TENTACULAR ECOLOGIES

WITCH ECOLOGIES is an immersive video mapping show that seeks to revisit the historical narratives about the relationship of plants and women, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The installation features a pre-recorded audio-visual composition, in which the biofeedback of medicinal “magical” plants is processed and transformed into an involving dynamic landscape, with the help of specific hardware, software and AI. The selected species — mugwort, lavender, sage, valerian, rue, and millefolium — represent traditional healing through phytotherapy, while evoking the symbology of plants as mystic tools. The work was presented in the XR Festival in Florence at Cattedrale dell'Immagine in the 16th of June 2024.

INSTERSTITIAL ALCHEMY presents an experiment of practice-based artistic research, that speculates on the healing of aquatic ecosystems, through a process of transmutation of micro pollutants. The work is particularly interested in how an intervention on a microscale can affect broader ecosystems and their territories. In the last years scientists have demonstrated that ecological variability at small spatial scales—often less than a square meter — can have very significant consequences in big territories. So could we perform micro interventions that produce relevant transformations, potentially independent from anti-ecological political and economic and forces?

This event was organized by the Interface Cultures department at University of Art and Design Linz, within the program of the Ars Eletronica Festival. In The Leonardo LASER network, an international program taking place in over 50 cities around the world, organizing events promoting interdisciplinary networking through inspiring presentations and conversations. The fourth event in Linz, “Danube Songs” in 2023 looks into the water medium through the eyes of an interdisciplinary group of speakers, formed by artists, curators, scientists, designers, and architects.

THINKING WEED - INTERSTITIAL ECOLOGIES is a workshop organized by Catarina Reis and Fabricio Lamoncha at the Kunstuniversität Linz. The participants are challenged to discover sub-represented lives, entities, or concepts present in narrow (but rich) physical and immaterial gaps. A space for discussion, exploration, and alternative forms of representation of these realities is provided, through a series of brief exercises, which include fieldwork and artistic experimentation.