We are deeply grateful to welcome Dr. Mihnea Tănăsescu for the opening lecture of our Future Ecologies programme. Dr. Tănăsescu’s learned and widely-inspired proposition for an epistemology, ethics and political philosophy of mutualism invites – and challenges – us towards voluminous, vulnerable, reciprocal, responsible, ritualised and eclectic practices of existing in the Ecocene. The Ecocene is a new temporal epoch, characterised by the increasingly frequent intrusion of ecological processes into political life. In Dr. Tănăsescu’s words: “Mutualist futures are possible; they have begun, through the systematic renovation of the forgotten inheritance that ties everyone fundamentally to their world.” (Ecocene Politics, 2022).

• Dr. Mihnea Tănăsescu holds a BA in Human Ecology (2006) from College of the Atlantic, Maine, USA and an MA (2009) in Continental Philosophy from the New School for Social Research, New York. He obtained his PhD in political science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2013), with a dissertation focusing on the relationship between representation and rights for nature in the 2008 Ecuadorian constitution. His current research continues the elaboration of the concept of political representation and is extending into the politics of ecological restoration. His main interests are the politics of nature, environmental ethics, the political representation of non-humans, restoration ethics, rewilding and environmental policy. His most recent books (2022) are Understanding the Rights of Nature and Ecocene Politics.

A search for home in times of crisis  

Who gets to tell the stories of conservation and whose voices are silenced? What might resisting the destruction of our environment really mean? In this event – part presentation, part story-telling – speculative fiction author and activist, Kes Otter Lieffe, will explore some of the interweaving strands of queer ecology and what they could bring to our social movements. She asks how learning from non-human nature could help marginalised communities become stronger and how solidarity and mutual aid might help to decentre the stories of a powerful few. She invites us to take a full breath and dream deeper – for the sake of our future, and survival.

• Kes Otter Lieffe is a working class, chronically ill, femme, trans woman. She is an author, facilitator and community organiser, currently based near Berlin. She is the author of the Queer Animals and Plants series, several short stories and Margins, a trilogy of queer and trans speculative fiction novels. In these futuristic stories, marginalised characters take centre stage in powerful resistance movements. Everything is at stake and so much is possible.

Esther Stanford-Xosei works towards the bringing to an end of the Maangamizi (the African Hellacaust), ecocide and the persistent extraction of wealth and resources from oppressed peoples. An avid champion of reparations, Esther posits that: “No vision of climate justice is complete without a roadmap to holistic reparations otherwise known as Planet Repairs.” In her Studium Gent lecture, Esther takes us on a visionary future in which reparations for the colonial past, and the neo-colonial present, have found firm footing in global and local ecologies in dire need of cultural, epistemological, legal, political and social-economic repair.

• Esther Stanford-Xosei is a Motherist, and decolonial Pan-Afrikanist Jurisconsult, Reparationist and Community Advocate engaged in reparations policy, research and movement-building under the auspices of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe, the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign and the International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations and the Extinction Rebellion Being The Change Affinity Network. Esther is currently completing a PhD in the history of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations in the UK at the university of Chichester.

There is so much potential to help ease the climate crisis, as well as address many health and social issues, through a shift in the ways we choose to produce, consume and think about food. Recognizing the unjust consequences of industrialized food on people and planet, resulting in food and agriculture contributing more than a quarter of global greenhouse gases and to countless unnecessary diseases worldwide, community organisers and food justice activists like Samie Blasingame are insisting on critical and speculative conversations on food and agricultural production: “… we must learn to reconnect with our food and reestablish its value – and that of healthy soil – as what nourishes and sustains us.” Join us as Samie Blasingame guides us – and challenges us – to re-imagine future food systems that are local, community-managed, ecologically resilient, and globally equitable.

• Samie Blasingame is a community-focused activist, researcher, and creative based in Berlin, passionate about environmental and climate justice, circular design, ecosystem thinking, and global food systems. Forever an advocate of people power, her work continues to express elements of community building and collective imagination.

