Jitka Goriaux
Jitka Goriaux is Associate Professor at the Department of Dramatic Theatre and researcher at the Institute for Theory of Scenic Creation of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). Her doctoral dissertation (Paris Nanterre University), devoted to the theatre of Thomas Ostermeier, was published in French (Études théâtrales, No. 58/2013) and in Czech (KANT, 2014; Czech Theatre Critics’ Award for Best Theatre Book). Most of her articles in international journals focus on contemporary European directing and its major figures. More recently, she authored a monograph on Antoine Vitez and the dramaturgical dimensions of his theatrical work (KANT, 2022). Alongside her research and teaching activities, Jitka Goriaux also works as a dramaturge and translator.
Veronika Klusáková
Veronika Klusáková is a graduate of the Faculty of Arts of Palacky University in Olomouc, where she held the position of Assistant Professor at the Department of Theatre and Film Studies from 2012 to 2020. Between 2019 and 2025, she worked as an assistant professor at FAMU, teaching the history of world cinema to Czech and international students. Since 2020, she has been the editor-in-chief of the academic journal ArteActa, which she transformed into an online open-access peer-reviewed journal focused primarily on artistic research. In 2025, she became the vice-rector for academic and artistic research and equal opportunities at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Her own research focuses on the interconnection of history with interdisciplinary theoretical concepts (Southern Gothic and its socio-political framework, representations of childhood from the perspective of gender and queer studies, aesthetic and performative foundations of tomboyism) in film and television production. Her most recent book is Jižanská gotika v současných televizních seriálech (Southern Gothic in Contemporary Television Series, NAMU, 2023).
When listeners hear a voice, they assess it intuitively – but what exactly are they hearing? Studies have shown that different listeners focus on different aspects: some on vocal timbre (brightness, darkness), others on vibrato, others on expression or pitch agility.
This presentation summarizes the results of interdisciplinary research connecting perceptual evaluation of singing with acoustic and physiological voice parameters. It demonstrates that subjective impressions can be linked to measurable sound characteristics and specific vocal tract settings. This research reorients thinking about singing toward a new model of vocal pedagogy based on the integration of science and art. It outlines a natural path from perception to structure – from what we hear to what we do. It presents the objectivizing potential of science for both pedagogy and performance, while emphasizing that its full artistic realization requires collaboration with artistic researchers. Scientific reflection on the voice does not aim to limit expression, but to deepen our understanding, expand technique, and enrich artistic freedom.
Marek Frič
A researcher in voice acoustics and psychoacoustics at the Musical Acoustics Research Centre (MARC), Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (HAMU). His work focuses on the perceptual, acoustic, and physiological analysis of the singing voice, with applications in artistic pedagogy and voice rehabilitation. He has collaborated with major Czech and Slovak voice clinics and has authored or co-authored studies on vocal timbre, register transitions, and vocal modes. His recent work includes experimental comparisons of classical and pop singing, perceptual voice classification, and the physiological basis of Estill Voice Training and Complete Vocal Technique. He is also a certified Estill Voice Training instructor (Figure Proficiency). At HAMU and Palacký University in Olomouc, he lectures on voice acoustics and the science of vocal function. His goal is to foster scientifically grounded yet artistically relevant models of vocal technique through interdisciplinary collaboration.
This contribution presents the outcomes of a joint initiative by the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (JAMU) and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU), focused on the practical implementation of the low-latency audiovisual technology MVTP (Modular Video Transmission Platform) for synchronous music collaboration within higher music education. The presentation explores the pedagogical applicability and technical feasibility of MVTP in enabling real-time musical interaction between geographically distant participants. Based on three applied case examples—a piano duo, a percussion ensemble, and a jazz improvisation—the contribution demonstrates that, under specific technical conditions, MVTP allows for near-real-time audiovisual communication with imperceptible audio latency and adequate visual feedback. This makes the technology particularly suitable for ensemble-based performance and live remote teaching scenarios where timing and responsiveness are essential. The presentation also addresses key implementation challenges, including system compatibility, coordination between institutions, and the need for standardized operational methodologies. Attention is given to how MVTP can support the development of blended learning formats and virtual mobility frameworks in tertiary level music training.
Daniela Peclová
In 2024, she completed her doctoral studies in the Music Production program at the Faculty of Music, Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (JAMU). Her dissertation focused on digitization and change management in the context of
symphony orchestras. She is an active lecturer at the Department of Marketing and Trade, Faculty of Business and Economics, Mendel University, and regularly presents at professional conferences both in the Czech Republic and abroad
In voice training, attention is often given to developing the use of the voice based on feeling, imagery or auditory percepts. On the other hand, scientific voice research often focuses on acoustic analysis or biomechanics, which are not always adapted and translated into practical voice pedagogy. This presentation will explore a pedagogical approach that seeks to bridge this gap by cultivating voice proprioception through embodied learning and peer feedback.
