12.02.25, (cancelled) Lennart Soberon, Universal Soldier (1992) en de maakbare man

Tickets are available via the website of VIERNULVIER. Students and staff of HOGENT, Ghent University, Artevelde, KASK & Conservatorium can send an email to helena.verheye@hogent.be with a photo of their staff or student card to receive a discount code for a free ticket.

‘Onvertaalbaar’ is Lisette Ma Neza's intimate search for her own language. She grew up in a multilingual environment and discovered that no language is complete. Through untranslatable words, memories and encounters, she explores how language barriers both clash and merge, and how multilingualism can be both vulnerable and enriching.

‘There are few people who can touch you with words in such a way that it seems as if they are holding up a mirror to you and opening a window to their magical inner world. Lisette does this time and time again, and I am grateful to be able to read her and learn from her.’ – Dalilla Hermans, author and theatre maker

Lisette will read from her book and theatre maker Aminata Demba will talk to her. Afterwards, you can buy the book at the book stand and we will conclude with drinks and music. Untranslatable by Lisette Ma Neza is a publication in the Karakters series, pocket-sized essays on philosophy and cultural criticism. The Karakters are a collaboration between Studium Generale, Academia Press, deBuren and rekto:verso.

• Lisette Ma Neza grew up in the Netherlands speaking French, English, Dutch and Kinyarwanda. She moved to Brussels to study audiovisual arts at the LUCA School of Arts, and she still lives there today. She is now an award-winning slam poet, the official city poet of Brussels, and gives poetry workshops at the Paleis in Antwerp and the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg (KVS).
• Aminata Demba is an actress, presenter, moderator and artistic team member at the theatre company Laika vzw. In recent years, she has been a creator and performer in various theatre productions at NT Gent and KVS, among others. In addition to her acting career, she is the driving force behind RepresentBelgium, an initiative to make our visual culture in the audiovisual sector more inclusive for underrepresented groups. She also gives lectures on the theme to film students and is often asked to speak or moderate events.
• Graziela Dekeyser is an Assistant Professor in the Education, Culture and Society research group at KU Leuven. Her research expertise lies at the intersection of multilingualism, emotions and educational inequality.In the coming years, she will focus specifically on how current pedagogical issues and new school concepts in primary education can contribute to pedagogical policy in a diversifying educational landscape. Graziela is also strongly committed to close cooperation with the education sector, including through her chairmanship of the LOP Primary Education Antwerp.

The Ballroom is accessible to wheelchair users. The lift at the reception takes you to the right floor. A sign language interpreter will be provided for this lecture. If you have any further questions about accessibility facilities, please contact the organisation: anais.vanertvelde@hogent.be

More information about the accessibility of the venue

This lecture is part of the Dag van de Filosofie, tickets will be available starting from February 10 via www.dagvandefilosofie.be

Monsters and the monstrous have always evoked the contradictory responses of fascination and fear. The boundaries between the human and the monstrous are dangerously porous and how these boundaries are drawn works to define who we are and how we define the normal (body). A sense of ontological, epistemological and ethical uncertainty and confusion that can resolve either in outright horror at the human inability to control a seemingly threatening materiality, or in a move towards alternative and more hopeful modes of becoming.

It’s little exaggeration to say that the representation of the monstrous/the anomalously embodied/the strange leaks and flows across material, political, philosophical, artistic and bioscientific imaginaries alike. The very excessiveness of corporeality that promises to productively transgress conventional expectations and boundaries can be both scholarly and fun, and under conditions of promise can revalue what has been figured as the excluded other.

Following the lecture, Margrit Shildrick will engage in a conversation with Professor of Ethics and Moral Philosophy Seppe Segers. This afternoon is a collaboration between the Dag van de Filosofie, Ghent University and Studium Generale Gent.

• Margrit Shildrick is Guest Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production at Stockholm University and works mainly in the field of biophilosophy. Her projects include an ongoing collaboration with Queer Death Studies; excursions into bioart and its posthumanist implications; and rethinking the concept of the gift as far more than exchange. Books include Leaky Bodies and Boundaries (1997), Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self (2002), Dangerous Discourses: Subjectivity, Sexuality and Disability (2009), and Visceral Prostheses: Somatechnics and Posthuman Embodiment (2023).
• Seppe Segers is a professor of ethics and moral science at the Department of Philosophy and Moral Science at Ghent University. He teaches ethics, moral science and feminist criticism, exploring the open meaning of “morality”, the relationships between description and prescription, and between moral value and non-moral value (if such a thing exists). Most of his published work deals with applied ethics.

This lecture and aftertalk will be in English and will take place in the Zwarte Zaal at KASK & Conservatorium. The Zwarte Zaal is located on the ground floor and is accessible to wheelchair users, there’s also an accessible toilet in the hallway of KASKcafé. In case you use a wheelchair, go via the entrance of KASKcinema instead of the Louis Pasteurlaan entrance. There are works in the street of KASKcinema, but it’s possible to pass bu the entrance at Godshuizenlaan 4. A translation into Flemish sign language will be provided. If you have any further questions about accessibility facilities, please contact the organisation: anais.vanertvelde@hogent.be

British biologist Charles Elton is often regarded as the founder of research into animals and plants that colonise new areas. His 1958 book The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants is considered the official starting point for this field of study. However, naturalists had been observing life forms establishing themselves in unfamiliar environments long before that.