“Die nacht liepen alle vossen uit het duingebied door de donkere straten naar de stadsparken, en verder landinwaarts. De oudste vos liep achteraan, hij hinkte met zijn achterpoot en bij elke hoek wachtten ze op hem. Een kunstacademiestudente die als nachtportier werkte zag ze gaan en dacht: Net mensen.” (Zee Nu, 2022) Een avond vol vragen en speculatie over alternatieven voor ons hiërarchische omgang met niet-menselijke dieren. Hoe menselijk zijn dieren? Hoe dierlijk zijn mensen? Hoe spreken dieren, hoe luisteren mensen naar dieren, wat is taal en spraak? Wanneer is stilte een vorm van spreken, en wiens stem wordt wel en niet gehoord? Wat is politieke participatie, als je niet spreekt, als je spraak niet gehoord wordt, als je stem tot stilte wordt gemaand? Of zelfs beter: hoe zit een ecologische politiek en sociale bestel eruit waarin onze stem die van andere dieren niet overstemt, waarin we luisteren naar en leren van niet-menselijke spraak, handelen en perspectieven?

• Eva Meijer is beeldend kunstenaar, filosoof, schrijver en singer-songwriter. Meijer promoveerde aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op een onderzoek naar de politieke stem van dieren, dat werd bekroond met de Erasmus Dissertatieprijs. Meijer schreef twaalf boeken, waaronder Het vogelhuis en When Animals Speak. Haar werk is vertaald in achttien talen. Haar laatste roman Zee Nu verscheen in 2022. In Meijers filosofische werk staat taal (inclusief stilte), meersoortige politiek en sociale rechtvaardigheid centraal. Momenteel doet ze als postdoc onderzoek aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam naar talige uitsluiting van mensen en andere dieren. Ze is voorzitter van de landelijke OZSW werkgroep dierfilosofie en schrijft columns voor NRC.

The Jan van Eyck Academie’s Nature Research and Food Lab, represented in this lecture by Giulia Bellinetti and Marente van der Valk, share in a joint lecture their reflections on how natural processes of fermentation can inspire us to rethink of social and economic relations in an ecological sense. What would happen if we reframed economy as a concept related to dynamic processes of livelihood-making, rather than as a purely human framework legitimizing extractive, profit-driven relations? Giulia and Marente will invite the audience on a collective journey through their minds and tastebuds, to explore these questions and related works of fellow artists.

• Giulia Bellinetti is the coordinator of the Nature Research department and leads the Future Materials Lab at the Jan van Eyck Academy. Previously, she was Coordinator of the Production Department at the M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art of Antwerp. In recent years, Giulia has become increasingly interested in the ecological discourse in relation to contemporary art, institutional work and interdisciplinary forms of collaborations. She is currently conducting a PhD research project on the epistemic function of art institutions in the age of ecological crisis at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (University of Amsterdam).

• Marente van der Valk is a UK/NL based culinary artist and chef. She graduated in 2012 from a MA Design and Environment at Goldsmiths University of London. Since then, she has focused on projects and events with an emphasis on environmental awareness, community mindedness and the social importance of food as well as the ephemeral and poetic qualities of food and the act of cooking and eating together. Her work is often a multi-sensory experience where a love for bringing people together results in a wealth of flavours and colours and a feel-good atmosphere. Currently, Marente coordinates the Food Lab at the Jan van Eyck Academy. The Food Lab has been created to offer a multidisciplinary platform to chefs and artists with an interest in food.

“Why make an installation about refugees being stuck at the border when you could design tools to cut through the fences?”
(We Are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism & Autonomous Zones, Pluto/Vagabonds, 2021).

Isabelle & Jay take on age-old questions that have challenged artists: “What is art for?” & “Who is art for?”. In their lecture, Jay & Isabelle share with us their vision of art and activism that is firmly committed to the protection and regeneration of life.

• Isa Fremeaux (she/her) is an educator, facilitator and author. She has worked as a freelance journalist, French teacher and administrator of a community arts company, while completing a PhD thesis on the concept of community. She became a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College-University of London (UK) where she worked for 10 years, before leaving academia to embrace freedom and collective life. Engaged in social movements for almost 20 years, she has facilitated assemblies gathering several hundred people, co-organised international mobilisations and climate camps and trained thousands of people to reinvent modes of disobedience.

• Jay Jordan or JJ  (they/them) is an author, art activist, part-time sex worker and full-time troublemaker. JJ is labelled a  “Domestic Extremist” by the UK police, and  “a magician of rebellion”  by the French press. JJ has spent three decades applying what they’ve learnt from theatre and performance art to direct action. They have performed in museums and International Theater Festivals, trained people in squats, co-organised climate camps, choreographed  carnivalesque riots, written a  BBC radio play  for today, and  an opera-for-one.

