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Our Vision, Approach and Activities.
Vision
Symbio(s)cene is a non-profit organisation with the vision to to contribute to shaping a new mindset that promotes thinking beyond the Anthropocene. We see this new mindset as an important key to bringing about transformative change. The distinctive proposition of…
Approach
The pressing environmental-ecological problems of our time are highly complex, interconnected, and nonlinear phenomena. The sciences are under pressure to provide precise, rational and conclusive answers, yet unambiguous evidence of causes and…
Activities
Our strategic objectives and activities are transdisciplinary and interconnected. Symbio(s)cene focuses on four strategic objectives and associated activities: Conducting Transdisciplinary Research, Facilitating Knowledge Exchange, Activating…
Our Repository:A Source of Information & Inspiration
Here, we post short contributions pointing to related work in arts and sciences, summaries of our own activities and essays written by ourselves and guests. Each post is tagged, and clicking on a tag will guide you to related posts
From Visions to Change
Recording of Keynote Presentation, originally delivered at the 10th Futurologic Symposium 2023, Amsterdam. Since quite a few people were interested…
Towards the Symbiocene?
10th Futurologic Symposium 2023, Amsterdam. Oliver Szasz, co-founder of Symbio(s)cene, was invited to deliver a keynote presentation at the 10th…
Towards an Ecological Turn
Online Talk Event: 10 May 2023, 15:00 – 18:00 (CEST). Oliver Szasz, managing director of Culturesphere and one of the Symbio(s)cene founding…
Objects of Human-Nature Dialogue
Material Culture and Transformative Change. Ingrid Rügemer, artistic director of Culturesphere and one of the Symbio(s)cene founding partners…
People – Nature – Future II
Exhibition | Ausstellung PEOPLE – NATURE – FUTURE 25.04. – 14.05. 2023 Opening Times | Öffnungszeiten Mo – Fr 08:00 –…
RE-IMAGINE – Presentation at the RCC
Presentation and discussion at the renowned Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. Oliver Szasz, one of the founding partners of…
MA Responsible Fashion
A new postgraduate programme starts in autumn 2023 at Istituto Marangoni, London. Why MA Responsible Fashion? It has never been more important for…
Phytophilia Design Conversation
Phytophilia Design Conversation Designers have always contributed to shaping material culture, which makes them important actors in the context of…
Phytophilia Exhibition
20 January 2023 – 31 March 2023: Symbio(s)cene presents Phytophilia – an exhibition with Danish Designer Sara Martinsen. Exhibition Period: 20…
Interview: Zena Holloway
Grown from Root – Sustainable, Sculptural, Wearable! Zena Holloway explores the interweaving properties of root systems and crafts unique artefacts,…
Stuart Walker – Designing Sustainability
Stuart Walker. Designing Sustainability via Progressive Design Praxis Introduction Design can be understood as a discipline that seeks to improve…
Your Donation Gift
We appreciate your generosity. As an NGO, Symbio(s)cene has many plans (see our Activities) and donations help us to realise them. All donations,…
World Biodiversity Forum 2022
Symbio(s)cene will participate at the World Biodiversity Forum 2022 in Davos. PD Dr. Tina Heger and Prof. Oliver Szasz, both co-founders of…
Matter Moves Mind
Material Culture and Transformative Change. “Matter Moves Mind: Towards a New Material Culture” was curated by Ingrid Rügemer, the artistic…
Activating Environmental Awareness
Activating Environmental Awareness: From Aesthetic Experience to an Ecological Mindset. On the occasion of the BARK performance coming to Munich,…
I am the forest…
I am the forest. You need me. Summers are short in Norway and nature knows no time is to be lost. Come June, Bergsmyrene farm, tucked away on a…
Symbio(s)cene is now an NGO!
