. “Saltvein” listens closely in on the local shellfish reefs of the area, finding the ways that emerging and shifting policy-making, fisheries, climate change, and military efforts characterize and are transforming the composition of sounds and ways of living for human and non-human entities in the Northeast passage of the North Sea.

While in Nice, Demeulenaere gave a performance of his work “Sounding Lines” at Villa Arson as part of the Symposium and Live Program “POROUS — Ports as Interspecies Dwelling” curated by Maria Montero Sierra of TBA21-Academy on June 7 and 8 as a S+T+ARTS4Water side event of the “Becoming Ocean” exhibition by Tara Ocean and TBA21-Academy. During his performance we could begin to hear from the many sounds he has been collecting during his residency hosted by GLUON-Platform for Art Science and Technology in Brussels.

“POROUS” two-day program, taking place on World Ocean Day and coinciding not only with UNOC but also Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan 2025, also featured another S+T+ARTSWater II Challenge and Residency artist named Carlos Casas. In the context of the S+T+ARTS Water II Challenge, Casas is bringing to the surface an auditory map of the city of Venice’s Lagoon by exploring a speculative narrative about its origin in his project “Allied Governance. From the Venice Lagoon and Its Citizens to the Ports” in his residency hosted by TBA21-Academy in Venice. For “POROUS”, Casas presented his performance entitled “LACUNAE”, which shared some of his explorations of the Lagoon’s soundscape that transforms across the layers of the Lagoon, as the artist leads us down a descent into its unexplored benthic zones.

While port zones may share the common feature of being particularly frictional sites between humans and non-humans when it comes to sound and noise, the impact of anthropogenic noise extends beyond these complex intersects in meeting areas between terrestrial and marine entities. During the One Ocean Science Congress, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) held a screening of the Emmy award-winning documentary “Sonic Sea” at La Baleine.

Coalition for a Quiet Ocean

Tracing the catastrophe of mass whale beaching events, “Sonic Sea” reveals how whales are indicators of the current crisis our planet’s oceans are facing due to the increasingly destructive noise coming from shipping, military, and industrial activities. One of the major forms of sound pollution discussed in the documentary comes from what is called cavitation, which is the formation and collapse of air bubbles in the water due to changes in pressure changes. Cavitation not only causes disturbing amounts of noise in marine environments, but because it can occur around ships’ propellers, it also can actually lead to considerable damage to the vessels themselves.

Sonic Sea, trailer:

However, in the ocean, these forming and collapsing bubbles can send shockwaves that sonically reverberate at immense volumes and speeds. Increases in the speeds of vessels and the number of ships being used for shipping can lead to increasing noise pollution from cavitation. However, improving propeller design can not only alleviate cavitation, but it can also improve shipping efficiency and sustainability.

Other sources of problematic noise come from the use of sonar, as it can overwhelm marine mammals like whales who use their own sonar to communicate with their hunting, family, and social groups. In some cases, the noise of sonar can lead to loss of hearing and eventual mass beachings. These mass beachings are not only a problematic behavioral phenomenon, but the film “Sonic Sea” explains how often times, the whales beached also present with physiological symptoms from the impact of this harsh noise in the form of gas bubble lesions, which present in their tissues in a similar manner to that of Decompression Sickness found in divers.

IFAW explains that there is no existing global or local regulation for sound or sound pollution in marine environments, leaving vessels with no operating standards for the amount of noise that they can emit into open waters. The outstanding issues concerning noise garnered the attention of not only the One Oceans Science Congress preceding the UN Oceans Conference, but they also received active addressal in the UNOC’s “Nice Ocean Action Plan”. Under the leadership of Panama and Canada, the “High Ambition Coalition for a Quiet Ocean” coalition composed of 37 countries was launched. The signed declaration of the coalition pledged to develop a new policy for quieter ships, investigate and implement solutions toward a reduction of shipping and other maritime vessels impact on marine organisms, knowledge-sharing of tools and technology for ocean noise reduction, and further establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) with the goal of restoring and preserving the ocean’s soundscape.

Songs of corals

While our oceans may be at high risk for noise, sound also has been found to play other crucial roles in ecosystem management. Acoustic Ecology represents the field of study of the environment through its soundscape. Artist Marco Barotti, working alongside acoustic ecologist Dr. Timothy Lamont, has built up his project “Coral Sonic Resilience” by looking at the potential of what is called acoustic enrichment to save coral reefs. Unlike noise pollution, acoustic enrichment is the process of using soundscapes of healthy environmental areas to bring enhanced or restorative effects to a local ecosystem.

Barotti’s “Coral Sonic Resilience” plays the soundscape of a healthy coral reef to vulnerable corals in the hope of restoring the ecosystem back to a healthy state. The work submerges 3D-printed sculptures designed from scans of bleached corals that act as solar-powered speakers playing regenerative soundscapes of healthy coral reefs to attract new life back to degraded coral reef habitats. Listen to a Coral Sonic Resilience’s excerpt here.

Barotti first began his work looking at corals during his residency with Science Gallery Berlin in his project “CORALS” where, in collaboration with researchers at the Bifold Institute in Berlin, he interpreted datasets of oceanic conditions through sound. Fueled by his exploration of shamanistic rituals and speculative research, Barotti became then inspired by what scientists like Dr. Lamont were doing by using sound to transform oceanic environments through promoting ecosystem regeneration of coral reefs.

The short film documenting “Coral Sonic Resilience” was screened in Nice at the Institut de la Mer of Villefranche-sur-Mer. Barotti’s work has also recently received the S+T+ARTS Prize 2025 Honorary Mention with jury comments highlighting and applauding the work’s creative solution toward the restoration of one of our planet’s most valuable ecosystems. Barotti was not the only advocate for coral health at UNOC, as the One Ocean Science Congress also emphasized its ongoing interest and recommendations toward ensuring the protection of coral reefs. Indonesia, in collaboration with the World Bank, also introduced the “Coral Bond” as an outcome-based financing structure for further financing of conservation initiatives in Marine Protected Areas.

Despite the harshness of noise that can be found reeking havoc our oceans, as seen at UNOC, there remains a committed drive toward facilitating not only quieter marine spaces but also promoting a hopeful regenerative approach to sound as a means to bring about new possibilities for ocean conservation and management.

Making the invisible visible: Artists and scientists spotlight the Deep Sea at UNOC

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 16:14:11 +0000

Leading up to the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, scientists and artists came together to spotlight the ocean and the issues that surround it – an unprecedented preamble to a highly diplomatic event, which proved to be rather fruitful.

Elsa Ferreira

50 heads of state and dozens of representatives, hundreds of artists and thousands of scientists… For two weeks in June, the coastal city of Nice – in partnership with Costa Rica – became the capital of the oceans. The big political gathering of the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) was preceded by the One Ocean Science Congress, organized by CNRS and Ifremer, along with the Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan. It was a precious opportunity for scientists and artists to highlight the ocean’s most pressing issues, and to raise awareness of the mysteries of the deep blue sea.

Achieving global governance

For although the ocean covers 70% of the Earth’s surface, experts and artists agree that only 3% of the seabed has been mapped, and that more humans have been sent into space than into the abyssal depths of the ocean floor. And with good reason: only 1.7% of national research budgets are allocated to ocean sciences, according to the two co-presidents of the International Scientific Committee of the One Ocean Science Congress, François Houllier, Chairman and CEO of Ifremer, and Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Director of Research at CNRS. Yet the ocean absorbs 90% of the excess heat caused by human activity and greenhouse gas emissions, and is an essential ally in our fight against global warming.

One of UNOC’s main issues is ratifying the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement), finalized in 2023 after more than 15 years of negotiations. Among other things, the agreement consolidates the establishment of protected marine areas covering 30% of the high seas (outside any national jurisdiction), the obligation to carry out impact studies before engaging in any human activity, and equitable access to the genetic resources of the oceans. Ratified by 31 nations prior to UNOC, it is now ratified by 51 nations, and should reach the 60 threshold required for implementation by the UN General Assembly in September.

Martin Alessandrini, advocacy representative for the Tara Oceans Foundation, is delighted with this unusually rapid progress: “This is a great result, and next year we’ll start discussing the operations.” Another victory was Nice’s call for an ambitious Plastics Treaty to reduce plastic production and consumption.

The main disappointment was in terms of regulations surrounding deep-sea mining, a hot topic ever since U.S. president Donald Trump authorized these activities in May. This year, a moratorium was signed by 30 nations. In June at UNOC, only five more countries joined the initiative.

Encountering the strangeness of the abyss

To introduce these diplomatic advances, artists and scientists set out to make the invisible visible. On the scientific side, practitioners from all over the world shared their research with their peers to advance knowledge, in sessions lasting around 20 very specialized minutes. Topics included mitigation and adaptation to the goals of the Paris Agreement, plastic pollution, fishing and transport industries, and sharing knowledge about the Deep Ocean.

Meanwhile, artists attempted to tell stories about these breathtaking discoveries, to make them universally accessible, as at the Sentiment Océanique festival on June 5-8 hosted by Coal Project at Fort du Mont Alban.

“It’s an act of diplomacy on behalf of species that are little-known or unknown,” says curator Christopher Yggdre at the opening of his exhibition “Lumière Vivante, Rencontre avec la bioluminescence marine”. At Fort Mont Alban, which is usually only open on Heritage Days, visitors could encounter the bioluminescent bacteria that inhabit the seabed.

“The average depth of the oceans is 3,800 meters. From 200 meters, no light penetrates. It is estimated that 78% of underwater life produces light,” explains researcher Jeanne Maingot-Lépée, from the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, during a conversation at the opening of the festival’s “Science Bar”. These light signals are as varied as their uses – they can serve as bait, but also as defense or camouflage, making themselves appear larger or deflecting the predator’s trajectory, for example.

This act of diplomacy on behalf of these marine creatures is also a nod to their mystery: “Bioluminescent bacteria can be traced back 3.5 billion years,” explains the researcher. The appearance of eyes, on the other hand, dates back 600 million years. As if, extrapolates artist Jérémie Brugidou, this cold, bluish light had created the desire to see.