As early as the eighteenth century, the famous Swedish scholar Carolus Linnaeus observed that exotic plants sometimes spread on their own and take root in the wild. He was the first to map how these newcomers spread across the world. Humans in particular play a key role in this.

Unlike today, Linnaeus did not see these successful exotic species as a threat, but as an enrichment of the native nature. It was none other than Charles Darwin who was the first to label a successful exotic species as “invasive”.

During his voyage on the Beagle, he saw how a European garden plant was rapidly spreading across the pampas of South America, displacing typical pampas plants. Not long after, Europe was hit by its first real plant invasion: a seemingly innocent aquatic plant from North America captivated science, politics and the press.

In this lecture, botanical philosopher Norbert Peeters will talk more about this forgotten history of thinking about plants that establish themselves in new areas. He will base his talk on his recent doctoral research. After the lecture, Norbert Peeters will talk to Tim Adriaens, a landscape ecologist specialising in invasive species. Helen Weeres, Saïda Ragas and Malika Soudani will provide literary and cinematic interventions on the subject of being exotic.

• Norbert Peeters is a botanical philosopher, writer and university teacher in Philosophy at Wageningen University & Research. Peeters studied Archaeology and Philosophy. At Leiden University, he is writing a dissertation on the conceptual history of invasion ecology, in which he writes about the earliest developments in thinking about invasive plants. As a botanical philosopher, he is interested in the extraordinary world of plants. Following Darwin's vision of the plant kingdom, Peeters argues for a different way of looking at and describing plants. In 2016, he made his debut with Botanical Revolution: The Plant Theory of Charles Darwin. He subsequently wrote Rumphius' Herbarium: Stories from the Ambonese Flora (2020) and Wilderness Varnish: A Philosopher in the Vondelpark (2021), among other works. In 2023, he co-edited the reissue of Flora Batava: the wild plants of the Netherlands.
• Helen Weeres has a background in poetry, literary and cultural analysis, and gender studies, and works in the (research) arts alongside regenerative farmers, scientists, and other artists. Helen's practice is fuelled by poetry and a fascination with artefacts and instruments that inspire regenerative interactions between humans and a broader ecosystem. Themes such as human-inclusive ecosystems, lost (pagan) rituals and folklore, queer ecology, and human-soil relationships are often central to Helen's evocative poems, performances, installations, and (inter)active gatherings. Helen is co-organiser and coordinator of Queer miQ, an “open” stage that invites FLINTAQ* people to “queer” the microphone. In 2025-2026, Helen will develop new literary work outside the book in collaboration with TILT, made possible in part by the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
• Saïda Ragas is an illustrator and comic strip artist. Her work is based on her idealistic, sex-positive and feminist ideas. Through playful and colourful images, she shares personal experiences, social footnotes and dream images. In 2024, Saïda was a finalist in the annual illustration competition De Stoute Stift (The Naughty Pencil) organised by deBuren. Together with Kato Kagenaar, Saïda is part of the sex-positive art collective HALFNAAKT.
• Malika Soudani is an author and teacher of creative writing in primary and secondary education in the Netherlands. In 2021, she graduated in Creative Writing at ArtEZ Arnhem with the poetry collection Waar ik een slaapkamer heb gehad (Where I had a bedroom). She did an internship at production house SLAA and worked as a PR assistant for Read My World. In the summer of 2019, Malika took part in deBuren's annual writing residency in Paris.

• Malika organises writing workshops and courses on themes such as spirituality, sexuality and (solo) intimacy. She recites her work at various venues and enjoys participating in panel discussions on social issues. In the summer, she is one of the writing workshop staff at Buitenkunst, where she also works as a cook.
• Tim Adriaens started as a landscape ecologist at the Institute for Nature Conservation in 2000, working on area visions and ecological networks. He then started a project on invasive species at the institute. He coordinates research on invasive species and is very active in international projects on sustainable control, setting up surveillance and warning systems, citizen science, horizon scanning and risk analysis, impact research and human dimensions research of biological invasions. He has many international projects in his portfolio, such as LIFE, Interreg and Horizon projects, as well as assignments for the European Commission and the IUCN. Tim has been part of the INBO management team since 2024. He is responsible for the Species Diversity, Open Science Lab for Biodiversity, Wildlife Management and Invasive Species teams. Tim is very active in the public debate on invasive species and their management. He often comments in the media on invasive species such as raccoons, Asian hornets, African clawed frogs and plant invasions, and their impact on nature conservation and management.

This lecture will take place in the Botanical Garden of the GUM. More information about the accessibility of the venue can be found on their website. A sign language interpreter will be provided for this lecture. If you have any further questions about accessibility facilities, please contact the organisation: anais.vanertvelde@hogent.be. Questions can be asked at the reception desk on site.