Research Symposium: All That is Alive

Program Overview

UTS Gallery and the UTS Faculty of Design and Society present a multidisciplinary research symposium that brings together practitioners working with living systems and regenerative ecologies.

The two-day symposium, with a dedicated online program, will share insights into designing with biological processes, material kinships, and more-than-human ecologies. The symposium offers a forum for new ecological understandings and multispecies solidarity, inviting researchers, creative practitioners, and students to engage in planetary thinking and place-based practices.

Traversing the hydrosphere, geosphere, atmosphere, and subterranean worlds, the program explores the porous boundaries between earth systems and the diverse forms of life they sustain. A keynote address by acclaimed artist and researcher Associate Professor Ionat Zurr will open the symposium. Zurr, together with Oron Catts, established the Tissue Culture & Art Project in 1996, which led to the establishment of SymbioticA and the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia.

Each session foregrounds situated, regenerative practices from within the biosphere: on being with water and aquatic environments; processes of growth, decay and renewal in terrestrial contexts; atmospheric relations shaped by air, aerosols, breath, scent and weather; and subterranean perspectives grounded in soil, microbes, mycelia and geological time.

In addition to the four in-person sessions is a dedicated online program—Alive across Site and Systems—bringing together international contributors whose regenerative and place-based practices expand the conversation beyond geographic bounds. It offers a satellite space for planetary thinking and distributed, networked approaches to making and research.

The Symposium is open to researchers, creative practitioners, students and HDR candidates, and anyone vested in more-than-human thinking and regenerative design on local and planetary scales. 

The symposium is presented by UTS Gallery and the UTS Faculty of Design and Society in conjunction with the UTS Gallery exhibition All That is Alive.

Program Schedule

Tuesday 16 September

4:00pm | Welcome to Country & Keynote (Ionat Zurr, SymbioticA, University of Western Australia)
Location: UTS Business School, (Building 8, Level 3), Ultimo NSW 2007

6:00pm | All That is Alive Exhibition Opening
Location: UTS Gallery, Level 4, Peter Johnson Building (Building 6), 702 Harris St, Ultimo

Wednesday 17 September

Location: Peter Johnson Building, Level 4/702 Harris St, (Building 6, Level 4, Room 7)

9:30am–12:00pm — Session 1 | Subterranean Worlds: Life underfoot
Subterranean Worlds will explore underground networks, mycelial thinking, embodied labour, and the systems and knowledges that operate beneath the surface. 

• Pia Interlandi: "Afterlives of Bodies in Dress and Death"

• Keg de Souza: "Fungal Futures: Growth in the Shadows"

• Samuel Hodge: "Digging Up My Mother's Garden"

• Kumar Biswajit Debnath: "‘Living’ Fungal Materials: Mycelium-Based Composites for Climate-Resilient Architecture"

• Alia Parker: "Repairing repair: Patchworking with fungi"

1:30pm–4:00pm — Session 2 | Aquatic Ecologies: Being with water

Aquatic Ecologies will examine dynamic aquatic ecosystems as sites of ecological sustenance and adaptive innovation. Participants will share practices that collaborate with algal organisms,  promote intertidal regeneration, and support marine and freshwater habitat restoration.

• Clare Britton, Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor: "Gooliyari and walking with water"

• Jessie French: "Other Matter"

• Martina Doblin: "Reimagining Infrastructure for Resilient Coastal Futures"

• Carla Sbrocchi: "Entangled Wellbeing: Human-Marine Relationships in Urban Restoration Practice"

5.30pm–7.30pm AEST / 9.30am–11.30am CET — Session 3 | Alive across Site and Systems (online)

In addition to the four in-person sessions is a dedicated online program—Alive across Site and Systems—bringing together international contributors whose regenerative and place-based practices expand the conversation beyond geographic bounds. It offers a satellite space for planetary thinking and distributed, networked approaches to making and research.

• Sébastien Maertinez-Barat, Benjamin Lafore, Florian Jomain (MBL Architects): "The Company of Things"

• Julia Lohmann: "Algae carry the ocean: Environmental Practices in the Department of Seaweed"

• Ana Compadre and Sandra Revuelta Albero (Atelier LUMA): "Bioregional Design Practices by Atelier LUMA"
  

Thursday 18 September

Location: Peter Johnson Building (Building 6, Level 4, Room 7), 702 Harris St, Ultimo

10:00am–12:30pm — Session 4 | Atmospheric Relations: Breathing together

Atmospheric relations explores shared spaces of breath, scent, thermal interactions, and weather patterns. Speakers will consider invisible molecular and chemical processes made tangible through embodied and relational practices, examining and measuring atmospheric conditions such as air quality, energy, sonic fields and scented landscapes.

• Rafael Luna Zelaya: "Beyond Human Inclusivity: Designing Cities for Multi-Species Coexistence"

• Robyn Schofield: "The Atmosphere: A scientist’s view"

• Joyce Hinterding: "Floric Oscillations"

• Clare Cooper: "Futuring Histories of Atmospheric Relations"
  
  

1:30pm–4:00pm — Session 5 | Terrestrial Assemblages: Growth, decay and regeneration

Terrestrial Assemblages explores Country, land and soil as sites of regeneration, microbial activity, fermentation, decomposition, material and cultural practice, and interspecies relationships.

• Madeleine Collie: "Following the plot"

• Bianca Hester: "Situating embodied entanglements within deep time terrains"

• Tully Arnot: "Teaching Sand to Think"

• Kate Dunn: "Terrestrial Assemblages: Earth as Home