Superstar Plankton

At the heart of La Baleine (“The Whale”), a free open space for the general public, we set out to discover these intriguing creatures of the abyss. Here we met extremophilic beings (i.e. which thrive in extreme environments) such as the Pompeii worm, or creatures with sexual dimorphisms (males and females of very different sizes, in this case 4cm vs. 60cm) such as the abyssal anglerfish. There was also the sperm whale, whose cry is louder than an aircraft engine, the 12-meter-long giant squid, and the opisthoproctidae, whose skull resembles a cockpit. All their extraterrestrial strangeness is creeping into our imagination, raising interest in our planetary roommates.

The little-known superstar organisms of this pre-UNOC were none other than algae. Phytoplankton absorbs CO2 on a much larger scale than terrestrial forests. It is also the main source of food for marine animals. At the political level, however, “There’s still very little talk about it, even if we’re trying to reach decision-makers,” admits Martin Alessandrini. Nevertheless, “Some countries are beginning to take up this issue in a fairly structured way. Senegal, for example, has introduced plankton into its decision-making and conservation tools.”

In their documentary Umi No Oya, screened at La Baleine on June 4, artist and chef Maya Minder and Makery editor Ewen Chardronnet explore the history of Japanese nori seaweed aquaculture. Trailer:

Cacophony of the Silent World

Meeting the inhabitants of the seabed gives us the opportunity to perceive the impact of our activities on their living environment. In the Emmy Award-winning documentary Sonic Sea (2016), co-produced by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), we discover the unbearable cacophony that reigns in what Jacques Cousteau called the Silent World.

In the Pacific Ocean, ship noise has doubled every ten years over the past 40 years, according to IFAW. It’s a drastic increase with serious consequences for marine mammals such as blue whales, orcas and dolphins. Disoriented, they are beaching en masse. The distance over which whales can communicate has fallen by 90%, while some of them have lost 80% of their ability to sing and are generally stressed out (when the world came to a standstill after September 11, 2001, scientists recorded a dramatic drop in the stress hormone in these animals). “This noise pollution affects all living creatures, from whales to plankton,” explains Aurore Morin, Marine Conservation Campaigner at IFAW. Even plants are affected, with one study showing that the growth of Posidonia seagrass is impaired by human-generated noise.

“The good thing about noise is that when you stop making it, it stops,” an OrcaLab scientist points out in the documentary. And for that, IFAW has solutions, such as slowing ship speed. Their petition, Blue Speeds, has so far gathered over 250,000 signatures.

37 countries have also joined a coalition for a silent ocean. “We’re very satisfied overall,” reports Aurore Morin of the event. “The issues we’re working on, particularly noise pollution, have been foregrounded, whereas they are usually seldom discussed.” Although no binding measures were taken, this augurs well for the future of IFAW’s work: “It shows that there is motivation, awareness and a voluntary initiative.”

La Baleine also offered a variety of thematic areas.

The migrant issue with Navire Avenir

As a counterpoint to all the wonders encountered during the scientific congress, La Baleine and artistic proposals, Sébastien Thiéry reminds us that the Oceans, and in particular the Mediterranean Sea, are also the scene of humanitarian shipwrecks and the absence of policies to assist others.

“On April 19, 2015, the biggest shipwreck of the 21st century took place,” the political scientist and urban planner reminds us at the outset. On that day, a boat with 900 migrants aboard sank, killing around 800 people. This hecatomb coincided with the end of the Mare Nostrum rescue operation, which was replaced by Triton, a lighter operation with no humanitarian mandate. However, no single country, nor the European Union, has re-established a humanitarian presence in this area. According to the United Nations, over 63,000 migrants have died or gone missing in the last decade, 60% of them by drowning. “Every three months, the equivalent of the biggest shipwreck of the 21st century takes place,” sums up Thiéry.

Faced with the need to “no longer observe the disaster, but face it in action”, the urban planner presents his Navire Avenir project, a collective work that brings together artists, students, rescuers, survivors, nurses, lawyers, architects, citizens and, soon, investors. His ambition is to build a lifeboat that meets the needs of humanitarian workers, with a shipboard hospital and a ramp for safe disembarkation.

The plans are ready – now he just needs to find the 36 million euros to fund the project. By way of comparison, Thiéry points out, the Barca Nostra carcass of the boat that sank on April 19, 2015 would have cost over 30 million to transport to the Venice Biennale, where it was exhibited in 2019. To raise the 15 million euros needed to launch the project, the Navire Avenir team is proposing that citizens, institutions and investors become co-owners of the vessel. To date, over 1.2 million euros have been raised.

In parallel with this shipyard in the making, Thiéry plans to have the actions of rescue sailors recognized as part of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Despite the urgency of these issues, “no draft regulations for intervention at sea and no plans to develop specific tools” have emerged from UNOC, regrets Thiéry. However, SOS Méditerranée and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have proposed recognizing maritime space as a humanitarian space.

“Taking care of the ocean also means doing everything possible to ensure that it remains a resource for life, not a place for death,” he says. “It’s a fact that this issue has been sidestepped, and that the political controversies surrounding migrants have prevented any real work on this crucial subject, both for us and for future generations. France should have played a decisive role in this matter.”

Funding… in Monaco

Protecting the Ocean is a great idea, but with what funding? At La Baleine, blue finance is mentioned. But the dedicated Blue Economy & Finance Forum was held a few dozen kilometers away, in the Principality of Monaco. There, 25 billion euros were invested in sustainable projects for the Ocean, and 8.7 billion euros in additional investments were committed by 2030.

This is a key issue. The oceans are also a global market zone, explains Marianne Carpentier, strategy consultant in sustainable funding: 90% of world trade passes through the waters, 98% of information flows pass through the oceans (fiber optics, but also electricity for wind turbines), as well as a large proportion of energy resources (wind turbines, but also gas and oil). Meanwhile 50% of world tourism is linked to the coasts, and 3 billion people depend on fishing for their livelihood. Economic agents will therefore be key players in preserving – or not – the oceans.

“It’s a very interesting lever,” stresses Martin Alessandrini. In the case of deep-sea mining, we were quite disappointed by the lack of commitment by nations. On the other hand, some 60 economic players have announced that they will not fund or ensure deep-sea mining projects. In the face of political failure, we can have this counterweight.” Scientists, artists, politicians, economic players and civil society… all in the same boat.

Pedro Soler: “During the Soil Assembly, we explored how the natural world has an agency of itself.”

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 14:02:57 +0000

Interview with Pedro Soler – writer, punk gardener and main curator of Soil Assembly #2 Tinku Uku Pacha, the second edition of an interdisciplinary gathering dedicated to soil and bioeconomies. Hosted in La Chimba, a rural indigenous community in the Andean highlands of Ecuador, the Assembly took place from May 8–10, 2025, with the aim of sharing local and international perspectives as well as amplifying indigenous leadership in homage to peasant leader Tránsito Amaguaña.

Julian Chollet

At Soil Assembly #2 Tinku Uku Pacha, over three days, participants explored regenerative rural economies (Day 1), the intersections of soil science, art, and planetary peasantry (Day 2), and celebrated Tránsito Amaguaña, the earth and indigenous culture (Day 3). The event brought together farmers, artists, scientists, activists, and local residents to co-create practices and dialogues for soil health, food sovereignty, and cultural resilience. Streaming options and simultaneous translation were provided to connect global audiences with on-site dialogues. The event was produced by La Divina Papaya and Upayaku Foundation.

Could you tell us about the area where you live and what is special about it?

Pedro Soler: I’ve been living for the last ten years or so in Cayambe, a small town about an hour and a half from Quito, the capital of Ecuador. It’s in the Ecuadorian Andes, near the northern border with Colombia. We live in the valley, but there are many communities up in the mountains. My partner Daniela Moreno Wray comes from a family that used to own a lot of land here, her great-grandmother was almost like a queen of this valley. When I met her, she was working on a documentary film that later became a large-scale video and audio installation, exploring tensions around land use for production and community struggles, between haciendas and indigenous peasants. The project focused on important women like Dolores Cacuango, Luisa Gómez de la Torre and Tránsito Amaguaña as an inspiration for intercultural collaboration. There is this beautiful metaphor from Tránsito : “wheat and quinoa in the same sack”- symbolizing unity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working toward common goals like land and food sovereignty. A central aim of the project was to heal the wounds left by colonization and the hacienda system [land ownership structure that exploited indigenous communities], seeking to regenerate not just the land but also relationships. This inspired us to organize activities here, like the AgroHack in 2016. We collaborated with local government and cultural figures and also engaged with the Intercultural Community Center in La Chimba (CICTA), though initial attempts didn’t take off. We were always fascinated by La Chimba – its stunning location, its people, the deep historical and cultural significance, and also the powerful tomb of Mama Tránsito. It’s a very special place.

Please tell us more about La Chimba. How is the community organized? Who are its people, and how do they relate to the land they inhabit?

La Chimba is an indigenous community of the Kayambi people of the Kichwa nation managed by an assembly whose president and executive council are elected every 2 years. There is a strict principle of alternance. All important decisions are taken as an assembly and it also decides the application of indigenous justice. The minga or collective work is the other main organizing principle whereby all community members must devote at least one day a month, and often more, to work that benefits the community.

This area was the birthplace of the Ecuadorian indigenous movement back in the 1930s when Communist forms of organisation meshed with the ancestral indigenous forms of the ayllu or the minga. It has given birth to leaders of national and international importance, and particularly women like Dolores Cacuango (1881-1971) Luisa Gómez de la Torre (1887-1976) and Tránsito Amaguaña (1909-2009). It’s also the oldest registered inhabited area up here in the Andes, well over two thousand years ago people were already living here. It is a spectacular landscape, in the folds of the snow capped Cayambe volcano with its glaciar, a lot of water. So it has a really powerful history both recent and ancient. It also has a wonderful cultural centre called Centro Intercultural Comunitario Tránsito Amaguaña (CICTA), which was made in the restored former hacienda house.

