Lectures & Teachings

Der Workshop Portals. Annäherungen an die Elemente einer Quantenweltbildung unter der Leitung von Michaela Vieser lädt die Teilnehmenden dazu ein, die Gesetze der Quantenwelt zu erforschen, indem sie sich mit der gleichzeitigen Gegenwart von materiellen und immateriellen Welten beschäftigen, die Lichtjahre voneinander entfernt liegen. Indem er die Grenzen des HKW überschreitet, aktiviert der Workshop dessen periphere Räume in der Hoffnung, eine andere Wahrnehmungspolitik zu finden, die die Grenzen der Gewissheit überschreitet. Wie kann eine Verschiebung des Blickwinkels das Wissen verändern? Und wie wird dieses Wissen weitergegeben? Die Veranstaltung umfasst einen geführten Spaziergang durch den Tiergarten, Wahrnehmungsübungen, Schreibanregungen und Diskussionen. Sie bietet Zeit für eingehende Reflexion und kreatives Schreiben.

Fertile Void, veranstaltet von Goethe Institut, HKW, Studio Quantum, Udk

“Towards an interconnectedness of science and senses”, a one week-intensive course at the UdK. I taught how nature writing leans close to science writing, but added a level of self-embodiment through memoir, sense-writing, and physical practices. We looked into the past and future of nature writing, imagined hyperobjects as living entities, explored the choreography of chemical processes and microbial behaviour together with the Robert Koch Institute, and experimented with ekphrasis at the Alte Nationalgalerie. Through various readings, writing prompts, museum excursions, and sensory-based exercises, we explored the more-than-human world and found our voices within the cacophony of the Anthropocene.

In a course titled “What if” taught to students from Nanyang Technological University Singapore and Bauhaus University Weimar, we explored nature writing and speculative thinking. We asked: What would change if we expand one dimension of today’s reality? The following is one such example from American author Jeff Vandermeer from Orion magazine:

“In Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia, a philosophical novel in which U.S. special forces claim to have uncovered evidence that oil is alive, an even more immediate personification of the inert has an incredible power to lay bare the inequities in our energy system and all of the foundational ills this brings with it. Sometimes, fiction can make us not just see the invisible, but feel it in our bones.”

In “The aesthetics of research”, a lecture held at SRH Berlin University of Applied Science, I instructed students to think about non-conforming ways of conducting research that goes beyond the practice of accessing scientific papers and periodicals. Lessons included methods of asking the right questions in an interview as well as creating a reciprocative atmosphere during the conversation. Awareness was created to honour and not exploit the interviewee’s/speaker’s worldview. I encouraged the students to follow their hunch while urging them to observe their proceedings carefully. I related methods of mapping their findings and encouraged them to look deeper into how to find their own traces within their research. Exercises were conducted on experimenting with AI language models with researching methodologies, even as we engaged in strategies to use the body to locate and sense information, including deep listening exercises and meditations.

In “Becoming another - Transformation to a hybrid state. Bacteria, Genes, poisons, creatures, critters and alien technologies”,  I developed a course that explores the role of dreams, imagination, and the sensory body. The reading list featured excerpts from a range of authors of fiction and nonfiction, including Octavia Butler, Karen Russell, Merlin Sheldrake, Benjamin Labatout, Jeff Vandermeer, Timothy Morton.

Sea related sound stories from the Soundatlas for the Ocean Summit event in Flensburg.

In “Nature Writing - Writing Nature” at Textmanufaktur Leipzig, I delved into the natural histories of our planet. Exploring different species in flora and fauna and ways to relate to them, the students became familiar not only with different text-forms and the natural sciences, but also with contemporary questions about our relations to the more-than-human world.

How can a river be defined as a legal entity? The global 'Nature Rights' movement is working to rethink nature as a legal space and to fight for legal rights for ecosystems. Local and international experts will present different perspectives on this topic.

In a panel, Christian Wolter / Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Judith Möllhoff / FU Berlin, Department of Politics and Law, Michaela Vieser, author for Nature Writing and Felipe Duarte, musician and storyteller of indigenous knowledge, will discuss the different perspectives of 'The Rights of the River as Ecosystem and Legal Person', moderated by Ela Kagel (Platform Cooperatives Germany eG)

Sharing my two years experience as a wave writer. I looked closely at the connection between forest and sea. The topography of the sea floor. Bodies of water in Japan. The transformation of a whale fall. I read Gilles Deleuze and Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler. I talked with Ama divers and people from the Haida Nation. I took students to the mediterranean to teach them Nature Writing and we met so many whales, that we stopped counting. For two years I kept a Wave Diary through all and everything, jotting down thought, encounters, collecting flotsam and jetsam of an interconnected earth.

