CONFERENCE
Interdisciplinary Methods of Imagination for Coexistence with Invasive Species
Tuesday September 2, 2025
Center for Contemporary Arts Prague
Tuesday September 2, 2025
Center for Contemporary Arts Prague
17:00 – 19:00 | Conference at CCA Prague
19:30 – 20:30 | Guided visit of A Garden of Shifting Minds at NoD
This conference, initiated by visual artist Adam Vačkář, asks how we might live with beings that refuse the borders we impose. Conference asks to imagine new futures with migrating (invasive) species, not as threats, but as agents of transformation. What if Giant Hogweed, salmon, or rewilded gardens were not enemies to control, but teachers, collaborators, even artists? What if imagination itself became a tool of ecology?
Artists and biologists meet to explore these questions, moving across visual art, biosemiotics, and evolutionary biology, the discussion will open pathways beyond rigid binaries: native vs. non-native, useful vs. harmful, culture vs. nature. How can humans imagine coexistence with migrating (so-called invasive) species? Instead of framing them only as threats, this gathering asks: what if we saw them as agents of the future?
The conference explores ways of overcoming dichotomies such as harmful vs. useful, native vs. non-native, culture vs. nature. It highlights artistic, scientific, and landscape approaches that reshape how we relate to non-human beings.
Tereza Stehlíková (CZ/UK) is artist and researcher exploring embodied experience through moving image and multi-sensory aesthetics. She founded Sensory Sites and the arts journal Tangible Territory, she obtained her PhD from the Royal College of Art, and has taught at the University of Westminster, UK, among others.
Thorolf van Walsum (CAN) is a researcher in biology, semiotics and anthropology, and a PhD candidate in Theoretical Biology at Charles University. His work on invasive salmon examines their ecological, cultural and symbolic roles through Arctic fieldwork and evolutionary biology. He’s Queen’s University (CAN), and Tartu University (EST) graduate.
Michal Mitro (SK) is an artist and researcher with a background in psychology and sociology. His practice spans sculpture, sound, light and electricity, and he co-runs ssesi, a cross-disciplinary organisation in Brno linking art, science and rewilded community gardens.
Adam Vačkář (CZ) is an artist and researcher whose work investigates ecological and cultural entanglements of “invasive" species, especially the Giant Hogweed. A graduate of ENSBA Paris, he has exhibited internationally and co-runs the interdisciplinary platform Transparent Eyeball.
The panel is moderated by Jindřich Brejcha, Assistant Professor at Charles University specializing in mimicry, animal coloration and behavior. His research spans evolutionary biology, ethology and biosemiotics. He co-runs the interdisciplinary platform Transparent Eyeball.