Now there is the struggle to protect the ecosystem and peasant economies and what to do about the intensive flower greenhouses and the looming threat of climate change, manifested in the drought that affected the area last year.

In the end you managed to start a collaboration with the cultural center in La Chimba and realize The Soil Assembly #2 at their place. How did you make that happen?

I feel that the context of La Chimba brings together everything we need to be thinking about right now: soil regeneration, small-scale farming, economic survival, climate change, indigenous resistance, feminism, collaboration among women, the role of education – all of it converges here.

After many years, the opportunity presented itself to do a project by applying to a contemporary art prize in 2024. It’s actually the most important art prize in Ecuador and only 10 projects are chosen. “Tinku Uku Pacha: Asamblea del Suelo #2″ (The Soil Assembly #2) was one of only two curatorial projects chosen. This initial funding was what finally gave us the push to start working directly with the community last April. This was quite challenging at first, because I was struggling to explain to the locals what we are planning to do. They don’t really have a frame of reference. The closest thing might be the traditional dances, but not something like a conference / gathering / hybrid arts show. Unless you already know what that is, it’s hard to describe. So it took a long time – really up until the end – to transmit the understanding of what we were trying to do.

The production really took off when Daniela and her company La Divina Papaya and her project Upayaku Foundation got more deeply involved, proposing to include rural economies as a transversal factor and raising support from many different organisations and processes who are involved in regeneration and conservation. The crowdfunding in collaboration with the international Soil Assembly Network was also fundamental.

You mentioned soil regeneration and small-scale farming as two of the central elements of the Soil Assembly – are these topics you’ve been exploring and working with for many years?

Yes, it’s been a while. In the 1990s and early 2000s, I was mostly involved in digital art, audiovisuals, music festivals, CD-ROMs for interactive art, and real-time video in theater. My early work revolved around cyberculture and urban environments – hacklabs, cooperative tech spaces, and contemporary art production in cities. 2011 marked a shift. I really started to take the biological turn somehow. At that time, I was working at LABoral, an Art center, on the Atlantic coast of Spain. The area outside the center is semi-rural, somewhat abandoned, but surrounded by trees. I remember the moment clearly: it was raining and for me the rain had always been kind of ”Oh, shit! It’s raining! Like no, I won’t be able to get a taxi or have to take an umbrella, or whatever”. But this time, instead of seeing the rain as a nuisance, I suddenly appreciated it – as a plant, as earth.

For me, this was quite a shift of perspective and I began to feel that this was the direction we needed to move toward in culture but also on a planetary level. It may be generational, many peers who were previously focused on digital art or hackers started to connect with gardening, ecology, and land-based practices., but at the same time I think we are all feeling this planetary necessity. As a curator, I began to see art spaces as ways of raising sensitivity – spaces that help us perceive other realities, to feel other realities. I also think it’s really important to decentralize contemporary art, pulling it away from the dominant urban centers, and imagining a culture rooted in “a small-farm future”. The internet plays a key role here, enabling international connections, access to education and culture without always having to leave the community.

How did you get involved with “The Soil Assembly” network?

It began with translating The Laboratory Planet, a newspaper that profoundly influenced me. Issue #5, titled Alien Capitalism, explored runaway systems and techno-capitalist excesses. One day, Ewen Chardronnet, from the editorial team, reached out about a new issue, #6 – this time focused on planetary peasants and soil assemblies. I was already deep into similar topics and it felt like a synchronicity: “ wow, you guys are thinking about this, too?!”

What does the term planetary peasants signify for you?

The sixth issue of The Laboratory Planet includes a powerful diagram: the globe vs. the earth. One side represented extractivist processes, finance, industry, etc.; the other social and ecological movements, natural systems, peasant ecologies, etc. – so the Anthropocene is kind of the clash between them; a battle to the death. Planetary peasants represent a way out of this madness. A possible future, different from the techno apocalyptic inevitability of the collapse, a literally ‘down to earth’ possibility of real sustainability. I mean, this worked for thousands of years. We can tune in again. This is particularly true here in Cayambe where there is a living indigenous peasant culture and the example of Tránsito Amaguaña, the indigenous peasant woman leader who became an international reference.

The Soil Assembly #2 is also called Tinku Uku Pacha. What does it mean?

Tinku is the Kichwa word for meeting, but not necessarily peaceful, it can be a clash also. Uku means inside – it also can be used to mean inside a room, while Pacha is space-time. So in short Uku Pacha is the space-time within, but maybe it deserves a bit more explanation. In Andean cosmology, the universe is vertically divided into three layers of space-time. Uku Pacha is the inner world – associated with death, birth, the ancestors, and future generations. It’s a space of regeneration, where things are transformed and reborn. It also includes subterranean waters and it’s therefore the source of all streams, rivers and lakes. However, it is not only the inside of the earth, but also the inside of the body.

The term describes time and space, so it has a materiality such as water, minerals, fossil fuels and so on. On the other hand, it also has a metaphorical dimension: the land of the ancestors and of those who are yet to be born. The land of death and birth, where everything gets recycled. Everything goes down and comes up from there. Ever dying, ever living. In the same way soil is being built: through decomposition and renewal.

Since Uku Pacha is also the place where people are born, it’s a place of the future as well. So thinking about the ancestors means you’re actually thinking about the future.

I think it’s time to talk about what happened during the assembly. Could you tell us about the artist residencies and walk us through the 3-day program?

The program started several weeks before the actual assembly with two residencies in the CICTA: Tau Luna Acosta focused on the lithic memory of the territory – exploring stones as archives and as connectors between human and non‑human meanings and time scales. At the same time, a team led by visual artist Ronny Albuja – with programmer-designer Santiago Tapia, musician Daniel Gachet and chromatography expert Dalo Gómez – created an installation titled “Look at the soil, where no light can be seen” (Mirar el suelo, donde la luz no se ve). Dalo collected soil samples from around the community and used chromatography to reveal their hidden patterns. Ronny devised an analogue projection system while Santiago and Daniel used computer vision and Pure Data to do realtime sonification of the chroma, bringing these findings to life. This work laid the foundation for what has become the living soil lab in the CICTA, where Karen Benalcázar, a young microbiologist is currently working. We officially inaugurated the lab on May 8, after closing our first day of sessions, at the same time as the exhibitions that Ronny and Tau had developed during their residencies.

What happened during the sessions? Would you like to share some highlights?

Day One, “Regenerative Peasant Economies”, was curated by Daniela Moreno Wray and opened with a presentation by the Dutch podcaster and author Koen van Seijen, who discusses regenerative investment – framing the possibility of aligning capital flows with ecological regeneration. A pragmatic kind of introduction. Following that, we held panels featuring experiences from the Amazon and Santo Domingo. One of the most attended discussions centered on regenerative cattle ranching, because dairy farming remains the principal livelihood for many families here. We also hosted a powerful panel on women in regenerative agriculture, where several community leaders spoke about their projects and challenges. In the evening Felipe Jácome Reyes, an artist from Quito, projected a video mapping on a house in front of the cultural centre. His work layered images of Mama Tránsito’s voice and face with photos of mycelium and microscopic footage of soil organisms – a tribute to her legacy. It is a very lovely piece. Women were busy cooking inside so smoke rose up through the roof to complement the projections! We then opened the exhibition in the CICTA and guided visitors through the artists’ installations.

The second day was dedicated to “The Science and Art of the Soil”. We tried to blend artistic projects and rural art & science projects with more academic soil research. This was our main international day: every session featured simultaneous translation, and a professional streaming team captured video and sound in really good quality. Everything was recorded and is published on archive.org – so all that material is now publicly available. It got a good reception. Participants joined via Zoom or were watching the livestream on Youtube. It was going really smoothly. The day’s program was divided into four thematic blocks: ancestral‑futurism, art & rurality, art & soil and sciences of soil. In the morning, we had a nice introduction from the international soil assembly network and in between the blocks there were many breaks, a guided walk, two poems and a presentation about Ukraine’s ecovillage movement. My personal highlights were Dhamendra’s presentation about his work in India and the concerts in the evening.

Those concerts – or rather audiovisual performances – looked really amazing. Unfortunately this is not so easy to transmit to the other side of the globe. I would have loved to see them live.

I really enjoyed the Friday evening program. “Layer Layer Layer” is the name of an audiovisual event that Ronny and Santi organize in different places. This was the first rural one and it indeed had many layers. One of them was a group called Amazangas Uyarik – two brothers who work with ocarinas, ancient flutes made from earth, made from ceramics. They have this whole investigation about the material and the kind of vibrations it creates, because each flute has its own very individual sound. That was really nice. Paula Pin, Felipe Jácome Reyes, Entrañas with Santi and Ronny, Jatun Mama, all did great sets and the evening ended dancing to chicha music.

The third day was structured very differently to give space to the local community – without any presentations or panel discussions. Can you tell us how the theme “Ceremony and Celebration for Tránsito Amaguaña” unfolded during that day?

This day was entirely devoted to the local community and coincided with the annual anniversary of Mama Tránsito’s death on May 10. In the morning, we prepared a Pachamanca – which means cooking inside the earth. So fantastic. There’s a whole rituality of thanking the earth and giving something back to the earth. It’s a very beautiful collective ritual. At the same time there was also a children’s assembly: organised by Violeta Moreno Wray and Mama Uma where about 20 kids came together and shared their thoughts about Mama Tránsito. That was wonderful. Also, there were different tents, a small cinema and in the afternoon Dario Rocha, from Amazangas Uyarik, led small groups to the nearby river to make the underground waters “sing” with his ancestral clay instruments. In the afternoon, Graciela Alba – Mama Tránsito’s granddaughter – conducted a closing ritual. She brought us all together, and said such beautiful words, and really kind of closed the day for us in a very beautiful and very sensitive way.
As evening descended, copla groups began to arrive. Seven traditional singing and dancing ensembles came to compete in a contest held each year in honor of Mama Tránsito. The women sing with prominent high-pitched voices in Kichwa and Spanish, men play guitars and other instruments, and everyone dances. It’s a party, but a traditional party.

