We will expand upon the topic of identity with a podcast series on identity & belonging in the modern world. The podcasts will feature guests representing the past, present and future of what it means to belong and how that affects our concept of self. To dive into the past, we will interview a […]

Jelle van Dijk is a researcher, teacher, writer, speaker and he draws comics. He is an Assistant Professor in Human Centred Design at the University of Twente, amazed by people, who they are, what they do, and what they make. In his research he develops the theory of embodied sensemaking and how this and […]

  Dr Catherine Oliver is a geographer and researcher currently working with urban chickens and keepers in London at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. From September of this year, she will be relocating to Lancaster University where she will be a Lecturer in the Sociology of Climate Change. Catherine published her first […]

Witchcraft made Science with Anna McCarthy

This podcast is part of the Witchcraft made Science series, a collaboration with curator Lieke Wouters. In this podcast, we approach the witch as a stereotype as well as a new feminist icon. Making space for the spiritual, the scientific and the sceptical aspects of witchcraft, all seen from an artistic lens. In this episode, we welcome designer and researcher Nella Piatek.

Nella Piatek is a designer and researcher studying the evolution of the human in conjunction with digital technology, along with the implications and values that this entanglement conjures. By working through current digital assemblages, she investigates ways to activate new architecture for dialogue and critique. Her work explores anthropological futures and socio-technical imaginaries, where poetic introspection and rituals are used to touch upon the themes of faith, impermanence, and the infinite search for a sense of self within the digital context.

Podcast edit by Reon Cordova.

This podcast is part of the Witchcraft made Science series, a collaboration with curator Lieke Wouters. In this podcast, we approach the witch as a stereotype as well as a new feminist icon. Making space for the spiritual, the scientific and the sceptical aspects of witchcraft, all seen from an artistic lens. In this episode, we welcome artist and researcher Anna McCarthy.

Anna McCarthy is known for her interdisciplinary, collaborative, and also often humorous, poetic as well as political approach. The artist studied at the Kingston University of Art & Design London, the Akademie der bildenden Künste München and at the Glasgow School of Art. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Haus der Kunst, D-0 ARK Underground, Kunstverein Göttingen, Kunstbau im Lenbachhaus, Goethe University Frankfurt and the Schaustelle Pinakothek der Moderne. In 2019/2020 she taught as a substitute professor at the Akademie der bildenden Künste München and in 2020 received the USA Scholarship of the Bavarian Ministry for Science and Art. Anna McCarthy also plays in the bands MOON NOT WAR and WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR?

We talk with her about her performance IT'S A STAKE STRIKE, which took place in 2021 during GLOBAL ANGST, part of the Spielart Theater Festival in Munich.

As the grand finale of GLOBAL ANGST,  Anna McCarthy staged a radical abstract opera to tame the world’s fears. By igniting the global Angst wicker man with a closing ceremony that manifests new shapes from the fire, symbolically countering its initially destructive nature and often ritualistic affiliations to bigotry (be it witch hunts, book burning or the Ku Klux Klan), Anna McCarthy reclaimed it as an element for replenishment and rebirth. In a theatrical and musical rendition, she took on the persona of Lucy Strike to call out the wicker man to honour current and past victims of bigotry.