• Isa and JJ live together on the on the ZAD in Notre-Dame-des Landes, and they both co-facilitate the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination brings together artists and activists to co-design and deploy creative forms of direct-action, which aim to be as joyful as they are politically effective. Creation and resistance, protest and proposition are the  entwined DNA strands  of their practice.

Voor deze Studium avond, nodigen wij Willem Schinkel en Rogier van Reekum uit voor een dieptegesprek over de noodzaak voor – en haalbaarheid van een minder gewelddadige maatschappij. Het Studium legt het schrijversduo de uitdaging voor om een open routekaart uit te tekenen voor een collectieve ontsnapping uit de kraal die ons – en onze niet-menselijke buren en omgeving – gegijzeld houdt in de necropolitieke orde van het raciale kapitalisme en fascisme.

• Als hoogleraar sociale theorie aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam combineert Willem Schinkel sociologie, sociale theorie, filosofie, culturele studies en wetenschap & technologie studies om bij te dragen aan de verbeelding van een alternatieve politiek. Enkele van de onderwerpen waar hij op ingaat zijn sociale verbeelding, migratie en integratie, geweld, democratie en depolitisering, klimaatverandering, vergelijking en smart cities.

• Rogier van Reekum is universitair docent bij de vakgroep Bestuurskunde en Sociologie aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. Hij werkt momenteel rond de vestiging van vluchtelingen en probleemvorming. Eerder deed hij onderzoek naar de visualisatie van irreguliere migratie in Europa. Rogier heeft gepubliceerd over grensvisualisering, nationalisme, place making, burgerschap & migratiepolitiek, immigratiebeleid en onderwijs. Samen met Willem Schinkel schreef hij Theorie van de kraal. Kapitaal – Ras – Fascisme.

Het is vast geen verrassing dat we in deze reeks over ecologie en de toekomst, het maar liefst drie keer gaan hebben over voedsel(productie). Fairouz Gazdallah draagt bij aan onze verkenning van dit onderwerp met een deep dive in de heropleving en herontdekking van aloude agrarische praktijken die onder de noemer agro-ecologie vallen. Fairouz zal ons meenemen in een geschiedenis, heden en toekomst van voedselproductie praktijken die niet schaden maar herstellen; die niet onderdrukken en uitbuiten, maar bevrijden en nivelleren.

• Fairouz Gazdallah is beleidsmedewerker food governance bij Oxfam België. Met een mensenrechtenbenadering en een intersectionele bril onderzoekt ze en pleit ze voor duurzame, eerlijke en agro-ecologische voedselsysteemtransities, boerenrechten en voedselsoevereiniteit. Naast haar beleidswerk, maakt ze deel uit van een kunstcollectief (C’est L’Heure) om stil te staan bij cruciale vragen rond diaspora identiteiten en ons voedselsysteem.

Studium invites you to join us as we further learn, reflect, and imagine the future of food. Climavore is a platform and a movement that questions how to eat as humans change the climate. It responds to the new seasons of the climate crisis, such as drought, polluted oceans, wetland disappearance, floods and soil exhaustion that are changing food production and consumption, and the built environment at large. Through a long term project on Isle of Skye, Climavore unpacks ecologically regenerative and socially restorative responses to extractive aquaculture.

• This lecture will be presented by Cooking Sections, who has worked on multiple iterations of the long-term site-responsive CLIMAVORE project since 2015, exploring how to eat as humans change climates. They examine the systems that organise the world through food and using site-responsive installation, performance and video, they explore the overlapping boundaries between art, architecture, ecology and geopolitics. Established in London in 2013 by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, their practice uses food as a lens and a tool to observe landscapes in transformation.

De kranten, verkiezingsprogramma’s en praatshows staan er vol van: economen en hun beleidsvoorstellen voor het in stand houden en waarborgen van de groei van ‘de markt’ en ‘de economie’. Maar is groei een natuurwet of enkel een dogma? Jonas Van der Slycken neemt ons mee in zijn visie op een economie die anders doet, denkt en droomt dan enkel groeien.

• Jonas Van der Slycken is freelance schrijver / onderzoeker / activist die houdt van fietsen, genoeg heeft van het bruto binnenlands product (bbp) en momenteel bezig is aan zijn debuutboek. Als doctor-econoom specialiseerde hij zich in alternatieve economische welvaartsmaatstaven die verder kijken dan het bijzonder beperkt perspectief van het bbp.