Living-with Feral Ecologies

Gloria Lauterbach is a visual artist and postdoctoral researcher at NODUS - Sustainable Design Research Group, Aalto University, Finland. Gloria has a PhD in Arts from Aalto University. As an artistic researcher, Gloria is passionate about dialogical post/humanism, post-anthropocentric theories, materials in cooperation, the more-than-human in human habitation and darkness as an urban restoration force. At best, this research takes place outside, practicing with and considering other/s.

Markéta Dolejšová is a design researcher and curator experimenting with feral, relational ways of knowing and doing, often in multispecies settings. She currently serves as a postdoctoral research fellow at Aalto University – School of Arts, Design and Architecture (FI) where she helps to sprout a practice-based inquiry into more-than-human forest epistemologies and data (Open Forest) and teaches design research courses. Previously, she worked with the CreaTures – Creative Practices for Transformational Futures EU project (2020-22) where she led the Laboratory of experimental artistic productions. She has co-founded several art-design research initiatives including the Uroboros festival, the Open Forest Collective, the Feeding Food Futures network and the Fermentation GutHub.

Ainu Palmu is a lighting designer and light artist. She makes animation, other video content and set design. She graduated as a lighting designer from Tampere Polytechnic in 2000 and from University College London yr. 2008. The first light artworks by her were seen in 2010. Since then she has made light art pieces for festivals and public spaces. A strong presence of drama in her work is parented by the background of her work in stage arts. She uses abstract imagery as well as more factual images and dynamics in between. The works most often have changes in them. The way how one image changes to another is as important as what is seen when the changes are done. Her works dive into the value of beauty. She invites people by the side of the work with flashy and forceful visual initial contact from which,  usually, there is a possibility to realize underlying other meanings. In her work, she brings darker sides of life up with tenderness. Her works often require some activity from the part of the viewer. Interconnection between maker and viewer is essential and the pieces sometimes are practically not ready before it is experienced. She can be said to be a visualizer of communication. Her main interests at the moment are inter-species coexistence and how the force of the sea of humans can form the future of earth also better. At the moment she is curating a light art exhibition for birds and insects.

Andrea Botero is a designer and researcher exploring technologies, services and media formats for collectives and communities. Through her research work she investigates how collectives come to understand the design spaces available to them and how designers could support more diverse infrastructuring processes around them. Andrea works as a Professor and Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University (FI). She is also a conspirator at the design studio Suo&Co and Adjunct Professor at the Universidad de los Andes (COL).

Anton Poikolainen Rosén is a researcher and lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). He focuses on designing for sustainable futures and the more-than-human world. Anton's thesis investigated how urban farmers use interactive technologies to organise their practice and understand and appreciate the more-than-human world. The thesis also articulates how plants can be seriously considered as stakeholders in design processes. Anton is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland and has a PhD in Informatics from Södertörn University and Umeå University, Sweden.

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.

Antropseenin lapset (Children of the Anthropocene) is a research group focusing on the atmospheres of young people growing up in the environmental crisis. We examine shifting nature-culture relations in the so-called Anthropocene, and advance attentiveness towards multispecies relations in society. In the project, we carry out ethnographic research and arts-based workshops. We also develop multi-species storytelling methods and produce scientific publications. The research project is funded by Kone Foundation (2022-2025). All the researchers are based in the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Education, and they are: Riikka Hohti, Henrika Ylirisku, Rachel Sinquefield-Kangas, Verneri Valasmo, Varpu Mehto.

Delphine Rumo is a Doctoral Researcher working with the NODUS Sustainable Design Research Group at Aalto University. She is a trained designer and a sustainability researcher exploring the materiality of diverse economies and post-anthropocentric practices. Fascinated by the timing of human-geology economies, she writes about the life of soils and rocks in construction and her encounters with spirited geologies.

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.

Iryna Zamuruieva makes images, writes, walks, organises, and performs. Across her work, she explores human-environmental relationships through research, photography, curating, collage, and gatherings of all sorts: sensory group walks & counter mapping, street interventions, mourning ceremonies. Most recently she has been writing about her kin-region in Ukraine, working on land, resilience, and climate justice in Scotland; curating Climate Art Labs, an interdisciplinary collaboration exploring the meanings and impacts of climate change in Ukrainian environments; and researching eco-feminist thought in Ukraine. Her writing has been published in the Commons, Open Democracy, and Scottish Left Review amongst others.

