Open lecture: Berit Fischer - Micropolitical Ecopedagogies

Micropolitical Ecopedagogies

Lecture by Berit Fischer

This lecture explores Micropolitical Ecopedagogies as a post-representational curatorial and artistic practice that seeks to activate relational, experiential, and embodied forms of

knowledge production in response to contemporary socio-ecological crises. Drawing from critical pedagogy, decolonial thought, affect theory, and ecological philosophy, Berit

Fischer examines how cultural practice can move beyond spectatorship toward forms of collective agency, critical consciousness, and ecological interconnectedness.

Central to the lecture is the argument that dominant systems of neoliberal, cognitive, and extractivist capitalism operate through separation, individualization, and the colonization of desire and imagination. In contrast, micropolitical ecopedagogies propose practices of relational awareness, embodied learning, and affective exchange that foster new ways of sensing, relating, and acting within the planetary community of life.

Referencing thinkers such as Paulo Freire, Donna Haraway, Suely Rolnik, and Carolyn Pedwell, Fischer discusses concepts including conscientization, the “knowing body,” active micropolitics, radical empathy, and post-anthropocentric ecological thinking. Through

examples such as the Radical Empathy Lab and the (Re-)Gaining Ecological Futures Festival at Floating University Berlin, the lecture reflects on experimental formats that intertwine artistic practice, pedagogy, ecology, and collective learning.

Positioned between curating, artistic research, and eco-social practice, Micropolitical Ecopedagogies proposes cultural work as a space for transformative knowledge formation — one that emphasizes situatedness, heterogeneity, embodied criticality, and the cultivation of ecological literacy and planetary consciousness.

Short Bio:

Dr. Berit Fischer is a Berlin-based transdisciplinary cultural practitioner working internationally as a curator, artist, researcher, writer, and lecturer. Her work focuses on socio-ecological knowledge formation, critical spatial practice, and transformative cultural methodologies inspired by alternative, feminist, radical, and eco-pedagogies. Her practice explores post-representational curatorial approaches centred on relationality, micropolitics, ecological consciousness, and emancipatory learning.

In 2016, she founded the Radical Empathy Lab, an ongoing nomadic socio-ecological art and

research laboratory for relational and experiential learning. She is also the founder and curator of (Re-)Gaining Ecological Futures, a transdisciplinary learning platform and festival at Floating University Berlin exploring ecological futures, post-anthropocentric thought, and regenerative forms of coexistence between human and the living world.

She is co-founder of the International Forum for Eco-Embodied Arts and the performative project detours, as well as a founding member of the Listening Biennial and Urbane Praxis e.V..

Her practice-based PhD at the University of Southampton / Winchester School of Art examined how curatorial practice can activate micropolitical and holistic forms of social empathy and critical consciousness. Her work has been presented internationally across universities, art institutions, festivals, and independent cultural spaces.

http://www.beritfischer.org

http://www.floating-berlin.org/programmes/re-gaining-ecological-futures/

https://ifeea.earth/

https://www.de-tours.org

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This is the second lecture in a lecture series held each semester at the Department of Fine Arts at IUA. In seven lectures during the semester, experts in the field of visual art discuss their own research, experiments, and artistic practice.

The lecture will take place in the lecture hall at IUA Laugarnes, Laugarnesvegur 91, 105 Reykjavík and is open across departments and to the public.

Language: English.