The annual transdisciplinary symposium IMPACT invites practitioners and theorists from the arts and sciences to engage with changing, overarching, and complex themes, linking their diverse perspectives and formulating common concerns.

›IMPACT23‹ explores the interrelationships between humans, animals, plants, and objects – in ecosystems and in the technosphere – and how these shape our patterns of perception through assumptions, projection, and selection. ›Ecologies of Attention‹ questions what powerful phenomena, forces, connections and exchange relations remain hidden or obscured as a result. What methods, tools, strategies, or systems are required to reevaluate these connections and foster productive relationships? Which ingrained patterns need to be disrupted? 

The starting point and vital forum of the four-day symposium are the so-called Assemblies – a series of concise presentations where participants introduce themselves and their work to one another. The second assembly ran under the topic: Ecologies of Attention –  the fragility of facts, normality and social norms.

• Martyna Marciniak is an artist, researcher and architect. She discussed the digital aesthetics of fact, based on her recent essay ›Aesthetics of Spatial Jurisprudence‹ by uncovering aesthetics of evidence that became hijacked using examples from art, media, architecture.
• Marco Kramer is a psychiatrist and postdoctoral researcher living in Germany. He is interested in reality and how differently it is experienced and lived by each individual and argues why new transdisciplinary ways have to be explored that radically burst open our discursive normality.
• Ahnjili ZhuParris is a data scientist, artist, and science communicator. In her scientific and artistic research she explores the multifaceted relationship between AI, surveillance, and how these influences shape our perceptions and categorizations of the world.
• Nancy Awori’s research focusses on the representation of black lesbian, bisexual and queer women in African cinema. Trying to create a safe space for these women, her work paves a way for them to come forward and tell their story.

A project within the framework of The Alliance of International Production Houses, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.