The talk will outline the main concepts used in a course taught at the Institute of Phonetics, Charles University, which aims to link artistic and scientific approaches to spoken voice training. Students are introduced to the scientific underpinnings of voice skills, including acoustic and physiological foundations, and are encouraged to actively experiment with and feel these concepts in their own voices. The goal of this process is to deepen students’ understanding of the relationships between physical sensation, acoustic output, and communicative intent.
A peer feedback approach is used throughout the course. Students record themselves and each other, observe vocal behaviors, and recommend targeted exercises based on their perceptual analysis. Each week adds a new element – such as posture, breath, phonation, resonance, or melody – gradually building a comprehensive voice profile. This model not only helps students develop more nuanced awareness of their vocal expression, but also challenges them to integrate subjective sensory exploration with analytical observation.
By weaving together proprioceptive practice and voice science, the course encourages students to cross boundaries between subjective experience of voice production and scientific voice analysis, fostering dialogue between the two disciplines. The presentation will share practical examples and reflections from the course, proposing that such integration can enrich the teaching of voice as well as the cultivation of artistic expression.
Adléta Hanžlová
A Ph.D. student at the Institute of Phonetics, Charles University. Her doctoral research focuses on the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of timbre in the singing voice. She also teaches courses on phonetic transcription and voice skills. Her work aims to bridge scientific research and practical voice pedagogy, fostering connections between researchers, teachers, and practitioners, and to creating collaborative spaces for knowledge exchange across artistic and scientific disciplines. Currently, she is also pursuing a MA in Voice Pedagogy with the Voice Study Centre, University of Essex.
Historiography is usually connected with archival research, interpreting sources, relating to secondary literature, and writing it up into a narrative. All this seems distant from scientific disciplines dealing with the contemporary world, such as sociology or artistic research. However, in recent decades, historiography acquired a much more “hands-on” character, applying experimental and embodied approaches.
This presentation will introduce the concept of the “historically informed costume”, which is considered a product of a specific mode of creation, but also and especially a process of research, which brings new insights both into the history of costume and performance. It will present a methodology developed through five years of collaboration between the costume maker, historian and performers employing comparative research of material, visual and textual sources, and making and performing experiments, often in historical spaces. It stresses an experimental and collaborative approach to research and creation, in which each member brings their expertise and way of doing that complement one another. Furthermore, the methodology promotes connections between objects – costumes and bodies – which inform each other through the historicity of their practice.
Petra Zeller Dotlačilová
Holds a Ph.D. in Dance Studies from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (2016), and a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University. In her research, she specialises in European dance history and theatrical costumes from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. She participated in the research projects ‘Performing Premodernity’ at Stockholm University and ‘Ritual Design on the Ballet Stage (1650–1760)’ at the University of Leipzig. Together with Hanna Walsdorf, she edited Dance Body Costume (Leipzig, 2019). In 2021, she was awarded an international postdoc from Swedish Research Council to conduct a three-year research project , “The Fabrication of Performance: Processes and Politics of Costume-Making in the 18th Century” in collaboration with the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles. She is currently a postdoc within the SNSF project “The Night Side of Music” at the University of Basel.
Since the 1960s, complex dynamic systems theory, or chaos theory, has been at the heart of decisive advances in fields as varied as meteorology, sociology, linguistics and cognitive neuroscience. This presentation aims to show how certain concepts drawn from this theory can shed light on a contemporary vision of acting. Between the definitive entry of performance and dance into theatrical creation, the incursion of new documentary theatre onto the contemporary scene, the ambiguous relationship between reality and fiction, character and performer, and the emergence of new creative methodologies and technologies, actors interact with the audience from an uncertain and constantly redefined position. In order to respond to these forms, which cultivate indeterminacy in action and interpretation, unpredictability in exchanges with the audience, and the active transgression of conventions, our reflection on acting necessarily involves a dissolution of the dualisms and linearity that has accompanied most historical theories of acting. Chaos theory has a particular potential to shake up our certainties and stimulate our reflection on aesthetic changes in the theatre, through the example of the radical questioning of theoretical paradigms that it has established in other scientific fields. Thus, in the same way that psychological research at the end of the 19th century revolutionized our vision of theatre, chaos theory, and in particular its influence on cognitive neuroscience, is now capable of opening the door to a profound epistemological and technical renewal of acting.
