Free symposium in Rotterdam: Too Close!
Happening on Friday October 23rd: Too Close! On the Pleasures and Perils of an Entangled Existence, a one-day symposium on what relationality means in theory and practice.
Short content:
We know that more just and equitable relations between humans and between humans and non-humans are absolutely necessary to everyone’s future survival, but what does it actually mean to say that everything is relational and everything is connected? If everything is entangled with everything else, in what terms can we begin to understand modes of being in relation? What happens if we take relation(ality) as our starting point, both theoretically and materially? And how might we cope with living with that which constantly feels too close for comfort?
This is a free event with ample tea and coffee provided throughout the day, and enough breaks to take everything in and digest all the content…
The event page with sign-up link and a downloadable full day programme can be found here: https://vu.nl/en/events/2026/too-close-the-pleasures-and-perils-of-an-entangled-existence
Speakers
- Kathrin Thiele (Universiteit Utrecht)
- Wendy Wuyts (TU Eindhoven)
- Katja Kwastek (VU Amsterdam)
- Sebastian Scholz (VU Amsterdam)
- Audronė Žukauskaitė (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute)
- Jort van der Laan (Universiteit Leiden).
Day Programme
10:00-10:30: Walk-in and registration with coffee and tea
10:30-10:50: Words of welcome by organising team
Session 1: Relationality in theory and practice
10:50-11:20: Relation(ality) as Starting Point: Onto-Epistemology, Viscerality, Politics by Kathrin Thiele
11:20-11:50: Multispecies design, care and reenchantment in times of exilic disenchanted ecologies by Wendy Wuyts
11:50-12:10: Q&A
12:10-13:30: Lunch break
Session 2: Complex ecologies, becoming
13:30-13:40: Welcome back!
13:40-14:10: (Ir)rationally relational? – Naturecultures in Contemporary Art by Katja Kwastek
14:10-14:40: Presentation by Sebastian Scholz
14:40-15:00: Q&A
15:00-15:30: Coffee break
Session 3: Processes of relation
15:30-15:40: Welcome back!
15:40-16:10: On the Modes of Existence of Living Beings: Transduction by Audrone Žukauskaitė
16:10-16:40: You Were in the Shape of an Arrow, and Now You’re the Shape of a Bowl
by Jort van der Laan
16:40-16:55: Q&A audience
17:00-17:30: Concluding panel discussion
17:30-18:30: Drinks
My 30 minute-presentation : Multispecies design, care and reenchantment in times of exilic disenchanted ecologies
How can we cope with living too close to more-than-humans in times of ecological crises? This presentation explores embodied experiences of nature connection and multispecies entanglement through the everyday practices of co-designing, inhabiting, and caring for a circular timber tiny house in a regenerative neighbourhood in the Netherlands, established on a former concrete wastescape. Rather than treating design as a means of managing or restoring nature, I approach it as an ongoing practice of becoming-with. Engaging with Val Plumwood’s ecofeminist ideas, Donna Haraway’s ethics of making kin, Maria Puig De la Bellacasa’s more than human ethics, Anna Tsing’s attention to the collaborative possibilities that emerge within damaged landscapes, Jane Bennett’s notion of enchantment as an affective force that rekindles ethical attentiveness, Astrida Neimanis’ hydrofeminism and Stacy Alaimo’s transcorporeality, Michael Marder’s concept of exilic ecologies, which foregrounds the shared displacement and estrangement experienced by both human and more-than-human beings under conditions of ecological crisis. Together, these perspectives invite an understanding of care as a situated, embodied, and reciprocal practice of learning to inhabit everchanging disrupted worlds.
Drawing on autoethnographic reflections, I examine moments of pleasure, discomfort, vulnerability, and surprise that arise through encounters with living and material companions. An ailanthus reclaiming disturbed soils and dancing with thunder storms, a hornet creating its nest in a nearby abandoned structure, and ongoing negotiations with mosquitoes reveal entanglement as neither harmonious nor merely burdensome. Instead, closeness becomes a site where enchantment and friction coexist, unsettling anthropocentric assumptions about health, safety, control and the Self.
In addition to my observations in and around me, I also write and facilitate new stories, informed by practices such as forest bathing and writing(with)plants, decentering the human perspective and inviting for a different worldview. In this way, multispecies design is a transformative practice of care and reenchantment, which expands our boundaries of our (ecological) self.
⏳ Time: 10:00-17:30
📍 Location: Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam
👄 Language: English
Full event info and sign-up form: https://vu.nl/en/events/2026/too-close-the-pleasures-and-perils-of-an-entangled-existence
Event poster: Daan Timmer
Art: Rinella Alfonso
This symposium is organised in partnership with the Environmental Humanities Center at VU Amsterdam and with financial support from VU Amsterdam and the Dutch Research Council (grant VI.Veni.221C.026 as part of the research project CINEAGRI — Global Elements of Cinema).
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