The work of Jacob Kirkegaard explores ways to reflect on complex, unnoticed or unapproachable conditions and environments. His works have treated themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl, melting ice in the Arctic, border walls in global and metaphorical contexts, immersive acoustic explorations into global waste management, and processes related to when a human being dies. Using his recordings of firearms, grenades and tanks his recent work explores the sound of warfare orchestrated for the Royal Lifeguard's Music Corps. Another recent work unfolds the mechanical elements of agriculture and food production. Since 2006 Kirkegaard has also been extensively researching, recording and creating works using otoacoustic emissions; tones generated from the actual human ear. The core element and method of Jacob Kirkegaard's work derive from the use of sound recordings of the tangible aspects from its intangible themes.

On the morning of 28 October, Jacob Kirkegaard will also lead an otoacoustic workshop at the media arts programme of KASK & Conservatorium.

“We force our stories on a world that doesn’t fit them,” wrote the environmental historian William Cronon in 1992.

Now that we are becoming increasingly aware of the intermingling of human and non-human worlds, influenced by phenomena such as global warming, artificial intelligence, microplastics and pandemics, the question arises as to who or what should populate our stories.

What is narrative realism today? And what is gradually, albeit unintentionally, becoming the realm of fantasy?

Over two days, in and around the Cirque, the 19th-century anatomical theatre on the campus of KASK & Conservatorium, stories will be told, performances staged, and lectures and workshops held. Be inspired by unexpected narrative perspectives, territorial and apocalyptic tales, micro- and macro-scaled stories, full of creatures who behave in ways entirely different from those of us who identify as humans.

With contributions by Amsterdam Poet’s Theatre (Artun Alaska Arasli & Joachim Robbrecht) feat. Gudrun Moreau, Lars Bernakiewicz, Liliane Campos, Marco Caracciolo, Decentering Design (Jo Boonen, Pippa Dekinder, Glenn Deliège, Bert De Roo & Giliam Ganzevles), Anne Dekeyser, Lisa Doeland, Carolin Gieszner, Sébastien Hendrickx, Toine Horvers, MM (Marcus Bergner & Myriam Van Imschoot), Nitzan Shafran, Benedikte Zitouni, a.o.

Curated by Sébastien Hendrickx.

What if we approached teaching and learning as practices of grafting, pruning, and growing sideways? The Assembly invites students and staff from KASK & Conservatorium to explore how we might cultivate different ways of learning, knowing, and working together. At a time when educational and research spaces face growing constraints, we ask what it means to nurture academic and artistic freedom, make room for unexpected connections, and unlearn the habits that limit our collective imagination. Through experimental, embodied, and relational approaches, the Assembly opens up space to rethink how knowledge is produced, shared, and transformed.

The day concludes with an open lecture by artist and educator Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez at 18:00 in the Cirque auditorium. She draws on the intelligence of mycelial networks to explore collaboration, the generative power of metaphors, and our entanglements with the more-than-human world.

Opening lecture by Daniela Vicherat Mattar, for educational master students
The need for a feeling-thinking turn in education

Current enthusiasm about critical pedagogies (feminist, decolonial) and interdisciplinarity dialogues have as a common underpinning the idea that knowledge is not only logical and scientific, it is also affective and aesthetic. That might not be a big discovery for artists themselves, but it is a major turn in education – from curatorial studies to social sciences – following the so called “affective turn”. In this opening talk I connect those ideas to the notion of sentirpensar (feel-thinking), coined by the Colombian scholar Orlando Fals Borda in the 1970s. The lecture is an interactive provocation aimed at reflecting about what we miss in a teaching/learning relationship. After all, if knowledge is necessarily always partial and incomplete, what is the importance of what we miss in how we teach & learn? And what do we need to see differently in order to teach & learn otherwise? Engaging deeply with critical and affective approaches implies a feel-thinking relation to what we learn, with whom we do so, when & where, and very importantly, what for. The talk is an invitation to engage with these questions together.

Daniela Vicherat Mattar

Daniela Vicherat Mattar is a Chilean sociologist. She works as Associate Professor In the Global Challenges Programme of Leiden University College in The Hague. Her teaching and research focuses on 3 C's: cities, citizenship and care, from inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives. Her interest in exploring the limits of disciplinary knowledge, and alternative pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning, respond to the urgent need to engage with the world in more attentive and less extractive ways.

Lecture with Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, open for everyone
Mycelium as a Model for Relational Research

The seminar will draw from the different chapters of Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez’s latest book, Mycelium Teachings in the Arts, as well as concepts from her current research and forthcoming book on relational practices. The discussion will raise questions about the need of addressing decay and decomposition, potentially connecting these notions to the former hospital site and its history of bodies and burials. It will also explore ideas of body-territory, alignment with agricultural time, and relational well-being; in this case approached through a critical reflection on collective practices instead of the productivity of self mind fullness work that proliferates in the capitalist systems.

Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodriguez

Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez is interested in exploring the application of a mycological lens in defining fair models of collaboration and (self) organization. Her book, Let's Become Fungal! Mycelium Teachings and the Arts, shares twelve teachings of the world of fungi. She is the founder of the Green Art Lab Alliance; a decentralized and non-monetary network of mutual exchange between eighty art organizations across Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean and Asia. The mission of the alliance is to foster relationships that contribute to social and environmental justice, akin to the interconnected nature of mycelium. She is currently working on a new book on relational well-being.

Context of the Project Glass House & Soft Stones conducted by Laura Palau under the supervision of Jana J. Haeckel

The project was developed within KASK & Conservatorium’s educational development initiative, established in 2024 to support experimentation, critical reflection, and innovation in arts education. The initiative provides staff with the time and resources to question existing teaching practices and explore new pedagogical approaches. Within this framework, Glass-House and Soft Stones investigates how horticultural practices and embodied, land-based knowledge can contribute to the development and transformation of arts education.

Glass-House and Soft Stones emerges from an interest in interdependence, multispecies thinking, and ecofeminist approaches to knowledge within the arts. The project draws on the horticultural practices of grafting and pruning as both metaphors and hands-on tools to rethink artistic and pedagogical processes. Through workshops with Bijloke’s ancient fruit trees, students and teachers from photography, film, design and music will explore embodied, tactile, and multisensory forms of learning, bringing land-based knowledge into the academy. By connecting agricultural practices with artistic research and teaching, the project seeks to challenge habitual ways of producing knowledge and foster more relational, ecological, and experiential approaches to arts education.