Laurent Berger
Director, dramaturg and scholar, Laurent Berger is currently the director of the Master in Performing Arts Creation at Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 and the director of the international research program “Being, Playing and Performing” for La Manufacture, Lausanne. He has translated William Shakespeare, Jean Genet and Jean-Luc Lagarce into Spanish and recently edited a volume on the Argentine theater today for Alternatives Théâtrales and another on the theater of Rodrigo García for Theater / Public and published the volume Shakespeare Material for the TC-TNA editions, Buenos Aires. As a director, among his latest performances are 3 8 SM (Shakespeare Material) at the Théâtre National Cervantes in Buenos Aires, D. Quixote at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris, and Medida X Medida after Shakespeare at the Galpón Theater, Uruguay, Tartufo, after Molière at Teatro Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, Colombia, and Metamorfosis, at the Festival Printemps des comédiens in Montpellier.
Through a critical framing of the scientific laboratory as a field site, my research initiated an explorative analysis of a material common to both art practice and contemporary scientific research as a means to create a body of visual artwork. Initial methodological exploration sought to explore associations with alchemical traditions of practice in contrast to contemporary scientific approaches informed by embedded laboratory experiences. The emergent methodology/critical framing of this research draws together Rheinberger’s experimental systems, alchemical theories relating to visual art practice through dirty Theory as informed by Mary Douglas’s theories on dirt and Helene Frichot’s proposition of “dirty theory” as relevant to creative practices (Rheinberger, 2012, Douglas, 1966, Frichot, 2019,). This research seeks to reassert value in intuitive approaches to visual art practice as research and interrogates through the research experience the conflicts inherent in knowledge production within a visual art practice aligned with alchemical sensibilities.
Gemma Dardis
A Lecturer at the Limerick School of Art and Design, Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland, and a Ph.D. Researcher with ACADEMY in the Limerick School of Art and Design. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose studio practice comprises ceramics, print, and photography, and the intersection of these material processes.
Her field of research utilises the creation of gold nanoparticle ceramic images as a means to explore the relationship between alchemical and scientific means of producing knowledge. Through a critical framing of the scientific laboratory as a field site, this study initiated an explorative analysis of a material common to both an arts practice and contemporary scientific research as a means to create a body of visual artwork.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally. A solo show Latent in Chimera Gallery Mullingar, Ireland (2017), as an invited artist Spare Room - Art, Architecture and Activism, Cork (2019), and has presented collaborative work at Impact 12 printmaking biennial, Bristol (2023).
Prof. Jaroslav Vostrý (1931–2025) was one of the foremost figures of Czech theatre: a playwright, director, critic, co-founder of the Drama Club, Rector of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU), and a greatly inspiring teacher. His most lasting contribution lies in founding the discipline of scenology, which he systematically developed from the 1980’s in books, studies, and the journal DISK. Rooted in practical theatre experience rather than abstract axioms, scenology combines analyses of productions, acting, literature, and visual arts, leading to a broader theory of scenicity. Vostrý distinguishes theatricality – professional performance before an audience – from scenicity, which may also appear in daily life, landscape, or art. For Vostrý, theatre functions as a laboratory of the “in-between”: presentation and representation, sign and meaning, actor and dramatic persona. He also linked the notion of scenic meaning to mirror neuron research, arguing that spectators co-experience actions kinesthetically, which explains the power of acting to ignite empathy and imagination. By uniting theatre practice with theoretical innovation, Vostrý opened new perspectives on theatre as both an art form and a model for understanding human action, culture, and society.
Jan Hyvnar
Professor Jan Hyvnar is a distinguished Czech theatre theorist, critic, and pedagogue. His academic and teaching career has been associated with major institutions – he has taught at Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Among his key publications: The Actor in Modern Theatre: On the Theatrical Reforms of the 20th Century (2011); On Czech Dramatic Acting of the 20th Century (2008), devoted to the development of acting, its transformations, and its relationship to the European theatrical tradition; and The French Theatrical Reform: From Antoine to Artaud (1996). Prof. Hyvnar has made a major contribution to the development of theoretical reflection on acting, nonverbal theatre, and theatre history, not only in the Czech Republic but also within the broader Central European context. He is recognized as a mediator between academia and artistic practice, as evidenced by his scholarly publications and his significant pedagogical activity across all the principal Prague arts schools.