… and received its first donation. Here is something to celebrate: The initiative Symbio(s)cene now officially became “Symbio(s)cene e.V.” and is a…
Green Like a Robot
Online Talk: Symbio(s)cene talked with Dr. Lora Koycheva. In this talk, Dr. Koycheva offers an anthropological perspective on the currently dominant…
Biodiversity and Wellbeing!
Online Talk: Symbio(s)cene talked with Prof. Dr. Aletta Bonn about the close link of biodiversity with health and wellbeing. The this talk Aletta…
Wilderness creates multifunctionality
Installation Walk-Through & Scientist Talk Sandra Rojas-Botero and Simon Dietzel guide through the biodiversity of their installation »Wildflower…
The Human Insect
Online Talk: Symbio(s)cene talked with Mark Wigley. This talk will explore the uncanny fact that humans became insects at the end of the 19th…
Talk with Eyes As Big As Plates
Exhibition Walk-Through & Artist Talk This recording features a walk through the exhibition People – Nature – Future by artist duo…
Art Science Project
Symbio(s)cene facilitates a photo art project. The exhibition People, Nature, Future, which featured the Scandinavian artist duo Riitta Ikonen and…
People – Nature – Future
Exhibition and Talk Event initiated and organised by Symbio(s)cene. Curated in collaboration with project partner Culturesphere Gallery. Exhibition…
Design with the Living 2021
Symposium at The Design Musuem, London. This symposium aims to participate in shaping an ecological blueprint for future biodesign practice. It is…
MA Regenerative Design
A new postgraduate course starts at Central Saint Martins College, London. Why this course? Course founder Carol Collet and her team believe that…
Waste Age – Exhibition
Waste Age – What can design do? An exhibtion at The Design Museum, London until 20 February 2022. We are living in the age of waste. Is design…
Project Cohabitation
Symbio(s)cene co-founder Tina Heger will be speaking at the discourse and exhibition event Cohabitation at Spreepark Berlin – a cooperation…
Glenn Albrecht’s Future Vision
An Invitation to the Symbiocene – By Glenn Albrecht. The impacts of the Anthropocene, the age of human dominance over the planet, are now headline…
Ecological Restoration – Taking & Giving
June 21-24 2021 is the week of the 9 th World Conference on Ecological Restoration. Organized by the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), the…
Interview: Phoebe Cummings
The beauty of the present moment and the briefness of existence. Ceramic sculptor Phoebe Cummings works mainly with unfired clay. Her intricate and…
Cosmo Sheldrake: Wake-up Calls
Music with and for nature. Multi-instrumentalist musician, composer and producer Cosmo Sheldrake dedicates his latest album Wake-Up Calls to…
Silence of the Tides
A visually stunning and meaningful documentary by director Pieter-Rim de Kroon – a film that inhales and exhales along with the tides of the Wadden…
A different conservation policy is needed
By Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher. In the face of the sixth extinction, rising wildlife crime and biodiversity under dire threat around the globe,…
Connect with Nature: Mud & Mindfulness
Dorodango (Japanese: “mud dumpling”) Hikaru Dorodango are shiny balls of mud, molded by hand, dried, and polished to an artifact of utter…
Symposium: Is Beauty Enough?
This provocative question is posed by a highly interesting symposium, initiated and organized by Central Saint Martins College London and Cockpit…
Master’s Student Project Senckenberg
M.A. Design Management students from Macromedia University Munich had the task to support Dr. Martin Jansen from Senckenberg Naturmuseum Frankfurt…
Economy for the Common Good
Mini Symposium on Economy for the Common Good at Macromedia University – Live on ZOOM. Prof. Oliver Szasz, head of the M.A. Design Management…
Transdisciplinary Project Outcome
Arts & Sciences Collaboration between Macromedia University Munich and Technical University Munich. During winter term 2020/21, the first…
Vienna Biennale for Change
Planet Love. This is the motto of the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021, which will be the first event of its kind to combine art, design, and…
Forest is the Artist
What does it mean when we say that “nature” is the artist? To explore this question, American ecological artist, filmmaker and author…
Envisioning Cities
Step into the future! The development of visions and scenarios are key drivers for shaping our future. What will our cities look like? How can we…
National Park Cities?
