At the 2025 STS-CH Conference, Anthea Oestreicher convened and moderated the panel Attuning to Watery Worlds: Perception, Relationality, and Care in More-Than-Human Ecologies. The session created space for dialogue across and beyond disciplines, bringing together contributions that engaged with watery worlds as sites of critique, creativity, and togetherness. By weaving diverse perspectives, the panel emphasized how minor, ephemeral, and often overlooked gestures can (re)shape planetary imaginaries and ecological relations.

Workshop led by Anthea in which participants encountered plankton under the microscope and reflected on their role in shaping breath, climate, and planetary cycles. The session combined hands-on observation with discussion, linking the microscopic scale of phytoplankton to wider ecological and cultural imaginaries.
Accompanying the workshop this text was published on the HEK blog: https://share.hek.ch/en/why-plankton-matter/

The DEEPWAVE Filmfestival, initiated by the ocean conservation NGO DEEPWAVE, brings together films and discussions to advocate for the protection of the seas and deep ocean. The festival is soon touring through Germany. https://www.deepwave.org/projekte/filmfestival/

Visibilities of the Invisible: Patchy Metabolisms is a research-based installation by Anthea that investigates the layered, irregular connections between human and planktonic life. The exhibition explores shared atmospheres, multisensory perception, and overlapping forms of knowing, sensing, and breathing, emphasizing how engagement with plankton transforms human experience as much as it reveals ecological processes.

It was developed during her residency at HIFMB (https://hifmb.de) and HWK (https://hanse-ias.de) as part of the UN Ocean Decade.

Exhibition at Landesmuseum für Natur und Mensch, Oldenburg (https://www.naturundmensch.de)

Anthea led a workshop for art and ergo therapists, exploring planktonic life as a way to reflect on care, interdependence, and ecological awareness. The session focused on understanding what is needed in a habitat—how both plankton and humans rely on balanced, attentive conditions—and on practices of caring for more-than-human life in times of environmental and social crisis.

Antoine created a live listening session as part of The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos. The event was made possible by Serpentine Gallery and Schering Stiftung.

»Why is the floor moving?« Collaboration with Vít Růžička and Weronika Zalewska, Group Show »Bodies of Water«, Display Gallery, Prague, CZ

The installation features a three-channel video that represents three perspectives of collaborating artists in dialogue and delves into the art of echo sounding, the movements of plankton, and AI-generated speculative forms. By juxtaposing human and non-human technologies of perception, the project challenges viewers to reconsider their relationship with marine life and the role of human innovation in shaping our understanding of the ocean. The accompanying audio piece deepens this exploration, offering reflections on perception, communication, and responsibility in the context of oceanic ecosystems. The video installation is accompanied by an audio recording of a conversation between the artists taking up diverse questions about their personal relationship to technology, science, the more-than-human world and AI, bridging the difficulties of the interdisciplinary collaboration.

https://www.display.cz/en/projects/inspiration-forum-lab-2023-2024-bodies-of-water

Our project PIs, Karmen Franinovic & Roman Kirschner,  taught a course called “Oceanic Realignments" at the ifk Summer Academy 2024, together courses led by Tim Ingold, Goran Sergej & Nikolina Pristaš, Natan Sznaider and Monika Wulz. Taking place on the island of Brijuni, Croatia, the Summer Academy approached the topic of non-aligned movements from a historical and political perspective by sounding out the decolonial non-aligned movement of the post-war period. 

In the arts and humanities, an ongoing sea change destabilises the established lines of thoughts and practices.  In “Oceanic Realignments” course, researchers and PhD candidates took the foundations of their research and disciplinary frameworks into the salty body of water that is the ocean and explored how the lines defined by gravity change their shape by attuning to ocean.  They investigated following questions: What happens if we take our movements of thought and practice underwater? How do the terrestrial foundations of our disciplines hold in a medium that is hostile to humans but pulses thick and dense with life? Can attuning within and to the sea bring new perspectives to our planetary and disciplinary assumptions, providing fresh alternatives to anthropocentric theories and practices?

Oestreicher, Anthea: »Planktonic Medi(t)ations«,Workshop, The Institute for Embodied Creative Practices, Protozone 14, Shedhalle, Zürich, CH

https://shedhalle.ch/en/the-institute-for-embodied-creative-practices-2024-2/