Summer Studio: SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS

Throughout August and September 2026, the artist duo MUELLER-DIVJAK continues the Summer Studio at AIL they started in 2025: another season of artistic research, experimentation, and learning devoted to the project's multisensory scenography – the so-called SΫS SPACE.

Aim of the Summer Studio is to prepare the prototype of the scenography, which will be established at the AIL in June 2027 as the centerpiece of the final exhibition of the PEEK project SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS — Exploring the Potentials of Multisensory Scenography for Systems Awareness.

The SΫS SPACE facilitates a physical experience of one's own embeddedness within living systems, within complex interrelationships – within a greater whole. It paves the way for relational sensing and thinking – an embodied systems awareness, that can help in coping with complexity, challenges, and uncertainties, and in making good decisions towards sustainable futures. It deliberately reduces the dominance of the sense of sight, placing the emphasis instead on smell, touch, and hearing.

Numerous scientists, as well as invited artists, politicians, journalists, children, senior citizens, curators, cultural workers, educators, and teenagers are individually guided through the immersive environment by Jeanette Müller and Paul Divjak and share their responses in photo-based reflections and semi-structured interviews. Their feedback directly informs the prototype.

During the (non-public) Summer Studio transdisciplinary evaluation methods, sound pieces, spatial settings, smellscapes, tactile experiences, choreographies, and linguistic framings are developed, tested, and reworked together with Alexandra Graupner, Anna-Maria Irgang, Oksana Lemishka, Taras Komisaruk, Mara Niang, Marta Escobar, and many others. Research activities include: a residency with sound-performance artist Juliana España Keller (Concordia University, Montréal), exploring sound, embodiment, and more-than-human ecologies across performance, installation, and experimental sound; a workshop with Maya Galimidi (nature connection and ecological practice) and Mine Küçük (museologist), exploring how the scenography might extend into outdoor and museum settings; a learning session towards the final exhibition with curator Christina Hainzl, who is also Head of the Platform for Sustainable Development (SDGs) and the Research Lab Democracy and Society in Transition (University for Continuing Education Krems; Ca' Foscari University of Venice), learning sessions with the systems scientists Stefan Blachfellner, Alexander Laszlo, Felix Tretter, and Claus Seibt, deepening the systems-science dimension of the SΫS SPACE., a performance with artists such as Ulrich Gottlieb and further collaborators bring new impulses to the process; the filming of a relational performance for the 2027 finals exhibition.

Save the date!

14 and 15 Sep 2026

The SΫS SPACE opens to the public in individual time slots for an exclusive multisensory experience. Each time slot is available for one person only (Details and booking link via Pretix coming soon).