If you now look back: how did the event create a space for dialogue between ancestral knowledge and contemporary perspectives?

In Andean thought, all natural elements – mountains, rivers, stones – are alive. These entities form a complex web of relationships, and our role as humans is to maintain the balance: on the social level and on the ecological level. Of course, this has gotten very much out of hand at the moment.

During the assembly, we explored how the natural world has an agency of itself. In the ancestral futurism panel there was a great discussion about how indigenous thought informs gardening, for example concerning the times of planting and harvesting. The Chakana – an eight‑pointed cross marking solstices, equinoxes, and lunar cycles – lays out a framework about the timing of specific tasks. One presentation reflected on how this cosmovision influences life in the soil from a scientific perspective. It was a great academic-ancestral kind of mix. On Friday, we heard a powerful poem by Marina Tsaplina, a Russian‑origin poet based in the U.S. Her piece, translated and read in Kichwa and Spanish by Wayra Velasquez and Violeta Moreno Wray, called on us to “row the boats back” – symbolically reclaiming soil from colonial exploitation. That was a very powerful and poetic moment. Rolling back the colonial exploitation and destruction; not to a pristine world, but at least to a world where we can start to see more clearly and understand what’s happening around us.

There was also a more practical side of the assembly: debates around cattle farming versus agroforestry, sustainable economic models or the influence of technology on rural development. I find it fascinating how high‑speed internet can transform “neo‑peasant” existence. On Friday, about half of the participants were local and the rest were online. Can you imagine what would have been the carbon footprint of all these people flying in? Technology enabled us to connect a rural area in the highlands of Ecuador with an international community. It’s mind blowing. I think it really does give a whole other dimension to rural life. You can be a cultural worker, a knowledge worker, and you can participate in debates, know what’s going on, educate yourself, bring your thoughts and ideas into the world. I mean, you don’t have to leave your village anymore. This was unimaginable just a decade ago.

I agree! It’s really fascinating that it’s possible to attend an international event without going anywhere. Whenever there was a break in the program, I could just go out and work in the garden.

Exactly! And there were also parallel events going on in Manaus and Paris, running fantastic, smaller-scale programs. There was this beautiful moment of synchronicity, when the Manaus team shared images and impressions of the produce on a local market, just as we were settling down to our work on Thursday evening. It was great to feel this connection – kind of tuning into some sort of quantum entanglement.

How do you see the Soil Assembly evolving over the next decade? What are your hopes and dreams?

Honestly, I’m a bit of a collapsist. I think the current systems are going to fall apart. But that’s exactly why we need things like the Soil Assemblies. They can be one element in generating resilience, in giving space for the transmission of knowledge around these things – for example farming practices and inspirational projects, which can give somewhere to pick up from after the collapse. I think this has the potential to catalyze a cultural shift of our relationships with the non-human.

I’m hoping for a variety of local, grounded events that can be connected via streaming or other digital tools. Like a mycelium network. Events popping up in different places and contexts, each with their own focus, but all connected. For me, that’s certainly a vision that I would like to see happening. The energy is there, and we’re hearing from more and more people who want to host an assembly. But it has to stay grounded. Not too academic, not just urban intellectuals. The Soil Assembly acquires its full dimension when it involves actually people working with the soil, not just thinking about it or examining it. I think that dimension is very important. I really hope that we can continue this dialogue between art, culture, science, and peasants – peasant people, peasant economies.

I heard rumors about a third assembly. Do you happen to know anything about it?

Yeah, there are rumors. It seems that there are some people in Chile who are thinking about organizing something in the Atacama desert. Also it seems that the Soil Assembly will be included in the Kochi Biennale in 2026, so that’s already a good result, to be doing one in India again.

Great. I’m very much looking forward to this. Maybe a last question to close the interview: How do you personally stay grounded in your everyday life?

Getting into the soil, into gardening, has helped me a lot on a personal level. It’s helped me come to terms with the craziness of the world. There’s something deeply healing about it. And the great thing is: everyone can do it. At least everyone can make compost. Everyone has done it in some way, really. That little act of making new earth, making humus, even in the smallest, microscopic way. It’s actually real. And it’s actually beautiful. And it’s actually beneficial.

And I feel that, especially as our political options are becoming more and more limited, and our opinions feel increasingly abstract, just echoing in the void, focusing on soil and on these small, tangible actions – that’s a very optimistic space for me. It’s grounding, it’s healing. It’s a space of hope. Yes, it really is.

Read our articles on the Soil Assemblies

Watch the conferences and events of the Soil Assembly #2 Tinku Uku Pacha day 1 and day 2

Embodied Defiance: Exploring Indigenous Dances as practices of Anti-Colonial and Ecological Reclamation

Tue, 20 May 2025 15:54:26 +0000

The Rewilding Cultures Mobility Conversation aims at initiating conversations on cultural exchange and offers grants for mobility beyond the current forms of support. Amongst the projects of 2024, the dancer Ghazal Ramzani travelled across Europe with the support of Ionian University, to meet dance practicioners who connect their art to anti-colonial and ecological struggles. Here is her report.

Ghazal Ramzani

Report and photos by Ghazal Ramzani

Ghazal Ramzani is a Berlin-based Iranian dancer, choreographer, dance filmmaker and facilitator. She received her formal dance training in the indo-persian Kathak dance at the National School of Kathak-New Delhi, where she was awardee of the Indian Councils of Arts and Culture. She completed her MFA in Contemporary Performative Arts at the University of Gothenburg, where she was awarded the Artisens Vanner scholarship. As an artist hailing from North-Iran and descendent from working-class women, Ghazal Ramzani’s practice encompasses artistic engagement with her community of origin. According to the artist, her movement language is rooted in communal stories, counter-narratives and indigenous dance traditions and her dance performances chronicle narratives of injustice, trauma and resistance that intertwine layers of the mythological, the political and the intimate. In this project, Ghazal Ramzani aims to explore the connection between disappearance of indigenous dances and the vanishing forests in her homeland Mazandaran/Iran, probing into the reflections they offer in the contemporary landscape. Recognizing informal dance gatherings within her community as fertile grounds for imagination and introspection, she seeks to delve into the ways in which these gatherings reflect the environmental emergency.

In December 2024, I embarked on a journey across Europe by train, meeting and interviewing practitioners of Indigenous dances deeply rooted in anti-colonial movements, along with artists and climate activists. This project stems from a critical observation: while many Indigenous dances and movement practices connected to soil, water, and ecological balance are often discussed as tools for reimagining humans’ relationship to environment, dances that explicitly embody resistance to colonial oppression are rarely examined through the environmental lens. Yet, dances like Palestinian Dabke, Irish dance, the North American Ghost Dance etc. hold relevance for climate justice efforts, as climate justice is the legacy of colonialism, and these dances reflect anti-colonial movements that resist the exploitation of both humans and nonhumans.

Colonial powers historically committed both ecocides and genocides to exploit lands and peoples, establishing systems of resource extraction and environmental degradation to fuel their economies. This legacy persists in ongoing violence, as vividly illustrated by the full-scale invasion, devastation, and televised genocide and ecocide in Gaza by the Israeli apartheid regime. The events in Gaza starkly reveal how colonialism continues to ravage human lives and ecosystems alike, demonstrating in real time the profound and often irreversible consequences of such oppression. As Vijay Kolinjivadi and Asmaa Ashraf emphasize in their essay “Palestine Against an Eco-Apartheid World”:
“The Palestinian resistance is currently articulating the clearest expression of anti-colonial dissent, of a national liberation movement that refuses to have its humanity cancelled, and its populations erased and sacrificed for the imperial core… and which refuses to have their lands destroyed.”

As a dancer, I am compelled to explore how movement practices rooted in anti-colonial resistance illuminate the crises they challenge. These dances as embodied expressions of resilience, storytelling, and world-making, hold cosmologies that challenge the exploitative systems responsible for the polycrisis we face today. What might we discover if we delve into the meanings embedded in these political art practices? What do they reveal about the communities and struggles they arise from, and how can they inform our search for climate justice?

Given the urgency of the issues at hand, the initial phase of this project focuses on Palestinian Dabke and Irish dance. Dabke has long been an expression of Palestinian resistance, serving as a communal practice that asserts identity and belonging in the face of ongoing oppression and expulsion. Similarly, Irish dance has played a vital role in Ireland’s anti-colonial struggle against British rule. The unapologetic solidarity of the Irish people with the Palestinian cause, marked by numerous collaborations between Irish dancers and Palestinian Dabke performers, makes these two dances a compelling focus for this initial phase of the project.

Supported by the Rewilding Cultures program, this research phase aimed to engage with dancers, choreographers, and activists across Europe. Traveling primarily by train, I engaged in conversations that uncovered the stories, knowledge, and meanings within their practices. These exchanges revealed glimpses of how Indigenous dances, rooted in anti-colonial movements, grasp and relate to the polycrisis. This report captures moments from these encounters—fragments of insight that lay the groundwork for a broader exploration into how these dance forms both reflect and resist the interconnected crises of our time.

In Berlin, meeting with Mohamad Freijeh: Dabke

I began the interviews in my home city, Berlin, with Mohammad Freijeh—a Dabke dancer, choreographer, and teacher.

I first met Mohammad during a Dabke workshop held in a queer cultural space in Berlin. Many participants were familiar faces from Palestine solidarity protests and events. Like me, they likely brought their exhausted bodies—worn down by a year of police violence, silencing, and the weight grief and rage over the devastating news from Gaza—seeking a moment of respite. The workshop offered a rare space for community, connection, and the shared joy of dancing together.

