SUMMER STUDIOS at AIL
July–August–September 2025 and 2026
The Summer Studios at AIL serve as an experimental research and production space for sound works, performances, smellscapes and other artistic expressions that also feed into the final multisensory scenography and exhibition of SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS in June 2027.
Throughout August and September 2026, the artist duo MUELLER-DIVJAK continues the Summer Studio they started in July 2025 at AIL: another season of ongoing artistic research and development, experimentation, and learning devoted to the project’s multisensory scenography – the so-called SΫS SPACE.
The Summer Studios prepare the prototype of the scenography, which is the centrepiece of the final exhibition (at AIL in June 2027) of the PEEK project SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS — Exploring the Potentials of Multisensory Scenography for Systems Awareness.
The SΫS SPACE facilitates a physical experience of one’s own embeddedness within living systems, within complex interrelationships – within a greater whole. It paves the way for relational sensing and thinking – the development of an embodied systems awareness, that can help in coping with complexity, challenges, and uncertainties, and in making good decisions towards sustainable futures. SΫS SPACE deliberately reduces the dominance of the sense of sight, placing the emphasis instead on smell, touch, and hearing.
Numerous scientists, especially the systems scientists associated with the project, as well as invited artists, politicians, journalists, children, senior citizens, curators, cultural workers, educators, and teenagers are individually guided through the created immersive environment by Jeanette Müller and Paul Divjak and share their responses in photo-based reflections and semi-structured interviews. Their feedback directly informs the prototype and enriches the ongoing refinement of the SΫS SPACE / the multisensory scenography.
Research Collaborations and Learning Sessions
Transdisciplinary methods for evaluating the collected data, as well as sound pieces, spatial settings, smellscapes, tactile experiences, choreographies and linguistic framings, are developed, created, tested, and reworked in the Summer Studio together with Alexandra Graupner, Anna-Maria Irgang, Oksana Lemishka, Taras Komisaruk, Mara Niang, Marta Escobar, and many others. Activities include:
- The sound-performance artist Juliana España Keller (Concordia University, Montréal), whose practice centres on acoustic care and collective resonant ecologies entangled with human and non-human life, takes up a residency with MUELLER-DIVJAK in the SΫS SPACE. Together they explore the relationship between sound, embodiment, and more-than-human ecologies, working across performance, installation, and experimental sound.
- A three-day workshop with Maya Galimidi and Mine Küçük – Maya working at the intersection of nature connection and ecological practice, Mine as museologist – explores how the multisensory scenography might extend into outdoor and museum settings.
- A Learning Session towards the final exhibition takes place with curator Christina Hainzl, who is also Head of the Platform for Sustainable Development (SDGs) and the Research Lab Democracy and Society in Transition at the University for Continuing Education Krems and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
- Two Learning Sessions with the systems scientists Stefan Blachfellner, Alexander Laszlo, Felix Tretter, and Claus Seibt deepen the systems science dimension of the SΫS SPACE.
- Performance artists such as Ulrich Gottlieb and additional collaborators work with MUELLER-DIVJAK, introducing new perspectives, impulses – and developing choreographies during the Summer Studio.
- The summer studios are accompanied by listening sessions, singing and humming workshops, and photo shoots.
- Filming takes place for a video of a relational performance in mid-August 2026, to be shown as part of the final exhibition in 2027.
- Mid-September 2026, the SΫS SPACE opens its doors to the public at specific time slots, inviting visitors to an individual and exclusive multisensory experience.
The opportunity to use the Digital Art Sound Lab, as well as the OLFACTORY FUTURES LAB (OFL – established by MUELLER-DIVJAK within the Digital Art department in spring 2026) supports the artistic work carried out during the Summer Studio.
SΫS has become a nickname for persons who develop an embodied consciousness of interdependencies, precious equilibria and fragile beauty of all life. In other words: SΫS characters evolve an embodied systems awareness. It is also an acronym and stands for Sense Your Senses – also to understand the systems that are relevant to one's own life – to Sense Your Systems.
SΫS SPACE is the SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS' multisensory scenography. The SΫS SPACE facilitates a physical experience of one's own embeddedness within living systems, within complex interrelationships – within a greater whole. It paves the way for relational sensing and thinking – the development of an embodied systems awareness, that can help in coping with complexity, challenges, and uncertainties, and in making good decisions towards sustainable futures. SΫS SPACE deliberately reduces the dominance of the sense of sight, placing the emphasis instead on smell, touch, and hearing.
SΫS SPACE is the SENSING LIVING SYSTEMS' multisensory scenography. The SΫS SPACE facilitates a physical experience of one's own embeddedness within living systems, within complex interrelationships – within a greater whole. It paves the way for relational sensing and thinking – the development of an embodied systems awareness, that can help in coping with complexity, challenges, and uncertainties, and in making good decisions towards sustainable futures. SΫS SPACE deliberately reduces the dominance of the sense of sight, placing the emphasis instead on smell, touch, and hearing.