Jaz Hee-jeong Choi is an Associate Professor in Civic Interaction Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Their transdisciplinary research and practice situate ‘care’ at the core of transformational encounters in different settings ranging from cities as complex cyberphysical networks to forests as moving creatures. They build on this to explore how radical transformation can materialise care-fully through creative-critical engagements. Their current research, practice, and engagement focus of the dynamics of creative practice as feral care.

Julia Lohmann is a Professor of Practice in Contemporary Design. She investigates and critiques the ethical and material value systems underpinning our relationship with flora and fauna. Julia's research interests include critical practice and transition-design, bio materials, collaborative making, museums and residencies, embodied cognition and practice as research. As designer in residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2013, she established the Department of Seaweed, an interdisciplinary community of practice exploring the marine plant's potential as a design material. She holds a PhD in Innovation Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art, London.

Kaisa Roover has been privileged to work on many internationally awarded projects in the audio-visual field for over a decade, before her current studies in Creative Sustainability Masters program at Aalto University. Currently she is working on a thesis that is looking at the case of Finnish Maritime Spatial Planning and how "voiceless", more-than-human stakeholders could be included in the process. Exploring how multispecies sustainability and justice can be effectively embedded in design and planning practice, through critical and experiential foresight and storytelling.

Lenka Hámošová is a visual artist and researcher focusing on synthetic media and the use of artificial intelligence in artistic practice. As part of her PhD at the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, she is specifically interested in the collective perspectives of human-AI co-creation and experimentation with participatory approach for AI-assisted media synthesis. She also explores ways of interdisciplinary collaboration in her educational and research activities related to the activities of the Uroboros collective (Uroboros Festival), of which she is a co-founder. 

She graduated from the Master’s programme in Design at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and Visual Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. She has initiated creative AI meet-ups in Prague, designed an educational set of brainstorming AI/ML cards Collective Vision of Synthetic Reality and is starting teaching her own course on AI in artistic practice at Centre for Audiovisual Arts at FAMU Prague. In the past she has taught at various visual arts programmes such as MA Future Design at Prague City University and Digital Arts at Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava.

Maiju Suomi is an architect (MSc), a doctoral researcher and an educator at Aalto University working in the field of environmental architecture. In her practice and teaching she focuses on bridging nature and culture through the creation of multisensory spatial experiences. Her projects include e.g. KKYC Youth Centre, Phnom Penh, Cambodia designed with participatory methods (Komitu Architects) and Alusta Pavilion for Multispecies Encounters (Suomi/Koivisto Architects). In her practice-led research she explores how moving beyond a human-exceptionalist world-view affects architectural practice and aesthetics.

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).

Open Forest Collective is a multi-disciplinary, multi-species group of creative practitioners and researchers experimenting with feral approaches to engaging with forests and forest data. The Collective's creative activities – experimental walking, drifting, storytelling, and co-creation of feral forest datasets – bring together scientists, artists, citizens, policymakers, Indigenous forest guardians as well as dogs and trees in experiential exchange of their diverse forest experiences and knowledge. The work is distributed across different locations, including (what is known today as) Finland, Australia, the Czech Republic, and Colombia. Current members of the Collective include Andrea Botero, Markéta Dolejšová, Jaz Hee-jeong Choi and Chewie.

Tuukka Perhoniemi is everybody’s favourite astrophilosopher. During nighttime, he explores the ambient darkness and tries to understand the universe. During daytime, he gives courses in Astronomical Association Ursa, writes and translates books, and tries to understand other living beings.

Satu Aavanranta, a dance artist and a service designer, is currently studying in the Creative Sustainability Masters program at Aalto University. For her thesis, she is researching ways that arts and creative practices, especially embodied practices, can be used for sustainability transformations, particularly in the context of darkness. She is interested in sustainable design and designing for the more-than-human world. Satu works as a research assistant at NODUS Sustainable Design Research Group at Aalto University.

Sonja Repetti (she/her) is an interdisciplinary doctoral researcher based at the University of Helsinki and Tvärminne Zoological Station, Finland, with a passion for protists. She completed her Bachelor of Science (Honours) at the University of Melbourne in 2019, with a thesis focusing on genome dynamics of green algae. In 2022, she submitted her thesis about the effect of nutrient availability on phytoplankton trait distribution and competition outcomes along a salinity gradient for the degree of Master of Science (Environmental Change and Global Sustainability) at the University of Helsinki. She began her doctoral studies in 2023, focusing on the capacity of algae to respond and adapt to environmental change, as well as increasing public understanding and appreciation of algae. She is a doctoral researcher member of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science HELSUS.