Workshop & Walk: “Sensing Environments with Care: Feminist Practices and Technologies of Embodiment”

Stuttgart, 18–19 September 2020

Two CIM researchers, Nerea Calvillo and Naomi Waltham-Smith, who is currently a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, presented a two-day series of public events on 18–19 September in Stuttgart together with Sasha Engelmann (RHUL) and Sophie Dyer in collaboration with Kunstverein Wagenhalle e. V. The workshops explored feminist approaches to environmental sensing and the intersections between atmospheres, technologies, bodies, and data. They posed questions such as: In what ways does sensing—both embodied and technologically mediated—constitute a practice of environmental care? How do different mediums of ambient attunement, specifically sound and air, call for different ethics and activism?

Drs. Calvillo and Waltham-Smith guided participants in a three-hour multisensory walk in the area around the Kulturbetrieb Wagenhallen, exploring how DIY air pollution sensors and portable field recorders can reconfigure embodied practices of environmental sensing, opening up a prosthetics of care. The day concluded with a lively panel discussion.