CARADT and MIVC Present: “In(di)visible Infrastructures, Bridging Overseen Worlds”

CARADT and Master Institute of Visual Cultures (MIVC) invite you to explore the unseen layers that underpin our world.

In collaboration with MIVC, CARADT presents the lecture series “In(di)visible Infrastructures, Bridging Overseen Worlds.” This series, curated by Victoria McKenzie (Master Institute of Visual Cultures) and Professor Biodesign and More-than-human Perspectives Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, will take place across multiple dates and venues: November 25, 26, 27, and December 5. The program encourages participants to reflect on the often-overlooked infrastructures — economic, ecological, social, and technological —in relation to the valuable unseen more than human world.

Through valuing the overseen worlds and revisioning humans aligned with living principles, how, as artists, researchers and designers, how do we utilise various lenses of investigation, methodologies, language and practice to interrupt, resist and re-structure systems & infrastructures? How could these altered structures be based on reciprocity and care rather than extraction? How can art & design become agents of change towards new reciprocal and caring economies actively shaping and activating alternative infrastructures?

On one end, it is about critique and revelation. On the other end, there comes a moment of action and critical imagination to interrupt and re-create. How do we critique, resist and re-vision infrastructures connected and even more so, how do we dream and rebuild new systems? We ask, what is the role of artistic research and design within this process?

What does it mean to ask these questions at a gallery, an art academy and in the field?

Invitation to Participate

“In(di)visible Infrastructures” offers a unique platform to engage with infrastructure from alternative perspectives, challenging conventional views and exploring possibilities for more ecological, interconnected, and caring systems. CARADT invites you to join these discussions, reflecting together on new ways of understanding and re-visioning the infrastructures that shape our world. A limited number of places are still available on November 25th and 27th at RADIUS.

⇒ For more information and to register, please visit this eventpage on the website of RADIUS.

Program Overview

Each session includes keynotes, panel discussions, and artist talks, led by noted figures in art, design, and environmental studies:

• Monday November 25th at RADIUS, Delft – 10:30 – 5:30pm: Opening talks on Dr. Ramon Amaro (Nieuwe Instituut), Prof Sebastian Olma (CARADT), Adriana Knouf  (MIVC), Louis Alderson-Bythell (Royal College of Art) and Samantha Jenkins (Imperial College London / Natural History Museum). This session will reflect on the intricate connections between infrastructures and the ideologies of contemporary capitalism followed by a discussion on Hybrid-weird collaborative communities, exemplified by lichens and extremophiles. The day will finish with contributions from Dr Aliya Say who will discuss botanical anomalies and through examining the works of artists and scientists such as Emma Kunz and Kate Brown artistic addressing practices which confront and destabilise our normative ideas of ‘human-nature’ interactions. Using feminist science studies that emphasise embodiment, situatedness, and subjectivity, Anna Mikkola’s talk reflects on the concepts of rooting and alienation through the history of growing plants in microgravity on a space station.
• Tuesday November 26th at St. Joost MIVC Campus Den Bosch and Design Museum Den Bosch – 10:30 – 1:00pm: Situated Art, Design, and Technology researcher Annemarie Piscaer leads an exploration into “Terroir: Engaging Through Material with the Wild,” “Terroir” — a concept that is used in the culinary world to describe how the physical environment, the soil, the rocks, the slope, the altitude, the proximity to water, the hours of sunlight, and so on, influences something such as taste, an embodied experience. Has the material always been there, or is it man-made? Are the elements of the Terroir locally “produced” or from far away?
• Wednesday November 27th at RADIUS – 10:30 – 2:30pm: Keynotes from Professor Tim Ingold and Dr. Annouchka Bayley (Cambridge University) will examine concepts of interdependence and entanglement between human and natural systems.
• Friday December 5th at Club Solo in Breda – 10:30 – 1:00pm: A concluding session, “Welcome to the Weird and the Dirty,” led by Professor Cultural and Creative Industries Sebastian Olma, Rob Leijdekkers, Renée van Oploo and Jess Henderson. Moral Purity is the privilege of those who are far removed from unsterile reality. The real world is weird and dirty. What are the roles we take on as artists and/or designers inside these different infrastructures and how does our behaviour shape them in return? Reversely, can we identify the weird and dirty components of design processes that can contribute to approaches that are nuanced enough to generate effective change? Do we dare to mix the desired with the undesired to create practices and organisational forms that can serve as prototypes of weird and dirty design?

Collaboration for a Cross-Disciplinary Exchange

The In(di)visible Infrastructures, Bridging Overseen Worlds lecture series is a collaborative effort between Professor Delfina Fantini van Ditmar from CARADT’s research group Regenerative Art and Design and Victoria McKenzie from the Master Institute of Visual Cultures (MIVC). This program is further enriched by contributions from CARADT’s Cultural and Creative Industries research group, led by Professor Sebastian Olma, and the Situated Art, Design, and Technology research group, led by Michel van Dartel. Master’s and Bachelor’s students from Avans University of Applied Sciences in Breda and Den Bosch are actively involved, fostering a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives throughout the series.