The Sea

Mohammad begins the interview by playing a traditional tune on his Ney, a wind instrument from Palestine. The melody carries a poignant dialogue between a Palestinian and the sea, with the sea being told, “We will be back soon to you.”

He learned this song as a child while part of a Palestinian folklore music group in Lebanon. It is an old, deeply familiar song that resonates with every Palestinian.
“You cannot be part of a political resistance if you do not feel something,” Mohammad reflects, explaining how the songs and dances of Dabke evoke powerful emotions—joy, hope, bravery, rage, homesickness, and an intense yearning to return, as expressed in the tune he played.

For Mohammad, every aspect of life serves as a reminder of resistance:

“Whatever we do, wherever we go—while eating, praying, making music, even breathing —it all reminds us that these things would feel different in our homeland. The air would smell different, the food would taste different. Whenever we dance, we say, Inshallah, one day we will dance in our homeland. Whenever we pray, we say, Inshallah, one day we will pray in Al Aqsa. Wherever we go, whatever we do, it always leads back to our homeland and the wish to return.”

The Olive Trees

Mohammad shares several Dabke songs that are heartfelt conversations between Palestinians and ancient olive trees:

مواقم اي ،ضرلأا ىسنت لا كلهدنيب نوتيزلا رجش
„The olive tree, is calling you
Never forget your land, oh fighter“

ابايت ىلحا يما سبلتو اباحص يدانت ضرلأا موي
„The land calls us: my children its time for us to come together. And on that day my mother wears her most beautiful cloth“

Mohammad believes these songs illuminate the relationship between humans and olive trees, showing how both are deeply affected by the occupation: “You can see the relationship between humans and olive trees in them,” he says. “How we treat them—with love and respect. They are like mothers, children, family members.”

He explains that these ancient trees have stood alongside generations of Palestinians, living through the lives of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. “They are
the oldest family members—they fight and resist with us. These songs make us feel that we are all one, united as one hand. It’s complex and beautiful.”

How can one not recall the iconic image of Mahfodah Shtayyeh, a Palestinian woman embracing an olive tree after it had been attacked by Israeli settlers? In an interview, she said, “I hugged the olive tree… I’d raised the tree like my child.” This moment profoundly encapsulates the united resistance of all that is tied to the soil. Similarly, Dabke embodies a deep sense of interconnectedness, as Mohammad explains, revealing a cosmology in which human and non-human bodies are inseparable, woven together in a shared existence.

In Göttingen, meeting with Morteza Fakharian: Sympoiesis

The day after my first interview, I traveled to Göttingen to meet my friend and philosopher, Morteza Fakharian, who has been a mentor figure to me over the years. Conversations with him—whether about my work, upcoming projects, or broader topics—always serve as reflective spaces that deepen my understanding and enrich my artistic process.

This meeting was no different. I spoke with him to clarify what exactly I was trying to uncover through this project. Our discussion touched on works of Donna Haraway, the immense power of dance as a non-verbal medium, and the shared grief and rage we feel witnessing multiple genocides in our lifetime.

Central to our conversation was the concept of sympoiesis. Derived from the Greek words sún (together) and poíēsis (production), sympoiesis means collective creation or organization. As Haraway writes in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene:

“Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means ‘making-with.’ Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing. In the words of the Inupiat computer ‘world game,’ earthlings are never alone. That is the radical implication of sympoiesis. Sympoiesis is a word proper to complex, dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems. It is a word for worlding-with, in company.”

We also discussed Haraway’s critique of anthropocentrism, another central concept in the book, which challenges human-centered narratives and calls for recognizing humans as part of broader ecological networks.

From the little I could gather about Dabke during my brief conversation with Mohammad, it seems that the concept of sympoiesis might resonate with how Dabke songs and dances reflect relationships between humans and non-humans, particularly in their depictions of olive trees. Dabke appears to suggest an understanding of interconnectedness, where humans, soil, water and everything connected to them are not distinct entities but parts of a greater whole. These elements share similar vulnerabilities under colonial regimes and embody a collective determination to resist. In this sense, the non-human is not an ‘other,’ but rather an integral part of a shared existence, enduring destruction and engaging in acts of resistance alongside humans.

In Svendborg, meeting with Sylvia Ferreira: Dabke

I traveled by train from Berlin to Svendborg, Denmark, to meet Sylvia, dancer, choreographer, and co-founder of Hawiyya Dance Company, a project centered on contemporary Dabke in Europe.

Sylvia’s journey in dance began with classical ballet and contemporary forms. She encountered Dabke as a professional dancer and choreographer at a moment when she felt overwhelmed by political injustices and questioned the relevance of her artistic practice:

“I regretted being a dancer, feeling it was very self-indulgent. Especially in the world of contemporary dance, where it’s about exploring your own space, body, and feelings. It’s overly focused on self-exploration, but it doesn’t change anything—except maybe yourself.”

Her path to Dabke grew from a desire to make her work politically meaningful. Unlike the individualistic nature of contemporary dance, Dabke offered her a practice that was inherently political and collective, directly reflecting the struggle for justice.

The joy of stomping your feet on the ground

“There is something about the rhythmical stomping of the feet in Dabke that takes the energy out of the body and into the earth, rooting you down. And when we are doing it together, it creates a sense of strength. It’s an expression of so many things—the rage as well as the joy. Dabke gives space to so many different emotions.”

Sylvia’s reflections remind me of an online panel discussion hosted by the Bethlehem Cultural Festival, where Dabke dancers and Irish dancers explored the significance of their respective dance forms. During the panel, Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour, founder and director of Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Society, discussed the origins of Dabke, describing how its stomping movements are rooted in Palestinian farming traditions:

“Originally, Palestinians were peasants. Their dances were a prayer for the rain to fall and the plants to grow. That’s why they hit the ground strongly.”

I tried to reach out to Dr. Abusrour for further insights but haven’t succeeded so far. Still, with this small lead, I’d like to reflect: the roots of a dance that today resists erasure, destruction, and occupation trace back to a tradition that nurtured the soil and encouraged the growth of plants. There’s something profoundly fascinating about this evolution—from stomps that once cultivated the earth to sustain life, to stomps that now reject ecocide, genocide, and erasure. Perhaps the enduring connection lies in this simple act of dancing to exist.

In Dublin, meeting with James Greenan: Irish Dance

I meet Irish dancer James Greenan in Dublin, where we discuss the shifting role of Irish dance in post-colonial Ireland. James reflects on how Irish dance, once a powerful expression of the anti-colonial struggle against British rule, has been institutionalized and commercialized. In this adaptation to post-colonial context, it has lost much of its political resonance and its communal aspect: “In the South of Ireland,” James explains, “some communities still hold on to the traditional form of the dance, practicing it as a social experience. But as a people, we are losing what they call the Irish session—getting together, playing music, dancing. That’s where it becomes alive.”

As a professional dancer, James has engaged in collaborations with Dabke dancers, including working with El-Funoun Dance Troupe in Palestine. These exchanges have been eye-opening for him, serving as reminders of the revolutionary heritage embedded in Irish dance. They also allowed him to see parallels between the histories of oppression and resistance shared by Irish and Palestinian communities.

Our conversations highlight a critical issue: while dances naturally evolve over time and adapt to new contexts, their foundational stories and collective significance risk being forgotten if not actively preserved. To uncover the embodied meaning of Irish dance in relation to Ireland’s anti-colonial struggle, it is essential to look beyond contemporary professional practitioners and turn to historical and academic works that document and interpret its deeper cultural and political roots.

At Cloughjordan Ecovillage: meeting with Eileen Brannigan and Rita Marcalo

My final stop is Cloughjordan Ecovillage, 155 km from Dublin, a community formed in the late 1990s by environmental activists and sustainable living enthusiasts. At the village entrance, I notice a Palestinian flag, a striking symbol of solidarity.

I meet Eileen Brannigan, Chair of the North Tipperary Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, member of Extinction Rebellion as a climate activist and member of the Cloughjordan Palestine Justice group. Over coffee, we discuss Ireland’s anti-colonial struggle, the destruction wrought by colonialism, her experience of feeling like a second- class citizen as someone born a Catholic nationalist in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the reason behind the ongoing solidarity between Irish and Palestinian people:

“For Irish people, the idea of a deliberate famine is very painful. Because of our colonial history (of imposed famine) and also partially due to the political hunger strikes of the
1980s. We know what it’s like to have your struggles ignored. I believe Northern Irish people in particular relate to the Palestinian struggle as the state of Northen Ireland, like Israel, is an imposed construct. Rigid borders were imposed upon the minority community supposedly to protect the majority. Our Irish culture, including our history and our equal right to self expression was erased and made to seem alien to the dominant British identifying culture- our very existence seen as a threat to social order. That sense of loss, of alienation from your own birthright, is very painful.That is possibly why I personally feel so strongly for the Palestinian people, but then, as a human being, who does not have empathy with the basic right to exist?”

Later, I meet Rita Marcalo, a choreographer, dancer, and environmental activist whose artistic practice focuses on both environmental issues and the experiences of oppressed people. Her project, „Dancing With Strangers: From Palestine to Ireland”, developed over the past year, aims to make the ongoing genocide in Gaza visible by amplifying the voices of co- artists in Gaza through sound and movement.

As I share my thoughts with Rita, I find myself questioning whether the medium of film can adequately capture the complexities I’m trying to explore. We discuss the idea of creating a digital map of anti-colonial Indigenous dances—a living archive. This digital space would house footage and information about dances connected to anti-colonial struggles, illuminating their embodied meanings and the intersectional injustices they resist. Through such a map, these dances and their stories could reach a broader audience, preserving their significance and revealing the knowledge they hold about interconnected struggles for justice and liberation.

Reflecting on the first phase of this project, I conclude that examining anti-colonial Indigenous dance practices through an ecological lens reveals profound significance. Through conversations with dancers, choreographers, and activists, I have come to understand that these practices offer vital insights into resistance, resilience, and solidarity in the face of ecological and social degradation. The interconnections between dance, land, and struggle are embodied responses to the urgent crises of our time. Hence
I am eager to continue this project in collaboration with other artists, activists, and scholars, further exploring these critical intersections.

