Symposium

How does finding balance between opposites generate new thought and action? The final symposium brings together all the moderators of the festival in a transdisciplinary conversation that reflects on its core theme. From aesthetics and ethics to science and fiction, from silence and sound to the artificial and the natural, each discussion throughout the festival has explored a threshold—a space of tension where concepts shift, collide, and transform. This closing dialogue, led by Marco Sammicheli, will weave together these insights, questioning how friction, contrast, and polarity fuel contemporary thinking and creation in a world where binarism blurs and fixed categories dissolve. Oppositions challenge us to engage with complexity: in design, art, philosophy, music, and science, the most radical ideas often emerge when contradiction is embraced rather than resolved. Bringing together the voices that have shaped the festival, this final moment invites reflection and speculation—a space where ideas from distinct disciplines merge, resonate, and generate new, unexpected perspectives.

Host: Marco Sammicheli

Marco Sammicheli, curator at Triennale Milano and director of the Museo del Design Italiano, explores diverse design approaches and their contrasts. He examines tensions between past, present, and future practices.

Andrea Lissoni

Andrea Lissoni, PhD, is Artistic Director of Haus der Kunst. His curatorial programme is based on transdisciplinary and transgenerational approaches in which all strands of artistic practices are deeply connected and started in April 2022 with the sound and music residency series TUNE and the series of intertwined exhibitions by Fujiko Nakaya, Dumb Type, Carsten Nicolai, Christine Sun Kim, Tony Cokes, Karrabing Film Collective. The series continued with Inside Other Spaces. Environments by Women Artists 1956—1976, alongside shows by WangShui, Martino Gamper and Meredith Monk and developed further, with solo exhibitions by Pan Daijing, Liliane Lijn, Rebecca Horn, Pussy Riot and Philippe Parreno.

Martino Gamper

Martino Gamper is an Italian designer based in London, trained as a furniture maker. He emphasizes materials in his work, rethinking the past to find concepts in reworked designs. His ongoing project, 100 Chairs in 100 Days, reconfigures discarded seats reflecting his political approach.

Serenella Iovino

Serenella Iovino is a leading voice in environmental humanities and ecocriticism. She explores landscapes and bodies, literary ecologies and artistic resistance, non-human animals and other-than-human beings, pollution, environmental justice, and the creative agency of matter.

Sarah Miles

Sarah Miles is a music programmer curating the Tune sound series at Haus der Kunst in Munich where she explores the intersection between sound, music, and visual art. She programmed the Roter Salon at Volksbuehne Berlin and co-founded Berlin Community Radio.

Martin Hanczyc

Martin Hanczyc established The Laboratory for Artificial Biology in 2014. His research seeks to integrate functional aspects of artificial life, synthetic life, and natural life with an expertise in interfacial dynamics, robot-chemistry interfaces, intelligent materials, and synthetic biology.