The presentation will introduce a neural mechanism that appears to be exceptionally important for human cognitive processes and plays a crucial role in the perception of visual art. In one of our neuroimaging studies, we focused on the brain dynamics that occur during deep engagement with visual art—that is, when the viewer enters a process of meaning-making, in which the artwork elicits intertwined sensory, cognitive, and emotional responses. This neural mechanism will also be discussed in light of Professor Vostrý’s contribution to the theory of art. The talk will further highlight that it is not only science that can help us understand the power of art and why humanity has continuously engaged in artistic activity since the emergence of the modern human mind. But also that art as an experimental stimulus, as well as an object of study, can significantly contribute to neuroscience research and to our understanding of the evolution of human consciousness.
Dominika Grygarová
Dominika Grygarová graduated in General Theory and History of Art and Culture at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. In her doctoral dissertation, she explored the interconnection of research on the subjective experience of art with objective methods through phenomenology and neuroscience. She works as a researcher at the Centre for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she focuses primarily on the cognitive neuroscience of art and media. Her main goal is to contribute to the understanding of the specific psychological and neural mechanisms involved in the formation of the aesthetic experience. Her current research also addresses the social dimension of art, particularly through the study of inter-brain synchronization between two individuals during artistic activities. Within ongoing projects, she also investigates the impact of media on population mental health. In her work, she employs methods of functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-tracking, EEG, and population surveys. She collaborates on research projects with the Institute of Informatics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Third Faculty of Medicine at Charles University. In addition, she has cooperated with the Benedikt Rejt Gallery in Louny on the creation of educational and interactive components of several exhibitions.
Shortly before his passing in March of this year, Prof. Jaroslav Vostrý completed the manuscript of his book Osvobozené divadlo [Liberated Theatre], which I am currently preparing for publication and whose findings I would like to present at this symposium. Vostrý conceives Liberated Theatre not merely as a celebrated interwar phenomenon but as a specific form of artistic research of the avant-garde. He examines its capacity to transgress boundaries – setting itself against official trends, liberating itself from conventions, and seeking new modes of theatrical language. At the center of his analysis stands the renowned duo Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich, whose work combines mimetic art with dramatic structure and serves to test the possibilities of both political and aesthetic effect. At the same time, he considers the work of Jindřich Honzl, Jiří Frejka, and E. F. Burian, who represent alternative and often polemical paths within the same search. Vostrý thus presents Liberated Theatre as a laboratory in which productions function as experiments probing the relationship between stage and audience, the collective dimension of acting, and the extent to which theatre can intervene in social discourse. Unlike earlier studies focused on individual figures or particular periods, this monograph offers a comprehensive synthesis that interweaves historical reconstruction with critical reflection. Vostrý underscores that the question of the avant-garde is not only a matter of history but also a matter of contemporary understanding of what theatre may signify today as a form of artistic research.
Zuzana Sílová
Head of the Cabinet of History and Theory at the Department of Drama at DAMU and Director of the Institute for the Theory of Scenic Creation at DAMU, Zuzana Sílová authored numerous scholarly articles and monographs devoted to acting, particularly in relation to the genesis of the stage work. She serves as the managing editor of the Disk series and of the Study Texts of the Institute for the Theory of Scenic Creation series. She is currently the principal researcher of the pilot project Drama and Mimus at the Institute for the Theory of Scenic Creation, carried out within DAMU’s institutional research framework for the period 2024–2026.
Drawing from an ongoing project entitled Soft Laboratory, which engages research-creation processes in visual and moving image arts, this presentation will articulate a conceptual space where the production of knowledge cannot be reduced to either propositional consistency (as valued in empirical science) or performative aesthetics (as assumed in certain discourses on artistic singularity). The laboratory is here neither a metaphor nor an interdisciplinary playground, but an operational device where the thresholds of scientific method and artistic protocols are simultaneously enacted and displaced. More precisely, Soft Laboratory refers to an unstable configuration of practices—filmic, curatorial, textual—that enact stress on their own institutional limits: between university and studio, between observation and transformation, between individuation and collaboration. By engaging with the neurophysiological concept of allostasis (Sterling and Eyer), which privileges dynamic adjustment over homeostatic equilibrium, this research situates artistic work within a regime of differential regulation, in which knowledge production is inseparable from its affective, material, and infrastructural conditions. This epistemological stance implies not a fusion of art and science, but a deliberate disjunction, wherein artistic research creates conflicts with scientific expectations, precisely in order to produce another kind of situated and embodied knowledge.
