Alter Eco/s : Un/Learning in Climate Dissonance

Enrique Encinas (they/he) is a design researcher exploring the patterns and textures formed by (other than) + humans and technologies through creative, critical and collaborative practices. He works as Associate Professor in Interaction Design at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). They have co-lead projects involving governmental, artistic and educational institutions such as the European Union Policy Lab, the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona (CCCB) or SpeculativeEDU.

Through teaching, research and architectural practice Matthew investigates how concepts and knowledge from interdisciplinary environmental humanities can inform renewed positions in architecture.

Matthew has taught at AHO since 2016 and internationally as guest at UCLouvain LOCI-Bruxelles, Università Iuav di Venezia and Ecole d'Architecture de La Réunion. He has held workshops for master students at l'Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de Granada - POP Europe ::: words and architecture, Cirque de Mafate, La Réunion - Rural Areas Facing Climate Change, Ecole d'Architecture de La Réunion - COMPOSITION-DECOMPOSITION-RECOMPOSITION, Ion Mincu University of Architecture, Bucharest - Positions: Letters from Bucharest (Europe in Transition: Bucharest Case), Oslo Architecture Triennale Academy - Untold Stories (kind architecture), Taliesin School of Architecture, Scottsdale, Arizona - Peripheral Tales, and the University of Ghent, Belgium - Shifting Positions. Studio Positions was exhibited at Chez Etym.: site (n.)  as part of 2018 Architecture Fringe, Glasgow, Scotland.

Matthew is director of Steinlia - an architectural practice. The practice has specialised in the transformation of houses entangled in their ecological and temporal contexts, with completed and published works in Australia, England and Norway. Work has been exhibited/presented at the 5th International Conference on Structures and Architecture/ICSA (2022), UNBUILT HOUSE - Oslo Architecture Triennale (2019), and History in Practice - Oslo Architects' Association (2019).

Regina Kanyu Wang is a Chinese writer of speculative fiction and essays on the genre. Her work was first published in 2015, and she immediately began earning acclaim in the form of a number of national awards. In 2023, she was nominated for two Hugo Awards, one for her work the prior year on the fanzine Journey Planet, and one for her 2022 short story 火星上的祝融 ("Zhurong on Mars"). She writes in both Chinese and English.

Wang catapulted to national Chinese prominence when she was awarded separate Xingyun Awards (the Chinese equivalent of the Nebula Award) for her fan work and for being a Best New Writer. After receiving a host of national awards in subsequent years, she was nominated for two Hugo Awards in 2023—again for both fan and literary works. Her English-language historical work on Chinese SF provide context to the recent upsurge in production, acceptance, and recognition of Chinese SF authors on the world scene.

In addition to her writing work, Wang has also edited two anthologies of translated Chinese science fiction and fantasy. For The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, the stories of which are entirely by women and non-binary authors, Wang made the editorial choice to integrate fandom essays throughout the anthology to provide a contextual foundation for the fiction.

Jomy Joseph (he/him) is an Industrial Designer and Postdoctoral researcher with the Anthropogenic Soils project at IKOS, University of Oslo. 

His research interests include speculative futures, long-term sustainability, technological disobedience, regenerative ecology, politics, and culture. He successfully defended his PhD in March 2023 titled, ReFuturing Studies: Rehumanizing Futures through/by Design, at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). His research explores a systematic, generative, Research by/through Design inquiries exploring alternative, emergent, concrete utopias articulated through Speculative Industrial Design, through/by making and fabricating artifacts, design fictions, exhibitions, and research publications.

In his postdoctoral research, he is exploring the systems, structures, and materialities that currently enable a designed culture to defuture and dehumanize Human-Soil relations for a privileged few and further entrench the unsustainability of everyday life for the many, humans and non-humans. 

He wants to explore how industrial design, in an interdisciplinary framework, can refuture and rehumanize alternative Soil Futures, by reclaiming the present such that the future is completely different when it arrives.

Exploring issues of time and perception, Ferdinand Schwarz is a composer-performer intrigued by slow and seemingly simple sounds, that he deploys in the design of compositions and communal listening practices.

