ISEA 2023 SYMBIOSIS
  • OctoAnemone - Interactive Organisms for Non-human Communications in the Post-Anthropocene Era, Yin Yu
    OctoAnemone: Interactive Organisms for Non-human Communications in the Post-Anthropocene Era, Yin Yu

General theme: SYMBIOSIS

Each year, ISEA proposes a general and unifying theme. This year's theme is symbiosis and is broken down into three sub-themes. 

It is a program that will associate works on symbiosis but also projects that invoke symbiosis as a metaphor or simply as an inspiration. It is an invitation to discover in a new way, both serious and curious, projects that closely associate creation, research and technology.
In an era of global crisis — ecological and economic; sanitary and socio-political — symbiosis is a notion that allows us to explore the metamorphosis afoot and to imagine possible futures. This symposium offers an experimentation incubator where artists, designers, scientists, and other thinkers will exchange and debate on processes and practices, exhibiting innovating projects along the way.

Symbiosis is a cornerstone of life itself — no organism, nor any species more widely, could survive isolated and without exchanges . This applies as much to human societies as to the relations of those societies with their environments. More than a simple co-existence, symbiosis involve interdependence. It can be positive, neutral, or negative, varying according to the dynamic between the relations between the parties. We must, then, choose our symbiotic models wisely. This is the thematic orientation of this year’s conference.

Symbiosis — at once object, subject, and pre-condition for this international gathering.

ISEA2023 SYMBIOSIS is a symbiotic event: trans-disciplinary (including visual arts, theater, music, design, cinema, sociology, philosophy, economics, engineering, mathematics, biology, physics , ...) and inter-sectorial, concerning the arts, creatives industries, research, and citizenship more widely.

View themes and details in ISEA2023 SYMBIOSIS’s call for proposals.

ISEA2023 SYMBIOSIS invites artists, designers, academics, researchers, innovators, and creators to contribute to the debate on our symbiotic world, using the following sub-categories.
  • Je viens de te voir en rêve, Marion Roche
    Je viens de te voir en rêve, Marion Roche

The three sub-themes

Symbiotic individuations: the planet’s next inhabitants trans-humanism 
Hybrid beings • Inter-specificity • New individuations

Which type of “hybrid beings” are coming into existence today, and thereby associating the human and the non-human? What new forms will they take, and will they be the next inhabitants of our planet?

Experiments on trans-humanism, the emergence of new artificial autonomies, and new representations of natural elements are examples of the exploratory perspectives to be presented and discussed.

Symbiotic organizations: new alliances
Ecosystems • Collaborative networks • Resilient societies • Biosphere • Scale

Human societies have founded their equilibrium upon multitudinous and interdependent forms of symbiosis across a wide swathe of domains: ecology, economy, culture, technology, and more.What happens when a given event destroys this fragile equilibrium?

Covid-19 and the ecological crisis have more than demonstrated to us the necessity and urgency of such reflection. How can the marrying of art, science, and technology help us to surmount new challenges?

Researchers, artists, designers, and leading experts will offer their perspectives on these resolutely trans-disciplinary approaches, with the shared ambition of contributing to a world that is more resilient and at ease in its alterity.

Symbiotic imaginaries: inventing worlds
Utopia • The unthought of • Hybridization • Alternative narratives • Myths • Representations

In order to exist and prosper, symbiotic relationships — relationships in which each partner derives reciprocal benefits indispensable to their survival — are essential. Symbiosis is a vital necessity at all levels of all known eco-systems. But “necessary” does not imply that it should be reduced to its pragmatism or instrumentality. Symbiosis also opens us to new imaginaries, be they novel or redundant in the context of their corresponding era. If modes of collective imagination vary according to perspectives, they are always multiple and in dialogue with reality — what, therefore, constitutes the symbiotic imaginations of today and how and why invent new ones?

Organizer

Co-organizers