Antoni Collot
A visual artist, filmmaker, and associate professor in Fine Arts and Aesthetics at the University of Lorraine (France), affiliated with the Centre de recherche sur les médiations (CREM, UR 3476), and ACTE (Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne). His research lies at the intersection of visual arts, cinema, and epistemology, with a focus on the conceptual frameworks of artistic research. He is the author of Les prises Doillon (Marest 2021), and co-editor of Intérieurs sensibles de Chantal Akerman (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2024). His films have been shown at FID Marseille, MoMI New York, and the CAC in Quito. He is currently preparing his habilitation, “Le laboratoire souple. Allostasie dans la création-recherche”, in which he explores unstable models of knowledge production at the margins of scientific protocols and artistic practices.
In recent years, the intersection of art and science has gained momentum and popularity as a joint field of interdisciplinary exploration. Both artists and scientists are increasingly looking to break down barriers and bridge domains with collaborations on exhibitions and joint research initiatives. However, beneath these often promising and successful enterprises lie serious challenges that often hinder the depth and sustainability of such partnerships. This talk will examine major tensions and misalignments that frequently arise within art-science collaborations. Artists often struggle with the complexity and rigor of scientific methodology, risking superficial or misinterpreted representations of research. Meanwhile, many scientists frequently undervalue the subjective, interpretive nature of art, demoting it to a communicative tool rather than an equal mode of inquiry. These different expectations can lead to frustration and/or superficial outcomes. This talk will focus on real-world case studies and years of experience facilitating cross-disciplinary projects, chairing and organizing joint sessions and conferences and trying to break down barriers. It presents an overview of lessons learned as well as recommendations on how this combination can work to create a practical framework that succeeds in fostering more equitable, dialogic, and transformative exchanges between artists and scientists. At the heart of the proposed solutions is a rethinking of collaboration—not as a convergence of parallel goals, but as a co-creation of new languages, processes, and perspectives.
Michael Lazar
A scientist and a professional artist who regularly combines these fields to offer insights into how artistic research interfaces with scientific inquiry, particularly in developing frameworks that bridge disciplinary gaps. Over the past four years, Lazar has organized and chaired a session dedicated to the art-science interface at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, the largest geoscience conference in Europe with over 20000 participants. Additionally, he is currently guest editing a special collection of papers on this topic for the prestigious journal iScience. He is also a Member of the Management Committee for the European Union's COST Action CA23158 - Artistic Intelligence - Responsiveness, accessibility, responsibility, equity (ARTinRARE).
We explore how learning pathways situated at the intersection of art and science can respond to the transformation of the arts through technological and scientific innovation. We argue that fostering creative agency in this context requires a paradigm shift: from fragmented and discipline-bound approaches towards systemic, transdisciplinary learning frameworks. Drawing on the Cyanotypes framework, five key clusters of creative agency are proposed as foundational dimensions for learning pathways: Collective agency, public agency, data-driven agency, value creation agency, and regenerative agency. By conceptualising these clusters as interconnected rather than isolated skills, learning is reframed as the cultivation of epistemic hybridity: the capacity to think, create, and act across disciplinary, methodological, and cultural boundaries. This hybridity enables learners to move beyond adaptation to technological and scientific change, towards becoming active agents in shaping innovation with social and ecological responsibility. We argue that such an integrated framework offers a powerful approach for learning at the intersection of art and science, preparing individuals to engage with complexity holistically, think outside established silos, and participate in the co-creation of future knowledge systems. It concludes that embedding these clusters within educational paradigms not only enriches artistic and scientific practices but also fosters the broader societal capacities necessary for navigating and shaping our rapidly changing world.
Sónia Alves
Sónia Alves has extended experience in working in and across diverse cultural contexts, museums and other institutions in Portugal and Germany. Since 2023 she works as scientific researcher for K8 Institut für strategische Ästhetik (Saarbrücken,
Germany) in Art, Culture, Technology, Learning Ecosystems and Future Skills and is currently active in several EU Projects CYANOTYPES (Erasmus+), Twin4Resilience (Interreg NWE) Hamlet (Horizon Heritage 2024). Other research interests include media theory, aesthetics, neocybernetics, ecologies of technology, digital ecology, media art, transformation design and systems design. She holds a Master’s in Communication Sciences with a research focus on Contemporary Culture and New Technologies.
Soenke Zehle
Media theorist, writer, teacher, and curator, with a focus on collaborative arts and technology research. Lecturer in Media Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Saar (HBKsaar), he is also the managing co-director of K8 Institut für strategische Ästhetik, gGmbH, the academy’s non-profit institute for generative research and regenerative design, as well as an affiliate researcher at the Ubiquitous Media Technologies Lab of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). He also worked as Managing Director of the academy’s xm:lab – Experimental Media Lab (2012-
2018), and as Action Program Director during the start-up phase of the European
Institute of Technology - Culture and Creativity (2023-2024). Current research concerns anticipation, collective intelligence design, and documentary aesthetics.