How can growth be sustainable? How much is enough? At Science Notes, researchers and artists report on their work, writers tell stories and journalists provide insights into their research. The musician duo Ströme will accompany the evening on their analog synthesizers.

The artist Andreas Greiner, whose work explores the relationship between humans and nature in a variety of ways, will be on stage. Nature writer Michaela Vieser will read and talk about her trip to Japan, where she met a fisherman who planted trees to harvest oysters. The evening is dedicated to the current issue of Science Notes magazine. The event is part of the “Berlin Science Week”.

Entering the realm of myth together with the design students of Prof. Myriel Milicevic and Public Art Lab . Providing guidance for exploring the depths, layers and traces of biodiversity within this former amusement park. Sound-Body-Work.

Invited by Public Art Lab to the Berlin chapter of AUGE Europe - talking about the dynamics of digital landscapes vs. natural ones. What narratives evolve from the presence of a place?

The authors come from the context of nature writing and describe and present rare sounds. They advocate a new attention to the sound space of nature. In the face of species extinction and the threat of climate change, the world of what we hear is also changing.

This panel is about sensory potentials of writing toward an appreciation of sound and sounds in the context of the climate crisis.

Invitation to a Workshop with the Art Academy Düsseldorf on affective spaces in rural areas. Many questions raised. They will stay with me for my work to come. Afterwards a walk around the final presentations of the graduation class. The flowers, a little ritual, just like that. To show affection, praise, honor the accomplishment.

For nature writing author Michaela Vieser, 2022 is the year of the wave: as a Wave Writer, she is supported by the Okeanos Foundation for the Sea and approaches water in a sensual and empirical way. Vieser immerses herself in topics, navigates with words and lets herself drift towards new insights into the wonders of the sea and our connections to the more-than-human world. She keeps still every day for a year and records her thoughts in a water logbook like flotsam. Over the course of a year, she will have collected sensual, aesthetic and scientific perspectives on water, life in it and its aggregate states.

In 1690, seeking to overcome the superstitions (fake news) surrounding them, the two main characters in this novel approach their understanding of Enlightenment through their culcultur-specific methods: the German physician Engelbert Kaempfer uses his meticulous scientific observations to assemble his world, the nun Yori evokes the natural phenomena surrounding her. When their worlds fuse, the hills and forrest of Japan become a metaphor of their cosmology  – if only for a short moment.

“A good life needs the opportunity to enter unoccupied spaces that are free of guidelines and requirements. Nature provides such spaces, and the movements in them, whether mental or physical, support us in our discovery, decision-making and healing processes thanks to their neutrality.”

From Calligraphy to cooking Ramen, the natural farming of Masanobu Fukuoka. Intensive course to Japanese approaches of design.

Our world is full of non-everyday sounds - from the pillars of sound in Hampi, India, to the groaning of breaking glaciers, from sounds produced by nature to man-made sounds such as whispering streets. You can even listen into space.

Sound artists use vibration sensors to penetrate the remotest corners of the earth. Hydrophones reveal the pulsating sound of rivers and oceans. But with this new ability to hear what was previously inaudible comes the responsibility not only to understand it, but also to protect it. Michaela Vieser, Nature Writer, opens our ears to limitless listening and takes us on a journey to the acoustic wonders of our earth.

Two days with Tino Sehgal (artist), Adrienne Goehler (Fund for Aesthetics and Sustainability), filmmaker Lisa Eder (The Wild Forest), Dr. Manuel Rivera (Institute for Transformative Sustainability Research), Potsdam, Prof. Dr. Corine Pelluchon, Marion Poschmann (author) and others. Discussions that have encouraged me to perceive culture as something sustainable. Carry on. There is no winning. There is only moving on. I presented our two projects Living Library for Nature Writing and the Intelligent Landscapes.

In 2020, Hella Jongerius asked me if I would help to bring the aspect of the “cosmic” into the loom. She saw her role as one of listening and giving shape — creating, re-creating, fabricating a Gegenstand (this German word expresses the idea that an object is something we confront and through the exchange with it, arrive at something new), that would open up to a new kind of thinking about the fabrics and fabrications of the world. Jongerius’ work always comes first from her hands; from touching, playing, experimenting. Where others feel they have exhausted the material and technique, she strives further and goes beyond, sometimes progressively, with a futuristic approach. Her hands intuitively respond, seeking the spiritual; they become teachers that eventually sensitise technology. Her approach is efficient, radical, and yet poetic and sensual.

Storytelling from the sound atlas.

Course at Kaospiloterne, Aarhus on the Art of Drifting: how do we choose where to drift to? Why is drifting important?

Japanese Aesthetics in the everyday. Wabi-Sabi. Hodo-hodo. Mono no aware.

Talk at the yearly congress of CCC. Meticulously searching for facts, forms and connections, Michaela Vieser talks about professions that have died out.