FESTIVAL’S SPEAKERS AND COLLABORATORS

Dr. John Bosco Conama
Director of the Centre for Deaf Studies  and an Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin

Dr. John Bosco Conama is a prominent figure in Deaf studies and advocacy. He currently serves as the Director of the Centre for Deaf Studies and as an Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin. John actively shapes policies to enhance the rights and inclusion of Deaf individuals. His efforts in promoting and preserving Irish Sign Language are widely acclaimed, and his scholarly publications inform discourse on Deaf individuals’ experiences and the importance of social policies in safeguarding linguistic diversity.

 

Shivant Jhagroe
Writer, researcher, artist, and an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University

Shivant Jhagroe is a writer, researcher and artist. He works as an assistant professor at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University. In his new book ‘Beyond Sustainability’ (in Dutch, ‘Voorbij Duurzaamheid’), Shivant argues that thinking and acting from the perspective of sustainability often functions as a ‘green pacifier’ that prevents radical and just system change. The moral fixation on sustainability narratives (e.g. electric cars, eco-tourism) makes us forget how deeply sustainability is intertwined with colonialism, capitalism and social exclusion. He therefore advocates for a different political imagination, towards an ‘eco-just society’, which prioritises a loving and caring relation with the Earth and each other.

Grace Turtle
Designer, artist and researcher at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the University of Technology Delft

Grace Turtle is a (post-disciplinary) queer, Australian-Colombian designer, artist, and researcher. They use experimentation and play (Table Top Games, LARPing, simulation design, etc.) to mobilise imaginaries towards more just and sustainable futures and render worlds otherwise. They have a decade of experience across Australia, Asia, Europe, Central and South America. They are a member of Becoming, a critical and speculative art and design research collective based in Barcelona and presented at TEDx, The Influencers Festival, and PRIMER. As a Design Manager at Deloitte, they have worked with government agencies, cultural institutions, and third sector organisations, driving participatory design research, futuring, and service design for transition.

Joost Vervoort
Associate Professor of Transformative Imagination at Utrecht University

Joost Vervoort is an Associate Professor of Transformative Imagination at Utrecht University. A futurist, ecologist and sustainability scientist by training, Joost has spent many years leading scenario processes for governments all around the world before deciding to focus more on societal futures and public imagination. His work focuses on the politics of the future – who shapes the collective imagination. Joost’s work investigates imagination infrastructures and work across creative sectors, including video games, music and more. In recent years, Joost has investigated how mystery and spirituality underlie societal possibilities, and used the concept of ‘Infrastructures of Mystery’ to connect personal and collective spiritual experience and societal transformation. He works with meditation teacher Rosa Lewis who will also join the session.

Madelaine Ley
Madelaine is a philosopher, spiritual ecologist, and contemplative artist

Madelaine Ley’s varied work explores the same question: how can we live in deep connection? Her creative approach to technology ethics weaves together over a decade of training in both academic philosophy and spiritual care. Her varied work includes lecturing at Delft University of Technology and Lassonde Engineering School in Canada on digital citizenship and responsible AI; hosting Sacred Sessions (non-religious gatherings that blend philosophy, art, science, contemplative practice and collective reflection); and offering her unique transdisciplinary approach to events, research projects, and media outlets.

 

RADIUS
RADIUS is a center for contemporary art and ecology

RADIUS works collaboratively with artists and other stakeholders to tell the urgent and necessary story of climate and systems change by means of art. They do this through a continuous programme, consisting of exhibitions, public events and educational projects. Just as systems are made of fossilised stories, they work together with artists to tell stories that will shape the systems of the near future. Using imagination and climate action, RADIUS focusses on shaping the blueprints for regenerative and sustainable more-than-human worlds. RADIUS is located in the city of Delft and stationed in the pump house and water basin belonging to the Delft water tower, a historical national monument and architectural landmark. With five hundred square meters of subterranean exhibition space, their program is dedicated to the intersection of art, science and ecology.

Floris Schönfeld
Floris Schönfeld is a visual artist based in Amsterdam.

He works mainly with film, installation and performance. The focus of much of his practice as an artist is in exploring systems of belief and radical alternative perspectives. The stories people build and maintain to give meaning and purpose to the world around them. He is interested in these stories as sites of potential transformation and radical reimagining. His work and the projects he develops are sites where this reimagining can take place, often in a highly collaborative way. Recently his collaborations have expanded to include non-human entities such as artificial neural networks, animals and plants.

Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes
Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes is a researcher, curator, and futurist exploring the intersections of temporality, technology, and ancestral knowledge

With over a decade of experience, Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes’ work challenges Western linear notions of time and envisions futures informed by Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, and alternative cosmologies. He is the founder of the Temporality Lab, a space for rethinking time beyond extractive models, and has led projects such as the Heritage Innovation Lab at the University of Jena with Time Machine Europe, where he co-developed methodologies for AI-driven storytelling in museums and conservation. As the Research Lead of Ancestral AI, with AIxDesign, he explores how artificial intelligence can engage with oral traditions, prophecy, and cyclical time instead of reinforcing colonial data structures.

Feminist Generative AI Lab x AICON: Kilo-girls
 AICON and the Feminist Generative AI Lab present Julia Luteijn’s artwork ‘Kilo-girls’

How is AI amplifying gender bias in language? AICON and the Feminist Generative AI Lab present Julia Luteijn’s artwork ‘Kilo-girls’: a collection of computer-generated poems that reflect programmed gender biases, while paradoxically reminding us of women’s historical role in computing.

Feminist Generative AI Lab, EUR and TUDelft
The Feminist Generative AI Lab explores, embraces and develops feminist theories and methods in relation to GenAI, recognizing that generative AI is shaped by historical contexts that reflect and reproduce systemic inequalities. The Lab is an initiative across TUDelft and the EUR, funded by Convergence.

Julia Luteijn is an artist involved in AICON, a movement connecting citizens, artists, and researchers in an exploration of the social-beneficial potential and challenges of AI. AICON is an initiative of Erasmus Professor Moniek Buijzen.

Francisca Grommé is an Assistant Professor in Digitalisation in Work and Society at the EUR Department of Public Administration and Sociology (DPAS).

Sara Colombo is an Assistant Professor of Designing Responsible AI at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft.

 

 

Imagis Lab and Virginia Tassinari 
Imagis Lab is a design research group based at the Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano.
Virginia Tassinari is a Assistant Professor at the Department of Human-Centered Design at University of Technology Delft

Imagis Lab has expertise in audiovisual language, transmedia systems, and the narratives. The group explores the intersection of communication, storytelling, and design-driven transformation, developing innovative strategies and projects that engage diverse audiences in various contexts.
Virginia Tassinari’s research focuses on how philosophy can contribute to the contemporary design research discourse, and particularly to address the (cosmo) politics of designing facing the Anthropocene. During For Love of the World they will invite you to explore the transformative power of words through co-design and storytelling practices and to help transform narratives around the prison system.

Yke Bauke Eisma
Dr. ir. Yke Bauke Eisma is an assistant professor at University of Technology Delft

Yke Bauke Eisma conducts research on understanding and quantifying human-robot interactions. Additionally, he has a strong interest in existential philosophy; from this perspective, he frequently reflects on the impact of modern technology on our humanity.

 

 

 

The Pen Test
Jesse Allison, Derick Ostrenko, and Vincent Cellucci are arts collaborators who work at the intersection of art, language, and technology

Jesse is a leader in sonic art technology, thought, and practice and an Associate Professor of Electronic Music at Louisiana State University (LSU).
Derick is an Associate Professor of Digital Art at LSU and media artist who creates physical and virtual systems that reveal hidden networks between people by creating structures for innovative forms of expression and discovery.
Vincent is a poet with a curious aptitude for digital multimedia; he works for the TU Delft Library and combines poetry and computational creativity at Leiden University.

 

In collaboration with KALEIDOS
KALEIDOS is a student run initiative at Theater de Veste

Kaleidos is a culturally stimulating evening at Theater de Veste – an evening where you first attend a performance and then get overwhelmed by bands, DJs, and more! They combine art, theater, and nightlife into a refreshing, disorienting, and always peculiar mix.

 

 

 

Jan van Steenbergen
Jan van Steenbergen is a linguist, journalist and translator

Can you make your own language? Jan van Steenbergen will give a short talk in the Kaleidos maker space Jardin d’Espoir about constructive language (conlang). Jan invented his own languages. After his talk, Kaleidos will host a workshop where you can  try to invent your own language.