In this talk I share my fascination with the movement of air, as well as spatial capture of weather and climate. What sort of scales, spaces, architectures support artistic approaches to ephemerality of atmospheres, from temperature to light, clouds and mist to aerosols that escape direct perception? Drawing on my work for exhibitions Weather Engines (2022) and Climate Engines (2023-2024), I will focus on curatorial and art methods related to scales and questions of nesting of atmospheres within an exhibition space. I also aim to draw on an emerging curatorial plan with Finnish artist Josefina Nelimarkka to discuss art-science methods that address the experiential nature of climate research.
Jussi Parikka
Jussi Parikka is a professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark, where he is also the co-director of the Environmental Media and Aesthetics research program. He holds a visiting research professorship at the University of Southampton (Winchester School of Art), and is the author of several books on media, digital culture, and cultural theory, alongside his longstanding interest in histories and contemporary practices of art and technology. His recent books include the co-authored Lab Book (2022), Operational Images (2023), and the co-authored Living Surfaces (2024). Two of his books have been translated into Czech: What is Media Archaeology? and A Geology of Media. In addition, Martin Charvát wrote a book in Czech that acts as a fitting companion piece, Jussi Parikka: od archeologie ke geologii médií (NAMU, 2022).
What if art is not just a mirror of the world but a factory for its futures? This project brings artists and writers into dialogue, exploring how each generates knowledge through distinct but complementary methods – logic and empiricism on one side, perception, affect, and fabulation on the other. In an age where we are drowning in data yet starved for meaning, we argue that art is an urgent toolkit for survival: a laboratory of sensation and imagination that equips us to feel, not just forecast, the worlds to come. This conversation asks not how to predict the future, but how to inhabit it – together, creatively, critically, and sensuously.
Bernd Hezogenrath
Professor of American literature and culture at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is the author of An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster; An American Body|Politic: A Deleuzian Approach, and editor of The Farthest Place: The Music of John Luther Adams and Deleuze|Guattari & Ecology. His other publications include collections The Films of Bill Morrison. Aesthetics of the Archive (2017), Film as Philosophy (2017), and Practical Aesthetics (2021). He is also (together with Patricia Pisters) the main editor of the media-philosophical book series thinking|media with Bloomsbury.
In his keynote speech, Thomas Ostermeier will outline how a sociologically trained perspective on society directly influences his theatre work and artistic approach to plays and themes. For Ostermeier, the question of class affiliation provides a key source of inspiration when it comes to dramatic situations and the specific constellations of characters in a play.
A sociologically trained perspective opened Ostermeier's approach to the plays of Henrik Ibsen. In addition to all the symbolic, general psychological elements, Ibsen's characters are always very concretely situated in specific social and economic situations. Achieving social status and the fear of losing it are recurring and decisive motivating factors for them. This point of view runs through Ostermeier's examination of plays such as Nora, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder and, most recently, The Wild Duck.
In this context, a series of encounters profoundly influenced Ostermeier: while studying at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in East Berlin, the sociologist Wolfgang Engler introduced him to the writings of Adorno, Horkheimer, Norbert Elias, Foucault and Bourdieu. This taught Ostermeier to understand society as something that has developed historically. Later, it was Didier Eribon's personal story of working his way up from a very proletarian background to a position within academia that Ostermeier could very much relate to. He also has a close working relationship and friendship with Édouard Louis, with whom he repeatedly collaborates on projects.
Thomas Ostermeier
Thomas Ostermeier is a renowned German theatre director and artistic director of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, a position he has held since 1999. Internationally acclaimed for his incisive reinterpretations of both classical and contemporary drama, he has staged works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov alongside new plays by leading contemporary authors. Ostermeier’s productions are celebrated for their social and political engagement, psychological precision, and distinctive aesthetic language. He has presented his work at major festivals worldwide, including the Festival d’Avignon, and has received numerous awards, among them the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (2011). As a key figure in European theatre, Ostermeier continues to influence both artistic practice and theatre pedagogy through his directing, teaching, and international collaborations.
