Symposium: Mari Bastashevski
Title: A World in a Grain of Sand
Reading models in art and science as propositions for the future
On Wednesday, 29 October 2025, postdoctoral researcher and artist Mari Bastashevski will draw on her research into interspecies world-modeling to discuss the value of interdisciplinary models in understanding the systemic environmental and socio-political problems we face in the near future. We invite you to this special event at Wageningen Campus, Gaia 1, from 14:30 to 16:00.
During this symposium, Mari Bastashevski will explore how reading and working with models situated across art and science can shape the way we approach multidimensional complexity within any given field. Using examples from philosophy, literature, architecture, sociology, and art, she will position models as tools of attention.
Bastashevski will consider how the interpretation and proposition of a model shift depending on who creates it, the intentions behind it, and who interprets it. Rather than treating models as neutral illustrations of reality, the symposium presents them as microcosms with multiple and ambiguous ties to the real—structures that can challenge, organize, and reorganize knowledge we assume to be settled. By tracing how artists and scientists think through models, the discussion will address how modeling can ground productive cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Centre for Space, Place and Society 