Given the pivotal role of these dances in anti-colonial struggles, it is essential for dancers and scholars engaged with the embodied meanings of dance to document, verbalise and amplify the significance of this Indigenous practices. At the same time, the preservation and continued practice of those dances are fundamentally rooted in the community itself, thriving independently of institutional or academic validation. Its resilience and vitality as a form of resistance demonstrates that its power lies in the collective will and lived experiences of those who perform and embody it. However, it is perhaps the dancers, choreographers, and dance scholars educated and situated in Eurocentric institutions who urgently need to engage with Indigenous epistemologies to challenge and liberate their thinking and decolonize their practices.

Rewilding Cultures website

Ghazal Ramzani was mentored by Ionian University for this mobility grant

Frame Story: A Long-term Research in Bicycle Design

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 13:04:59 +0000

Since 2012, designer and researcher Atar Brosh has been engaged in a long-term design research project titled “Frame Story.” The project revolves around bicycle design and explores innovative fabrication methods. Operating primarily from a modest home-based studio equipped with basic digital fabrication tools in Tel Aviv, this research seeks to integrate traditional hands-on craftsmanship with contemporary digital manufacturing technologies. Over the past twelve years, 21 distinct bicycle frames have been created, each capturing incremental improvements and reflecting thoughtful explorations in materials, modularity, and design philosophy. “Frame Story” serves as both a personal documentation of learning and growth and the foundation for an academic studio course, “The Human Machine,” taught by Brosh at the Jerusalem Multidisciplinary Academic Center.

Atar Brosh

Atar Brosh is a senior lecturer, designer, and researcher focused on practical production methodologies, parametric design, and digital fabrication. Based in Tel Aviv and associated with the Jerusalem Multidisciplinary Academic Center, Brosh combines hands-on experimentation with academic inquiry, examining how contemporary design can influence mobility, cultural practices, and technological innovation.

Tel Aviv, correspondance.

“Frame Story” did not start as an ambitious or highly structured project; instead, it began quite humbly, with the simple act of restoring discarded bicycles. Over time, this basic restoration work evolved organically into an extensive examination of bicycles as platforms for creative design, material experimentation, and advanced production methods.

Each bicycle frame developed during this period marks a personal step forward, capturing small successes, challenges, and ongoing learning experiences. Initially, the designs were straightforward experiments with easily available materials like bamboo and flax fiber, assembled with simple tools and improvised methods. Gradually, the experimentation moved towards more sophisticated techniques involving carbon fibers, epoxy composites, and digital fabrication technologies. Despite these advancements, the project remained fundamentally grounded in an approach that values gradual progress, personal reflection, and practical experience.

Historical and Cultural Context

Historically, bicycles represent more than mere transportation; they symbolize personal independence, innovation, and adaptability within changing economic and social landscapes. This cultural resonance has deep roots in Israel’s vibrant and resourceful maker culture, an environment where innovation often thrives amidst limited resources and significant challenges. Brosh’s project reflects and contributes to this ongoing dialogue by merging traditional craftsmanship with contemporary technological methods.

Methodology: CraftTechnology

The methodological approach of “Frame Story,” termed CraftTechnology, deliberately avoids grand claims or overly technical jargon. Instead, it describes a practical, hybrid process that combines traditional manual techniques with modern digital fabrication. Rather than positioning itself purely in terms of sustainability or technological superiority, this methodology emphasizes modest, iterative development through hands-on experimentation, trial and error, and ongoing refinement.

CraftTechnology is fundamentally iterative and exploratory, allowing the designer to learn from each attempt, including failures. These insights feed back into subsequent designs, gradually building knowledge and skill in bicycle frame construction. By embracing imperfections and continuous adjustments, the CraftTechnology approach transforms each new frame into a meaningful reflection of accumulated experience.

Technological Integration and Innovation

The integration of modern technologies like additive manufacturing (3D printing), CNC machining, and parametric modeling software in “Frame Story” has always been approached with a sense of humility and practicality. Initially, simple tools were employed primarily to complement handcraft techniques. Over time, these digital technologies became more central, enabling greater precision, more complex designs, and practical innovations such as internal cable routing and modular frame systems.

Yet, the project never abandoned its roots in manual experimentation. Each technological integration was seen as complementary, enhancing rather than replacing traditional skills. Parametric modeling tools facilitated rapid prototyping and iterative design processes, empowering more intuitive and responsive experimentation. These digital advancements also aligned naturally with the broader maker culture ethos, promoting openness, accessibility, and shared learning.

Academic Integration: “The Human Machine”

Insights and experiences gained from “Frame Story” directly inform the teaching approach in “The Human Machine,” an academic studio course. Rather than simply teaching technical skills or manufacturing methods, this course emphasizes practical experience and thoughtful reflection on design choices. Students are encouraged to actively engage in experimentation, face real-world design challenges, and recognize that mistakes and setbacks provide valuable opportunities for deeper understanding and growth.

Future Directions and Implications

As the “Frame Story” project moves forward, the goal remains practical exploration and steady progress. Upcoming designs continue to explore material innovations, improved modularity, and refined fabrication processes. Recent frames, such as the modular M.O.A.B., point towards increasingly personalized and practical bicycle solutions, highlighting the continued relevance and accessibility of thoughtful design innovation.

Conclusion

Ultimately, “Frame Story” represents a humble yet meaningful journey of practical exploration and continuous learning. It demonstrates how traditional craftsmanship and modern technology can come together through patient experimentation and iterative refinement. Above all, the project illustrates the importance of maintaining curiosity, adaptability, and reflection in design—showing that meaningful innovation often arises gradually, through persistent and attentive practice.

The work of Atar Brosh is featured on his YouTube channel TagMeNot design lab and on Instagram

The Benjamin Netanyahu Research Laboratory: A Political Design Experiment in 3D

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 11:38:07 +0000

Since 2019, designer and researcher Atar Brosh has been running The Benjamin Netanyahu Research Laboratory, an ongoing political-design experiment exploring the symbiotic relationship between technology, design, and politics in Israel’s complex socio-political landscape.

Atar Brosh

Atar Brosh is a designer, senior lecturer, and researcher at the Jerusalem Multidisciplinary Academic center, working at the intersection of sustainable production, parametric design, and digital fabrication. His practice critically engages contemporary culture and technology, blending artistic inquiry and practical experimentation, and has been presented internationally.

Operating out of Tiny Factory, Brosh’s compact home-based studio and digital fabrication lab in Tel Aviv, the project employs accessible digital tools—such as parametric modeling, additive manufacturing, and free open-source software—to rapidly large scale one-of-a-kind artifacts \products. These creations function as souvenirs based on short-term memory, responding in real-time to the continuous presence and influence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The lab serves not only as creative commentary on Israeli politics but also as an exploration into how contemporary designers can critically engage with public discourse through one of a kind yet potentially huge scale, real-time manufacturing.

Tel Aviv, correspondance.

Somewhere between a home workshop and the nightly news, The Benjamin Netanyahu Research Laboratory began. It wasn’t planned as a project. It simply started — one object, one version, then another. It was 2019, Israel was in mid-crisis, and the same figure kept appearing everywhere: on screens, in speeches, in courtrooms, in memes. Ubiquity turned into material. The image became editable.

I calculate and find the amazing fact that Benjamin Nethanyahu is the prime minister of 17 years of my adult life, 55% of my life was under in some way or another, I was try to estimate his influence, by purpose and just by third hand media coverage.

Using 3D printers, parametric modeling tools, and the corner of a worktable, the lab began producing small objects in response to the political atmosphere. A figurine here, a candelabra there, sometimes a toy submarine, a travel-sized bust, or a voodoo doll. Some functional, some ceremonial, some entirely useless. What connected them all was not satire alone, but the speed of response — and the sense that repetition had become the message.

The lab operates in a space where design meets protest, where fabrication is not about optimization but observation. Each object is a kind of timestamp — a short-term memory molded into form. Not always clear, not always fair, but always reacting. The work doesn’t claim neutrality, nor does it attempt to summarize. It reflects a fragmented moment using the only available tools: low-cost machines, off-the-shelf software, and a stubborn need to make something physical out of the blur.

What follows is a selection of these artifacts. Some were made overnight, others over weeks. Most were built before October 7, 2023, though all now carry the weight of what came after. Taken together, they offer no single statement — only a layered archive of absurdity, admiration, anxiety, and critique.

This is not a tribute. It is not a campaign. It is an evolving cabinet of curiosities from a time and place where politics became plastic — and design tried to keep up.

The Lab Setup: No Walls, No Budget

The Benjamin Netanyahu Research Laboratory was never an official institution. It operated from a small home studio with no budget and no staff — only one person, a laptop, and a few consumer-grade 3D printers. The goal was never efficiency. The goal was presence. The lab functioned like a seismograph, responding to political tremors as they happened — printing when others were posting, fabricating when others were fuming.

The workflow was deliberately simple: a political event occurs — a speech, a scandal, a tweet — and a design begins. Within hours or days, a model is produced in CAD, adjusted with a mix of humor, symbolism, and frustration, and printed in physical form. Sometimes it worked. Often it didn’t. But the process became a practice — like keeping a journal, but in plastic.

Technology as commentary

The lab’s core tools were parametric design, additive manufacturing, and an open-source approach. But none of these were employed to optimize production. Instead, they were used to slow things down — to translate a constant media stream into tangible, awkward, often impractical objects.

As McLuhan put it, the medium is the message. In this case, the medium — 3D printing — becomes both content and critique. It undermines traditional political iconography by allowing a single figure to be endlessly reshaped, resized, and repurposed. Netanyahu is not glorified here. He’s versioned. He’s iterated. A digital puppet caught in a cycle of transformation, much like his public persona.

