Uroboros is a feral collective of artists, designers and researchers working with more-than-human worlds. By more-than-human we refer to multispecies ecologies of plants, animals, fungi and microbes, together with the algorithmic, infrastructural and technical agencies entangled with them. Around this shared interest, we run an annual festival, the Ars Biologica Independent Studies (ABIS) programme, and other educational and collaborative research formats in changing constellations of contributors and partners.
Our collective inquiry and activities are inspired by the symbol of Ouroboros (or Uroboros in Czech): a self-devouring serpent that changes its shape and form in an eternal cycle of re-creation, using its own body as fuel. The serpent figures both regeneration and entrapment: the promise of new beginnings and endless returns, the willingness to move forward and the inability to break from extractive cycles of business as usual.
Uroboros began in Prague in late 2019. The the inaugural festival launched in May 2020, in the early months of the pandemic, and brought together over 600 designers, artists and researchers, mostly online. Since then, the collective has grown around the festival, with new strands of year-round work added as collaborators and partners have joined.
The long-term Uroboros program aims to foster a globally distributed network of contributors interested in exploring the possible shapes of artistic and design research inquiry into more-than-human ecologies and relations. The Uroboros circle is always open to new creative inputs and provocations.
The Uroboros has been kindly supported by various partners, including the City of Prague, Czech Ministry of Culture, Abakus Foundation, Petrohradská collective, Ocean Archive, The Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU), Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), Aalto University, Brno University of Technology – Faculty of Fine Arts (FaVu), The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), Czech Technical University in Prague (CVUT), UMPRUM, Fresh Eye, Fotograf Festival, CreaTures project, HYB4, Kasárna Karlín, 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 working with embodied and sensory approaches to explore meaning-making across human and other-than-human bodies. 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 affiliated as an Assistant Professor at The Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she acts as the Head of Doctoral Research Department and leads the Multispecies Ecologies and Practices research group. Earlier, she was a postdoctoral research fellowpost 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. Since 2025, she has been co-directing the ABIS – Ars Biologica Independent Studies, an international educational programme connecting experimental art, design, technology, and science to explore how different disciplinary perspectives can inform collective engagement with living landscapes.
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.