Keynotes Liesbeth Huybrechts and Rachel Clarke

Monday 4th  of May 2026 - 17u30-18u30

Kapittelzaal (house #2 / 1.4) Beguinage Hasselt

Embodied Institutions - Re-institutioning & Governance

Liesbeth Huybrechts and Rachel Clarke. The role of artistic and design methods in Re-institutioning and More-than-Human Governance

Art is increasingly mobilised in climate governance and policy, yet often instrumentalised to serve predefined human agendas of data visualisation, awareness-raising, and science communication. This lecture explores design research’s role as a mediator of more radical art-driven participation that cultivates more-than-human care ecologies – relational configurations that redistribute sensing, accountability, and decision-making across human and other-than-human actors. Drawing on theories of care and affective politics alongside case studies addressing sustainable transitions on an interregional level, urban air pollution, and disaster recovery, we examine how design research can support art-driven participation to move anthropocentric frames in policymaking towards situated more-than-human co-composition. We argue that by mediating between artistic practice and governance, design research can foster more open, relational spaces for change, calling for sensitive, tentacular mechanisms to understand and articulate just and resilient more-than-human climate futures. The lecture opens a debate based on a critical literature review combined with accounts of three illustrative cases.

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