Elaborate

Since 2019, I’ve found myself in a unique, perhaps strange, relationship with the political figure of Benjamin Netanyahu—not out of direct political alignment or opposition, but rather out of a prolonged exposure that has permeated almost every aspect of my adult life. It struck me one day: Benjamin Netanyahu had been Prime Minister for 17 years—approximately 55% of my adult life. His face, voice, and rhetoric had become unavoidable, woven into daily life through screens, newspapers, protests, casual conversations, and even personal reflection.

This awareness led me to establish what I called “The Benjamin Netanyahu Research Laboratory,” a somewhat ironically named initiative. The name itself carried a dual meaning—part parody of an institutionalized academic body, part genuine inquiry into the phenomenon of one person’s overwhelming media presence and its cultural implications.

My lab was modestly equipped with accessible tools emblematic of post-industrial design: consumer-grade 3D printers, open-source parametric modeling software, and basic workshop materials. These were intentionally chosen—low-cost, easy to operate, and capable of fast responses. This choice was driven by necessity and ideology: I wanted to embody the ethos of decentralized production, democratic accessibility, and immediacy of response characteristic of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Every artifact produced in the lab was triggered by real-time events—political scandals, election cycles, media spectacles, or speeches by Netanyahu himself. My process became something akin to a ritual. I would read or watch an event unfold, often saturated in intense public debate, and then retreat to my studio to quickly model a three-dimensional response. This might manifest as a candle holder shaped as Netanyahu standing behind a podium, emphasizing the ritualistic quality of his speeches. Or it might become a bath toy submarine—an ironic response to a naval procurement scandal. Sometimes the objects were intentionally provocative, like a voodoo doll, symbolic of collective frustration, or a “Pickle of the Nation,” embodying the idea of cultural fermentation and political stagnation.

In creating these objects, my intention was never to simply mock or support. Instead, I sought to materialize a collective short-term memory—a cultural snapshot of fleeting but intense reactions to political moments. Each artifact became a tangible timestamp, a physical reminder of otherwise transient emotions and discussions.

However, the tone and meaning of this practice changed dramatically following the events of October 7, 2023. Israel experienced profound trauma, and the artifacts I’d produced before took on entirely new dimensions. What was once absurd or ironic now seemed deeply prescient and disturbingly resonant. I found myself facing the reality of how these playful objects could hold deeper meanings and profound implications in times of crisis.

This shift led to reflection and a pause in my practice. I recognized the broader implications of what I’d created: these weren’t merely souvenirs of short-term memory—they were artifacts of a deeply unstable political and cultural landscape. My work, through playful design, had unwittingly captured the inherent volatility of Israeli politics, the fragility of public discourse, and the unpredictability of collective emotional response.

Israel’s unique socio-political landscape significantly influenced this project. It is a nation marked by contradictions and constant tension—between democracy and security, secularism and religion, innovation and tradition. Israeli society is perpetually negotiating its identity amid ongoing conflicts, external threats, and internal divisions. Netanyahu himself has come to symbolize many of these tensions, embodying the complexities and polarities of contemporary Israeli politics. His political career, marked by both fierce loyalty and fierce opposition, has amplified societal divisions and debates on democracy, governance, and national identity.

My work in The Benjamin Netanyahu Research Laboratory reflects these tensions directly. Each object, initially created as an immediate, instinctive response to daily political shifts, gradually revealed itself as a deeper exploration of Israel’s collective psyche. Objects initially interpreted as humorous or trivial gradually acquired layers of meaning, reflecting anxieties, hopes, and cultural contradictions. By giving physical form to these fleeting, often ambiguous moments, the project illuminated the fragility and volatility that characterizes contemporary Israeli life.

Today, The Benjamin Netanyahu Research Laboratory stands as more than a playful, ironic title. It’s a living archive—a design-oriented reflection on a specific moment in history, where politics and digital production converged unpredictably. Each artifact remains a quiet statement, neither entirely serious nor purely satirical, but a genuine attempt to give form to the often chaotic, ephemeral experience of political life in Israel. Through this ongoing exploration, I’ve discovered the profound capacity of design to speak where traditional language often falters, providing a physical anchor to the fleeting emotions and narratives that define our contemporary existence.

Post October 7.23 Recalibration

After the events of October 7, 2023, the entire archive changed tone. What was once ironic became tragic. Objects that once seemed silly now felt loaded. In hindsight, many of them read like warnings — too absurd to be real, too real to be ignored.

In response, the lab stopped producing and started watching. The newer pieces remain silent. There are fewer jokes now. The weight of current events pulled the work inward. What remains are the objects — and the question: can design still speak, when words begin to fail?

The work of Atar Brosh is featured on his YouTube channel TagMeNot design lab and on Instagram

Rewilding Cultures conversations: Observations on Permafrost

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 11:03:26 +0000

The Rewilding Cultures Mobility Conversation 2025 is now open. It aims at initiating conversations on cultural exchange and offers grants for mobility beyond the current forms of support. Amongst the projects of 2024, the multidisciplinary artist Jean Danton Laffert went for a month to The Arctic Culture Lab in Ilulissat, Greenland, with the support of Zagreb makerspace Radiona. Here is his photo report.

Jean Danton Laffert

Report and photos by Jean Danton Laffert

Jean Danton Laffert Parraguez is a Chilean visual artist and docent, currently based in Netherlands. His work embraces the intersections of art, science and ecology through mixed media installations including light, space, electronic systems and living material. He explores a hybrid aesthetic between the digital and the organic as bio-interfaces, reflecting on bio-political topics. His creative method arises from the collaborative process, connecting diverse specialists such as scientists, artists and humanists. He’s been docent at universities and schools, as well as research artist in the fablab of the University of Chile.

In Greenland Jean Danton developed his project Observations on Permafrost, a visual narrative around permafrost in the Arctic and its thawing process as traces of the current anthropogenic crisis. With the base of media art, environmental big data, and a transdisiplinary collaboration with scientists and artists, he developed a field exploration plan, looking for a situated aesthetic experience and learnings about how a remote phenomenon as is the permafrost, evidences the interdependence in our modern world.

What could remote communities teach us about adaptation to this problems? Can we find in these regions, alternative visions to the crisis of the Anthropocene?

Preparing for the expedition

I started this project in July 2023, in collaboration with Runa Magnusson, a permafrost scientist from Wageningen University. Initially, this project was born as a thesis research for the Master of Fine Arts – “Ecology Futures”, which I was pursuing at St. Joost School of Arts in the Netherlands. After a period of theoretical research and small experiments, in March 2024 I participated in the Ars Bioarctica residency. That was my first field exploration in Finnish Lapland, and my first insights into permafrost and its ecological network: the ice, soil, mosses, lichens, reindeers and the weather. All of this defined my initial stage of exploration.

In August 2024 I finished the Master Ecology Futures with a prototype of an art installation. After this I prepared the Greenland residency in Arctic Culture Lab for October-November, with the support of Radiona, Zagreb Makerspace and the Rewilding Cultures mobility grant.

“Observations on Permafrost” is a project related to a local field experience in the arctic. Normally, people from urban areas or big cities do not have access to this remote places, and sometimes they not connect with the arctic problems and their importance for all of us.

In this sense, capturing the life of local people, including Inuit communities, was an important point in the residency an the future creative results. Permafrost is very present in the common life of greenlandics, so their perception is key to integrate the human factor in my project.

The residence is located in Ilulissat, a small town on the west coast of Greenland. It is very close to the Kangia Glacier and surrounded by numerous Fjords, as well as settlements to the north and south of that area.

The settlements I visited frequently during my stay were Oqaatsut (north) and Ilimanaq (south). I arrived by boat. In the area around Ilulissat, I went on hikes and field explorations on the fjord coast and inland, as well as sailing through part of the sea area of the icefjord.

I collected soil samples and collect plant species in open fields and fjord coasts, where traces of landslides and tsunamis linked to the melting of permafrost are found.

Remote settlements

Located in remote areas of the west coast of Greenland, many of the settlements are only accessible by helicopter or boat.

On these trips we visited, together with the collaborating photographer and a guide, different locations in the villages, houses and areas that have been affected by previous landslides caused by permafrost. We talked to local people about this, as well as learning about their daily life and their personal view of climate change in Greenland.

Studying the permafrost soil effects on buildings

Beyond the general effects of landslides and tsunami across Greenland, there are certain buildings with particular significance to the society. One of them is the Ilulissat Historical Museum, part of the town’s history and a house that highlights the controversies of the issues of permafrost melting in the city; a time- less mirror of the human relationship with the land and climate.
During my residency, I gived special attention to this building. It shows a great unevenness in its constructive base, risking its collapse in future years. Thanks to the support of Andreas Hoffman, one of the directors of the museum, I was able to access the internal spaces of the building and check the exact degree of unevenness and deterioration of its structure, all due to the melting of the permafrost wich year by year is increasing.

Key sites exploration

The effects of permafrost thawing on the urban development of Ilulissat are significant. For some years now, government authorities have been working together with private companies to design a new sustainable, climate-resilient development plan in Greenland with a special focus on permafrost.

I visited the new Ilulissat airport. Since 2022, land transformation works are underway, removing the entire underground layer of permafrost to have a stable base for the new airport, as the current one has suffered serious unevenness and damage due to permafrost thawing in recent years. We made videos, photos and an interview with an engineer in charge of the project.

I also visited a site preparation project for a retirement home. In this work, part of the underground permafrost layer was removed with machine excavations at the red X marks. We spoke to the project manager, who explained the technical details as well as his impression as a citizen of the effects of climate change on everyday life in Ilulissat.

ILLU science & art

Illu scient & art hub is a centre that serves as a meeting place for the local community, where artists and scientists organise regu- lar activities open to the public. It was established by the University of Bergen (UiB), together with partners from the ClimateNarratives project, in collaboration with Avannaata Kommunia.

I was invited to participate in artistic events such as the presentation of “Wispers of the sea”, an interactive performance installation by Birgitte Bauer-Nilsen, a Danish choreographer. Here I established important links with artists and cultural agents from Greenland and Denmark.

