Uroboros is a feral collective and annual festival experimenting with art and design inquiries into more-than-human co-existence. Attending to ‘more-than-human’ as involving both multispecies nature and algorithmic agencies, Uroboros provides inter-disciplinary and inter-species place for researchers and practitioners of diverse backgrounds.
Our co-creative inquiry and activities are inspired by the symbol of Uroboros – a self-devouring serpent that changes its shape and form in an eternal cycle of re-creation, using its own body as fuel. The Uroboros embodies contemporary social, environmental, and political frustrations: it offers a promise of new beginnings as well as endless returns; a willingness to move forward as well as the inability to break out of the normative, extractivist practice of business as usual.
The Uroboros project was initiated in late 2019 by a group of friends based in Prague, Czech Republic and officially released in May 2020 along with the inaugural Uroboros festival. The first festival edition brought together over 600 designers, artists, researchers, and creative practitioners from around the world. Inspired by this interest, we decided to extend Uroboros from a one-off festival into a long-term process, re-imagining Uroboros as an ongoing festival series accompanied by diverse collateral events including the Loops and various educational programmes organised with partner universities and other edu institutions.
The long-term Uroboros program aims to nurture a globally distributed network of contributors interested in exploring the possible shapes of artistic and design research inquiry into more-than-human relationalities: in the context of socio-technicality, multispecies nature, and everywhere in-between. The Uroboros circle is always open to new creative inputs and provocations. The best way to join us is the upcoming Uroboros 2024 festival that happens in October-November-December 2024, in Prague and online.
The Uroboros has been kindly supported by various funders, partners and friendssss including the City of Prague, Czech Minsitry of Culture, Abakus Foundation, Petrohradská collective, Ocean Archive, Fresh Eye, Fotograf Festival,Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), Aalto University, Brno Uniersity of Technology – Faculty of Fine Arts (FaVu), The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), Czech Technical University in Prague (CVUT), UMPRUM, The Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU), CreaTures project, HYB4, Kasarna Karlin, Tactical Tech, Fiber festival, .ZIP space, AIxDesign, and DOX Center for Contemporary Art.
Meet the Uroboros snakecore:
Markéta Dolejšová
Markéta Dolejšová is a practice-based researcher experimenting with co-creative and embodied experiences in multispecies contexts. Her recent focus has been on ferality and feral eco-systems, exploring what relations, intuitions, and ways of knowing can emerge in the liminal spaces between the wild and the domesticated, the familiar and unknown, the serendipitous and intentional. She is also an Assistant Professor at The Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she acts as the Head of Doctoral Research Department, and recently finished her postdoctoral research fellowship at Aalto University – School of Arts, Design and Architecture (2020-24). In 2020-22, she worked with the CreaTures – Creative Practices for Transformational Futures project, where she led the Laboratory of Experimental Productions and co-created the CreaTures Framework setting out how creative practices can stimulate action towards socially and ecologically sustainable futures. She co-founded several art & design research initiatives, including the Uroboros festival, the Open Forest Collective, the Feeding Food Futures network, and the HotKarot & OpenSauce.
Lenka Hámošová
Lenka Hámošová is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher working at the intersection of AI, creativity, and embodied human experience. With a background in visual communication and over 15 years of creative practice, she explores how we can reclaim agency, intuition, and meaning in the age of intelligent tools.
Her ongoing PhD research investigates collaborative human–AI creation, and she regularly shares her findings through talks, workshops, and experimental educational formats. Lenka is the founder of Creative AI Workflows, a methodology and platform helping people develop more conscious and grounded relationships with generative technologies. She also created the Creative AI Cards — a tactile system for mapping AI tools by input/output modalities and creative potential.
She has lectured at FAMU, UMPRUM, and Prague City University, collaborated with teams like Google AI Ethics and ČSOB, and exhibited work at venues such as DOX and the AI Art Gallery. In 2023, she initiated Creative AI Meetups in Prague to foster a hybrid community of technologists and creatives exploring the future of co-creation with machines.
Michal Kučerák
Michal Kučerák is a researcher, lecturer, and curator with a particular emphasis on art mediation and digital projects. Presently, he is actively engaged with a contemporary art foundation TBA21, where he contributes to their digital team, specializing in digital research and projects, specifically Ocean-Archive.org (TBA21–Academy). Additionally, he is pursuing his PhD studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Technology in Brno. Michal initiated a research exhibition project called #DATAMAZE (DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, 2018-2022), which revolves around enhancing digital and data literacy through the medium of contemporary art and design. He co-organizes Uroboros festival focused on socially engaged design and artistic practice. You can find him in his studio at Petrohradská kolektiv (Prague, CZ).
Enrique Encinas
Enrique Encinas 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.
Chewie
Chewie is a forest guide living and thriving in Central Bohemia, in the protected landscape area Křivoklátsko. Since 2021, Chewie has been a core member of the Open Forest Collective where he contributes to feral explorations of more-than-human ecologies and leads a series of experimental walks in the Křivoklátsko forest. Through his kind guidance, Chewie helps other collective members and contributors to learn about diverse multispecies relationalities and spatiotemporalities of care that make up a forest. As part of the Uroboros Collective, Chewie helps to organise the annual festival, in 2023 with his own program section Chewroboros.