Conference | Live—stream
Sat 18 June + Sun 19 June
The two-day conference was the heart of the festival and offered a dynamic range of performative lectures, interviews, listening sessions, conversations and a revolving ritual installation that expand on the festival's theme of Mutation. Get to know the work of artists, designers, musicians and researchers and how they dream about, and propose adaptive futures. How to reorientate ourselves collectively, and foster new forms of kinship with more-than-human entities, towards post-human worlds?
The sessions were moderated by Shailoh Phillips, Abdelrahman (Abdo) Hassan, Katía Truijen and Jarl Schulp.
Saturday 18 June
Attuning to Mutating Worlds
Meet the makers and thinkers who challenge our perception of reality Saturday 18 June: Attuning to Mutating Worlds The programme on Saturday Attuning to Mutating Worlds will invite artists and thinkers to propose ways to engage with, and direct our attention to, our changing environments, systems and technologies.
Session 1: Energy, Electricity
Geographer Adam Bobbette & artist Vibeke Mascini
Energy, Electricity will look at the ways in which we understand and engage with energy as a resource that is fundamental for life. How have fossil fuels shaped our sense of self? Can we imagine a post-carbon culture without re-imagining what it means to be a person?
Session 2: Other Frequencies
Creative researcher Colette Aliman & sound artist Andrius Arutiunian
During Other Frequencies, sound artists and researchers are invited to discuss ways of deep listening and techniques for tuning in with (non)human bodies and environments.
Session 3: Realms of Mutation
Marina Otero Verzier & Yasaman Sheri
Realms of Mutation will look at how to unfold, read and interact with our entangled energy- and information systems, landscapes, and (non-)human bodies.
Sunday 19 June
Collective Reorientation
The second day of the conference on Sunday will focus on Collective Reorientation, asking how we can practise communal forms of thinking, experiencing and action.
Session 4: Postcapitalist Design
Designer, researcher and organizer Selçuk Balamir & Writer, broadcaster, and founding editor of Salvage, Richard Seymour.
Its first session Postcapitalist Design discusses how to design for a postcapitalist world. In response to Western extractivist and capitalist information- and energy systems, researchers, activists, artists are experimenting with alternative modes of governance and post-capitalist design strategies to sustain existing and foster new communities.
Session 5: Queer Ecologies and In-Betweenness
The Institute of Queer Ecology (Nicolas Baird) & artist Kumbirai Makumbe
In Queer Ecologies and In-Betweenness, we ask how to undo destructive human-centric hierarchies, by engaging with queer and feminist theory and decolonial thinking, directing our attention to the in-between.
Session 6: Wxtchcraft
Storyteller and spell casting audiovisual artist Juliette Lizotte & visual artist Dayna Casey and curator Erika Sprey
The final conversation of FIBER Festival’s conference will revolve around Wxtchcraft, proposing altered ways of learning, thinking and being. Inspired by magical thinking, artists and researchers are revisiting moments before the industrial revolution and past spiritual traditions to explore paths to other futures.