Sensing Change Festival:
A Citywide Program of Art, Science, and Ecological Imagination
New York, USA
October 4 – 18, 2025
For more info click on each event
RVSP Here
A Conversation at Pratt Institute:
Practicing Resilience
Sat, Oct 4, 3:00–5:00 PM
Pratt Institute
An Afternoon at BioBAT Art Space:
Adaptive Bodies – Plant, Fungal, and Human Perceptions of Change
Sat, Oct 11, 1:00–5:00 PM
BioBat Art Space
Film Screening: Fire of Love
Fri, Oct 17, 6:00 PM
Museum of the Moving Image
Symposium at Parsons School of Design: Rhythms of Change
Sat, Oct 18, 4:00–7:00 PM
Parsons School of Design
Sonic Afternoon: Tuning into Nature
Sun, Oct 19, 3:00–5:00 PM
NOoSPHERE Arts
The program unfolds across Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design, BioBAT Art Space, Noosphere and the Museum of the Moving Image, activating each site with talks, performances, and site-specific interventions. Sensing Change engages process philosophy and resilience thinking to reframe how we witness transformation: from migrating birds to thawing glaciers, from botanical movements to molecular shifts.
At a moment when climate data can feel abstract or overwhelming, Sensing Change proposes an alternative form of measurement. One grounded in attention, memory, imagination, and care. The project invites a deeper kind of listening, recognizing the planet not as backdrop, but as collaborator.
Sensing Change is supported by the Ministry of Culture Czech Republic, Teiger Foundation, and 1014 Space for Ideas.
Niche Construction
Group Exhibition
NOD, Prague, Czech Republic
25.7. – 14.9.2023
Artists: Gerard Ortin Castellvi, Shezad Dawood, Andro Eradze, Pilar Mata Dupont, Martin Netočný, Andrey Shental, Adam Vačkář
Biologist - texts: Vojtěch Abrahám, Martin Adámek, Jindřich Brejcha, Kristýna Eliášová, Roman Figura, Petr Tureček, Martin Weiser
Currently, niche construction theory stands as a focal point in evolutionary ecology, captivating the attention of both artists working through moving images and biologists expressing their insights in written form. Collaboratively, artists and biologists delve into specific natural processes that underlie human existence.
The texts penned by biologists serve as a wellspring of inspiration, sparking curiosity about the narratives of these natural processes. Understanding these processes should ideally be at the core of future education, shedding light on the intricate ways in which humans and nature are shaped and interconnected, aspects of which many remain blissfully unaware.
In-habit
Transdisciplinary symposium
Academy of
Arts, Architecture
and Design
Prague, Czech Republic
December 1 - 2. 2022
List of speakers:
Václav Cílek
Geologist, climatologist, writer
Mareike Dittmer
TBA21-Academy, Madrid
Habima Fuchs
Visual artist
Johanna Gibbons
Landscape architect, London, UK
Paloma Gonzalez-Bellido
Prof. of ecology University of Minnesota, USA
Stefan Helmreich
Professor of Anthropology at MIT, USA
Tereza Stehlíková
Visual artist
Sissel Tolaas Visual
Artist
Neal White
CREAM, University of Westminster, UK
Šárka Zahálková
Visual artist, curator and cultural activist
This transdisciplinary symposium was born out of an urgent need to reformulate our relationship to our physical and mental environments, near and far, human and non-human. The In-habit Symposium will bring together scientists, artists and cultural workers from the Czech Republic, the USA, Germany and the UK, institutions such as MIT, University of Minnesota, TBA21-Academy, Charles University.
Where is the right balance in our relationship between human and non-human agents? How can contemporary art, science and other disciplines come together to rethink and shift our point of view, to access non-human perspectives, non-human motivations, to change our habits and successfully coexist? What role does embodiment/senses play in training our sensibility? We need to rethink human behavior and point out the functional behavioral systems for the future.
Organized together with Tangible Territory, an open access art, science & philosophy journal, which focuses on how we make sense of the world through all our senses and the importance of place and embodied experience in giving meaning to everyday experience of life and art.
The symposium received financial support from Ministry of Culture Czech Republic.
Click here to watch lectures online
Life Discussions
Transdisciplinary lecture marathonCentre for Contemporary Art
Prague, Czech Republic
March 12, 2022
List of speakers:
Adam Vackar and Jindrich Brejcha
Introduction, Transparent Eyeball
Michael Bok
Biologist, Lund University, Sweden
Reuben Fowkes
UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, London, UK
Johannes Jaeger
Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Vienna,
Miranda Lowe
Scientist, Natural History Museum, London, UK
Katja Novitskova
Visual artist, Amsterdam
Michael J. Ryan
Professor, University of Texas in Austin
Kostas Stasinopoulos
Curator, Serpentine gallery, London, UK
Antonin Strizek
Scientist, Academy of Sciences, Prague
Today’s environmental challenges are highly complex, and developing strategies that foster public awareness and responsibility is crucial for the long-term conservation of species and ecosystems. The symposium emphasizes collaborations between artists and biologists to create innovative forms of participatory research while helping to share ecological knowledge with wider, non-specialist audiences.
Internationally renowned scientists, artists, and cultural thinkers exchange ideas on the evolutionary roots and the deep interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. Themes include invasiveness in plants and humans, beauty as a biological concept, public interventions that reshape our relation to the environment, and non-human perspectives—from the overlooked agency of plants to the extraordinary vision of the mantis shrimp, a species with the most complex sight system known.
Life Discussions sets pats for art and science to reveal together new perspectives, expand collective imagination, and remind us that humans are inseparable from the living networks we share this planet with.
Click here to watch lectures online