Engaging with Campus Etterbeek as a zoöp

In this workshop, you will engage with the Campus Etterbeek of the VUB as though it was a 'zoöp'. You will read and treat the Campus Etterbeek as a collective body, consisting of the human and nonhuman entities and artefacts together: soil life, plant life, water life, human users and passers-by, buildings, infrastructures. They you observe how different life worlds at the Campus relate to each other. Finally, you will characterize, from different perspectives, which internal and external relations are critical for the development of the quality of life of Campus Etterbeek. 

Zoöp is a new form of organization that has the goal to strengthen the position of non-human life within human societies, both politically and ecologically. An organization becomes a zoöp by including in its board human representatives of the interests of the local non-human community. Zoöps support ecological regeneration, or quality of life for the whole multispecies community.

• Klaas Kuitenbrouwer is researcher at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, primarily in the context of digital culture. Since the late 1990s he works at the intersections of culture, technology and ecology. He researches, curates and moderates events at the touch points of these fields.

• Patricia Ribault is Professor for Performative Design Research at weißensee kunsthochschule berlin and one of the principal investigators for the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. She studied Applied Arts and Ceramics in Paris and glassblowing in England, Murano (Italy) and Tunisia.