This presentation discusses one of the most transformative influences of AI on screendance—reconstructing the ontology of the physical body. AI not only leads to an innovation of visual effects of screendance, but also brings a fundamental challenge and expansion of the “dancing body”. AI breaks the laws of physics and deconstructs biological forms, creating a non-human, fluidized and programmable digital body. It provides the virtual body with dynamic abilities beyond the limits of physical human body, such as anti-gravity movement, granularized recombination, and super-scale deformation, creating the aesthetics of “impossible body” and expanding the boundaries of screendance narratives. In terms of artistic innovation, this kind of body liberation subverts the body-centered dance tradition: AI-driven morphology generation shifts the dance choreographic logic from human body dynamics to prompt regulation, hence creating a new creation mode— “algorithmic choreography”. However, this change also brings about new challenges: firstly, the digital body removes the sense of breathing and gravity of the physical body and questions the validity of emotional communication; secondly, AI dependence can undermine original creativity; thirdly, the necessity of traditional dance training has been questioned. This presentation argues that the future of screendance needs to be based on a collaborative creation ethics between humans and AI, maintaining the humanistic core of art while accepting the unique aesthetics of the virtual body. AI is not a substitute for artists, but rather a catalyst to redefine the nature of body, movement, and existence in dance.
Lin Zhu
An accomplished Chinese artist and educator specializing in screendance, dance choreography, and performing arts. She holds a Master's in Festive Arts from the University of Limerick (Ireland), alongside specialized dance teaching licenses from China and the UK. Since September 2025, she has been studying for a Ph.D. at the University of Aveiro, Portugal.
Lin creates innovative works merging traditional Chinese dance with contemporary forms and digital media, such as “Nanyin into the Painting” (2024) and “The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Path of Life” (2025), exhibited nationally and internationally. She also organizes workshops and festivals (e.g., Ri ‘Ra’ 2020) to foster cross-cultural dialogue.
In an age where generative AI tools increasingly shape how we write, design, and even think, this project asks a deliberately naïve question: What does it mean to think like a bot? What happens when we mimic the predictable, smooth, and coherent logic of bots until it breaks?
“How to Think Like a Bot” is a speculative, transdisciplinary attempt to fuse artistic experiments, critical algorithm analysis, and glitchy text practices. It proposes a simple method for surviving the age of generative AI: become stupider, but on purpose.
Stupidity, in this context, is not a failure, it is a method. An artistic tactic to interrupt the aesthetics of plausibility. A conscious misuse of machine logic. A way to reclaim ambiguity, error, and unproductive detours as critical epistemic tools.
The theoretical framework is based on Matteo Pasquinelli’s critique of neural ideology and the political unconscious of machine learning; Byung-Chul Han’s analysis of the disappearance of negativity in the transparency society; and Yuk Hui’s demand for technodiversity, resisting the universalization of Western computation.
Stupidity, here, is method, resistance, and aesthetic. It is a refusal to play along with the scripted brilliance of AI. It’s an invitation to drift, contradict, and fail generatively – as an act of epistemic sabotage.
Nina Wenhart
An associate professor at the University of Art and Design Linz. As a media art historian, she explores emerging technologies by experimenting with their limits, breaking points, and contextual implications.
This presentation examines the role of cinema, as both an art form and a scientific tool, in fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and generating new knowledge. By tracing the technological origins of cinema and its evolution into a powerful narrative medium, we will explore how it can serve as a bridge between specialized fields of knowledge. The analysis will focus on contemporary modalities of this collaboration, particularly the use of cinema for scientific communication, complex data visualization, exploring the ethical implications of technological advancements, and its potential as a research method in neurosciences and humanities. We will also discuss the inherent challenges in these collaborations and propose avenues for maximizing their impact on knowledge production and societal engagement.
Hajar Redouani
Holds a Ph.D. in Literature, specializing in Literature, Communication, and Audiovisual Arts, from Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco, with highest honors. Her thesis, titled “Representations of Freedom and Technical, Narrative, and Thematic Progression in Hamid Bénani’s La Nuit Ardente,” offers an in-depth cinematographic analysis of the Moroccan film La Nuit Ardente (2017), examining its technical, narrative, and thematic aspects through a constructivist approach and qualitative methodology.
Redouani is a lecturer in French language at the National School of Applied Sciences in Agadir and at the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences in Agadir. She also teaches “Film Analysis” within the Professional Bachelor's program: Cinematographic and Audiovisual Writing and Analysis, at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Ibn Zohr, Agadir.