As part of the Arctic Culture Lab residency program I was invited to participate in activities at the Ice Fjord Center in Ilulissat. Here I meet Karl Sandgreen, the director of the center. Among other activities, thanks to Karl I engaged with local children through an art activity, I spoke with them and learned about their daily lives.

At the Historical Museum of Ilulissat I got to know more deeply the culture and history of Greenland and its people, their language, technology and their old relationship with the European pioneers.

At the Art Museum I had access to the state of contemporary art from both local and international artists. I connected with diffe- rent approaches on topics involving Greenland and its relationship with global tenden- cies.

Both institutions are linked to the Arctic Culture Lab residency, so I had direct access to its libraries, facilities and people.

Engagement in education

It was very important for me to explore the human aspect of the permafrost phenomenon in Greenland. So, on my own initiative, I carried out an activity in a school in Ilulissat to find out the children’s impressions on this topic.

I offered a one-day workshop to the Mathias Storch School and was very well received by the coordinators and teachers. After two weeks of coordination I held a conversation session with the students, about permafrost in their daily life. I encourage them to express this with basic art materials plus samples of lichens and mosses from the area that I collected on my field trips.

It was a beautiful and enriching opportunity for both the children and me. Their writings and artistic creations will serve as a reference for my future artistic project.

Future steps

With all this experience I plan to make a mix media installation for exhibitions in Europe in 2025 or 2026. I am currently working in the next steps for carry out this.The whole impact that I spect for this project is not only about art exhibitions, but also for education and talks. I think that I can contribute with this, to the global reflections about climate change. As Bruno Latour coins, “There is a esicion between nature and culture in the modern times”. This project looks also to capture, as much as possible, a non-western vision in contrast with the single scientific knowledge and our classical perspective of nature in western societies.

Apply until March 31st to the Rewilding Cultures Mobility Conversation open Call

Rewilding Cultures website

Jean Danton Laffert was mentored by Radiona for this mobility grant

In memory of Nicolas Nova

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:42:03 +0000

Maxence Grugier

The announcement of the death of Nicolas Nova, anthropologist, teacher-researcher at HEAD – Geneva, HES-SO, essayist, entrepreneur, but also friend, leaves us abandoned and distraught.

Nicolas Nova was a generous spirit. An eternally curious observer of everyday life. I’m not the only one to wonder where he got his energy from. How he managed to write so much, read so much, listen so much, all the while observing the world. For him, everything was valid and respectable: a piece of sidewalk near the Official Injection Center he lived next to in Geneva, like a strip of desert a few meters from the potential Roswell crash site he visited last summer.

His vision of the socio-technical world in which we live was equally original and singular. Witness his latest book, Persistance du merveilleux, le petit peuple des machines recently published by Premier Parallèle. A thinker of the contemporary (and a contemporary thinker), Nicolas Nova was regularly interviewed on Makery, and we wanted to pay tribute to him by republishing the articles in which he expressed himself:

Nicolas Nova : smartphones et wild-tech, « entre hautes-technologies et réappropriation par la rue » (in french)
Nicolas Nova sees dada in big data

Earth-Space and Place: Reimagining Law and Place in the Earth-Space Complex Systems

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:34:59 +0000

As part of the More-Than-Planet program, Makery organized a conference in May 2023 on the links between the ocean and space and how artists explore these issues. On this occasion, we invited Elena Cirkovic, a Law researcher from the University of Helsinki and a Bioart Society member, to discuss ocean law and space law. This winter, Elena Cirkovic will publish “The Law of Complex Earth and Outer Space Systems, The Cosmolegal Proposal”, in which she proposes an exploration of the law-making paradigm for complex interactions between the Earth system and outer space in the Anthropocene era. Here are exclusive reading notes on the book to be published on March 4, 2025.

la rédaction

The rapid expansion of human activities in outer space has created novel environmental challenges that transcend existing regulatory frameworks. As satellite mega-constellations proliferate and space debris accumulates, Earth-space technologies and accelerating activities impact Earth-space complex systems. These activities generate complex feedback loops and emergent phenomena affecting both orbital and terrestrial environments.

Elena Cirkovic’s latest book, “The Law of Complex Earth and Outer Space Systems: The Cosmolegal Proposal”, introduces the concept of “Cosmolegality” as a theoretical framework for understanding the socio-political, technical, and ecological Earth-space interactions. Developed through the ANTARES project (Anthropocentrism and Sustainability of the Earth System and Outer Space, conducted and completed at the University of Helsinki and the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law in Luxembourg), this approach argues for fundamental changes in how law, as a social system, conceptualises and addresses environmental challenges that span Earth and space environments.

Elena positions her research at the intersection of environmental law, complex systems theory, and critical legal studies, while engaging with broader discussions in environmental humanities and Bio-art. By examining specific phenomena such as Arctic methane releases and orbital debris accumulation, her extensive and transdisciplinary study demonstrates how current legal frameworks fail to capture the complexity of Earth-space interactions.

Earth-Space Complex Systems

The book examines several key phenomena that demonstrate the complex connections between Earth’s systems and space activities. Arctic methane craters serve as a starting point. Initially, these phenomena appear unrelated. Methane craters emerge from complex processes involving permafrost thaw and trapped methane release. Their formation represents a dangerous feedback loop in the climate system, as methane is even more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Space technology plays a dual role in understanding and affecting these Earth system changes. Satellite monitoring systems, such as MethaneSAT and MERLIN, provide important data for tracking methane emissions and environmental changes. However, the effectiveness of these monitoring systems faces increasing challenges from orbital congestion and debris.

The research demonstrates how space activities affect atmospheric processes through multiple pathways: direct pollution from launches and re-entries, modification of upper atmosphere chemistry, and long-term alterations to atmospheric composition.

Recent findings from the 2024 European Space Research and Technology Centre workshop reveal that, inter alia, approximately 10% of particles in the stratosphere now contain spacecraft metals, demonstrating the increasing human impact on atmospheric composition at all levels. The full lifecycle of space technology, from manufacturing through launch to eventual re-entry, creates environmental impacts that cross traditional boundaries between Earth and space environments.

These interactions challenge traditional legal frameworks in several ways. First, they demonstrate how environmental impacts transcend conventional jurisdictional boundaries. Second, they reveal the limitations of current regulatory approaches that treat Earth and space environments as separate domains. Finally, they highlight the need for legal frameworks that can address the complex, often unpredictable interactions between human activities and natural systems.

The book argues for expanding our understanding of planetary boundaries to encompass orbital space, demonstrating how space activities affect all nine existing planetary boundaries. This analysis shows how seemingly separate phenomena—from Arctic methane releases to satellite operations—are, in fact, deeply interconnected through complex feedback mechanisms that span Earth and space environments.

The Cosmolegal Proposal

The concept of Cosmolegality proposes a transformation in how law approaches Earth-space interactions.

The book develops this normative and theoretical concept through an analysis of both scientific evidence and legal theory, arguing that traditional legal frameworks are fundamentally inadequate for addressing contemporary environmental challenges. This approach extends existing arguments that law is a complex adaptive system. It draws on recent developments in complex systems science, particularly the research teams and work of 2021 Nobel Laureates Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi. Their research demonstrates how even seemingly simple systems can exhibit extraordinarily complex behaviour.

The framework challenges traditional legal assumptions about causation, predictability, or stability of legal systems. While conventional environmental law often seeks to establish clear cause-and-effect relationships, Cosmolegality explicitly incorporates uncertainty as a fundamental characteristic rather than treating it as a problem to be solved and argues for the “complexification” of legal procedure (not as procedure itself, but re-imagining causality and causation, stability, and predictability).

The book demonstrates this approach through several concrete examples. The May 2024 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) Advisory Opinion on climate change provides a case study in how international law might evolve to address complex environmental challenges. The Opinion’s expansion of marine pollution definitions to include greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of source, suggests how legal frameworks can adapt to address systemic environmental challenges.

Displaced Placemaking in Earth-Space

Building on the theoretical foundations established in the book, Elena’s parallel artistic research project at the University of Lapland’s Faculty of Art and Design develops the concept of “displaced placemaking” through individual engagement with Earth-space environments. This work examines how experiences of displacement can generate unique perspectives on human-beyond planetary relationships that transcend traditional geopolitical boundaries and local identities.

At Lake Kilpisjärvi Enontekiö, Finland (Kiruna, Sweden) and the Seurasaari museum in Helsinki, this research engages with multiple narratives of place and belonging. Elena positions her work at the intersection of local cultures (Sámi, Finnish, and migrant), experiences of multiple temporal and spatial scales simultaneously, and the beyond-human. The Seurasaari Museum was founded in 1909 and consists of 87 buildings from the different provinces of Finland. Relocated to Seurasaari Island, they are meant to show life in Finnish countryside from the 18th century to the 20th.

This temporal framing of Finnish cultural heritage co-exists with deeper geological processes—the island’s emergence through post-glacial rebound continues at approximately 3 millimetres per year. This ongoing geological movement provides a metaphor for understanding place as dynamic rather than fixed, challenging traditional notions of belonging.

In this context, Elena’s work documents both observable phenomena and the more abstract concepts of displacement and belonging. Here, the concept of “displaced placemaking” elaborates on place-based art to encompass actual, grounded, and felt bodily experiences of forced displacement. “Outsiders” visiting local spaces that connect culture and nature make new observations and narratives. Elena argues that social inclusion and justice are inseparable from broader understandings of Earth-outer space systems as well as specific localities.

This contribution suggests that displacement can engender forms of environmental connection, particularly when social communication presents challenges due to persisting discrimination or exclusion. By explicitly challenging nationalist narratives of “nature” and related approaches to environmentalism, this framework opens new possibilities for understanding human-beyond-human relationships.

Elena Cirkovic, The Law of Complex Earth and Outer Space Systems, The Cosmolegal Proposal, Routledge, March 4, 2025. The book will be available for pre-order on February 11, 2025.