London became the first National Park City in July 2019. A community-grassroots movement celebrating and supporting action by millions of people in…
Nature, Music & Change
The sounds of nature can be soothing and moving (see the post Nature Appreciation). Quite logically, many artists included recordings made in nature…
Forest Man
One man and his forest. Since 1979, Majuli Islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees to save his island. To date, he has single-handedly planted…
Cities, Nature, Poetry
Sprout – The eco-urban poetry journal presents its first issue dedicated to the theme SPACE. “In inviting new work to reflect expansively…
Ove Arup Foundation
Collaboration, Interdisciplinarity and Sustainability. These are the values of the Ove Arup Foundation and the driving forces behind its…
Bioeconomy
Bioeconomy means using renewable biological resources to produce food, materials and energy. Bioeconomy includes the vision of biobased and…
Nature Appreciation
Experiencing nature is something special. Talking a walk does not only provide one with a good portion of fresh air, it also provides calming visual…
Eyes as Big as Plates – Volume 2
Riitta Ikonen and Karoline Hjorth have created a new book. Eyes as Big as Plates is a remarkable and ongoing art project by Riitta Ikonen and…
ART AUREA & Material Awareness
Material Awareness – the mindful dialogue between man and material – is the guiding theme of the latest issue of the bilingual art, craft and design…
Competition: Post-Covid Cities
Question: How do we design post-COVID-19 cities that enrich nature? A competition by Pandemic Response CoLab. Overview View Contributions:…
NESTA TALK: Ann Pettifor
Why Radical Change is Required to Address the Climate Crisis. Nesta, the renowned innovation foundation, based in the UK, talked to Ann Pettifor. Ann…
Arts & Sciences Collaboration
Technical University Munich meets Macromedia University Munich. The first interdisciplinary research and development project with students in…
Dennis Meadows – Limits To Growth
Scientist Dennis Meadows and an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began a study in 1970 –…
Architecture & The Common Good
What can Architecture contribute to the common good? Architecture and its transformative and social value is the topic which the Obel Award is…
The Conservation Revolution
Radical ideas for saving nature beyond the Anthropocene “Conservation needs a revolution. This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic…
World Hope Forum
The World Hope Forum – founded by Lidewij Edelkoort, one of the world’s most respected cultural forecasters and Philip Fimmano, a design…
From Anthropocene to “Symbiocene”
Anthropocene, the ‘age of humans’ – this is the name experts suggest for calling the current geological epoch (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000, Ellis…
The Biodiversity Crisis
The crisis – and how it can be solved. We are currently experiencing the biggest global mass extinction event since the disappearance of dinosaurs.…
Good Life, People and Nature
The concept of ‘good life’ has strong roots in Western philosophy. According to Aristotle, leading a meaningful, fulfilled life means reaching…
Embodied Sensemaking
Physical stimuli as agents for knowledge creation and knowledge transfer. Scholars in philosophy of Cognitive Science have increasingly investigated…
Visions for Transition
Visions for Transition is the first major online conference of its kind, bringing together more than 20 renowned scientiest and in the fields of…
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life has received great reviews by the…
Fungi Futures
Movements in Mycelium – From plastic waste eating solutions to growing structure potentials. The live streamed talk – hosted by artist, inventor, and…
Cambio – Ecology and Design
A re-evaluation of our relationship to trees from a design perspective. Cambio is an impressive exhibition and ongoing project by the designer duo…
Seeding Sustainable Futures
The power of embodied metaphors. Seeding Sustainable Futures – a project by Culturesphere – aimed to address the potential of each individual in the…
Life of Plants by Emanuele Coccia
A philosophical perspective on plants. Emanuele Coccia, Associate Professor in the History of Philosophy at the EHESS in Paris, presents his new…