Performing arts are creative expressions presented through live performances, including music, dance, theater, opera, and other disciplines. They serve as a dynamic reflection of diverse cultures and identities, while also playing a crucial role in cultural expression and community building. In all forms of performing arts, the human body is the essential medium of performance. Through long-term practice, artists’ bodies develop unique physical and expressive qualities. At the same time, the physical demands of performance may place artists at risk of injury or adverse health conditions. Scientific research focusing on artists’ bodies and movements can contribute to enhancing performance, both physically and mentally, and support injury prevention. Furthermore, performing arts themselves are known to enrich the quality of life for all people. In this lecture, I will introduce recent scientific findings related to performing artists, particularly dancers, which may provide valuable insights for both artists and non-artists.
Mayumi Kuno-Mizumura
A professor of the department of Performing Arts at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in Exercise/health sciences. She is the president of the Japanese Association for Dance Medicine and Science.
Since the mid-2010’s, graphic science has been on the rise. Visual interpretation not only appears as a convenient tool for knowledge transfer with the wider public but also for the co-production of knowledge (sketches in notebooks, comics-ellicitation). Based on a corpus of over 40 comics that we study from a mixed externalist-internalist perspective, we assess to what extent comics partake of a new poetics of knowledge and are relevant for popularizing research findings in social sciences. We address two main tensions generated by the comicization of knowledge – between ethnographic observations and fictions and between stereotypes, idealtypes and archetypes – and question the epistemic status of scholarly comics. Despite underlying assumptions and popular belief, understanding comics – furthermore if they are based on science – is neither universal nor natural. The taken-for-granted popularization should be nuanced as various indicators of sociology of reception highlight, both quantitatively (sales figures, library borrowings) and qualitatively (the sociological broadening of the readership is often only partial). A key insight is that comics reading demands specific skills that are not widely mastered, potentially complicating the goal of popularizing social sciences, as the comic format itself introduces a new language and set of comprehension skills that might actually create an additional barrier to understanding scientific content.
Thomas Alam
Senior lecturer in political science (University of Lille, CERAPS), with a specialization in political sociology. Previous research projects focused on multi-level public policies (food safety, obesity prevention, nightlife) and the sociology of administration and bureaucracy (ministerial cabinets, top civil servants, agencies, lobbies).
Nicolas Bué
Professor of political sciences (Artois University, CERAPS), with a specialization in political sociology. His work focuses on political parties, local power, the political profession, and the sociology of the body.
Since 2020, they both turned their attention to visual studies, specifically to the use of comics in teaching, research, and knowledge transfer. They organised a panel entitled “The Comicization of Academic Knowledge: the Sequential and Invisible Artification of Science?” at the 2024 international conference of Scuola Democratica and hosted a journée d’études “Le déploiement des sciences sociales ? Romans graphiques et recherches dessinées ” in January 2025 (Faculté des sciences juridiques, politiques et sociales, Université de Lille). They published “Politisation et raisons graphiques des BD de sciences sociales.” in Emmanuel Cherrier, Pierre-Alexis Delhaye, Serge Deruette and Stéphane François (dir.), Neuvième art, pouvoirs et politique, and are expecting other articles to be published in the coming months.
In academia, there is a bias towards text: published articles are valued more than conference talks, a text citation is preferred to a citation from a lecture, and even oral presentations at conferences are called “papers”.
Lectures, panel discussions, and conferences are formats for collective listening, but they took on conventions that make perception difficult: reading aloud texts that are too complicated for listening, speaking very fast in order to squeeze in as much material as possible, showing slides with long texts, sitting quietly for a long time without moving. When an image gets shown, it is rarely trusted by itself, and a layer of verbal explanation is added. In my drawing-based talk, I will dissect the decorum of conventional presentation formats and look into what impact they have on our attention. I will suggest that once a piece of research has been reduced to a text format, it might be difficult to add other modes without them being auxiliary. I will also provide a brief overview of the history of presentation tools and suggest that their affordances catalyzed different research content in different times, and that, if we don’t pick our presentation tools, the tools we use might be nudging us into doing research that fits to them.
Magda Stanová
A visual artist whose research-based practice results in artistic forms like visual essays and lecture shows. She smuggles performative lectures into academic conferences and a drawn theory of photography into photographic festivals. She looks into cognitive sciences for ideas about creative process and the perception of art, and combines them with the experience of an artist. She has authored two books – Algorithms in Art (2016) and In the Shadow of Photography (2022), and is co-author of The Pedestrian’s Venice (2017). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at EFA Project Space, New York; Angus Hughes Gallery, London; Školská 28, Prague; ThreeWalls, Chicago; Fremantle Arts Centre, Australia; ZPAF i S-ka, Krakow; and Shedhalle, Zurich.
She holds an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she now teaches doctoral-level classes related to artistic research.
Academy of performing arts in Prague
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