In search of a music that allows one to be immersed in its presence, unchanging, not telling a story as such, but making space for being continuous and presently now, his work unfolds in formal rigour towards an emotional depth that fosters emptiness and recalibration; in resistance of a high-paced and profit based concept of the world.

Ferdinand is interested in listening as an active condition; a creative and contingent tool pointing towards states of magnified presence and self-experience.

His solo project the rhythms of harmony in space is a performance-installation utilising wave interference, just intonation, and the experience of space via listening with a self-built instrument made of multiple air-pressure machines and melodicas.

Since 2023 he hosts regular sounding listening sessions where communal listening practices are explored.

Together with Jonas Evenstad they form the group functions of time exploring extended durations performances and creative listening modes.

 Jonas is a Norwegian percussionist, improviser, and interpreter. His personal work emerges from a deeply embodied connection to the tangible vibrations of objects. This unique perspective forms the foundation of his creativity across concerts, installations, artworks, and workshops. 

As a percussionist, Jonas carefully considers every frequency he produces, striving for tonal autonomy with each percussion instrument. As an improviser, he emphasizes collective listening practices as a tool for play and creativity. As an interpreter, Jonas approaches performance with boldness, often questioning established norms and traditions of interpretation. He seeks originality and authenticity, exploring the vast possibilities available to the reader of a musical text. 

Together with Ferdinand Schwarz they form the group functions of time exploring extended durations performances and creative listening modes.

Born in Aguascalientes, México, Luis Fernando Amaya is a composer and percussionist based in Oslo. Topics such as collective memory and the relationship between humans and non-humans (such as plants, animals, or environments) are commonly present in his work. He studied composition and music theory at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Musicales (CIEM) and holds a Ph.D. in composition and music technology from Northwestern University.

Amaya's music has been performed throughout the Americas and Europe by performers such as the CEPROMUSIC (México), Arditti Quartet (UK), Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (Switzerland), Ensemble Dal Niente, Fonema Consort, Yarn/Wire (USA), Oslo Domkor (Choir of the Cathedral of Oslo, Norway), amongst others. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships such as the Residency PRIX CIME (International Electroacoustic Music Competition 2023), a Presidential Fellowship (NU), and representing México in the 61st International Rostrum of Composers of the UNESCO in Helsinki, Finland. As a performer, Amaya is a member of the collective composition and free improvisation trio Fat Pigeon.

His scores are published by BabelScores.

His monographic album Cortahojas was recently released by Protomaterial Records.

Rolf Gerstlauer is a Swiss-born architect, filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist, and professor at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design. His teachings and artistic research works investigate Body & Space Morphologies in a more-than-human world. Working with performing arts including dance, choreography, live-installations, land art and earthworks, he uses mainly video and photography as the tools to explore environmental and socio-cultural conditions and phenomena. The collaboration with Julie Dind resulted in their participation in all three previous International Ecoperformance Film-Festivals, several articles and essays as well as a new teaching format on ecoperformance in architecture.

Julie Dind is a butoh dancer, a multidisciplinary artist, and a PhD candidate in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University. Her artistic and scholarly work autistically explores autistic modes of performance. She dedicated over a decade to the study of butoh, both in Japan and abroad. Since 2012, she collaborates with Rolf Gerstlauer on an a(u/r)tistic research-creation project titled “Drawing NN Inside Butoh.” As part of this collaboration, she has performed internationally in over 40 site-specific performances. Her work has been presented at various locations, including Sørlandsutsillingen (Norway), The Invisible Dog (New York) and Ós Textile Residency (Iceland).

Inga Chinilina is a composer, improviser, and pianist based in Providence, Rhode Island. Inga’s music reflects on a range of social topics such as immigration, womanhood, and ecology. Her compositional practice spans acoustic and electroacoustic (fixed and real-time) realms with instrumentation from solo instruments to orchestra. In addition to stand-alone music pieces, Inga also makes installations, music for dance and film. Ensembles that performed Inga’s work include Jack Quartet, ICE Ensemble, and Dal Niente. Inga is a PhD candidate in “Music and Multimedia Composition” at Brown University. Her research explores how composers represent sound entities that bare emotional meaning and possess complex timbre through the use of Western-European instruments.