Echoes from Below
About the panel
Underwater worlds reach us as echoes. Below the surface, they are known through images, recordings, data, stories and the imagined lives of aquatic beings. From these fragments we build, back on land, our relationship with the sea: one that can become care and protection, or convenient assumption and even indifference. These perceptions shape the policies, laws and decisions that govern how we relate to oceans, lakes and rivers. This panel brings together the perspectives of authors, artists, designers and policymakers to reflect on how these echoes are made, who shapes them, and how they travel from imagination to decision.
Moderator
Filipa Ramos
Filipa Ramos, PhD, is a writer and curator whose long-term research investigates art's relationship to ecology. She is particularly interested in animals and time-based media. Ramos teaches at the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel and is Curator of the 2027 edition of LIAF and co-curator of the 2028 Bergen Assembly. Together, with Lucia Pietroiusti she founded the arts, humanities and science festival "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish" (2018-onwards). Recent projects include "BESTIARI," the Catalan representation at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), "Songs for the Changing Seasons" for the 1. Klima Biennale Wien (2024) and in 2022, "Persons Personen," the 8th Biennale Gherdëina (both with Pietroiusti). In 2021, she co-curated "Bodies of Water," the 13th Shanghai Biennale. Her most recent book, "The Artist as Ecologist" (2025), discusses the ways in which contemporary artists embrace environmentalism.
Speakers
Elahe Rajabiani
Art & Design for Policy — Joint Research Center, EU Policy Lab
Elahe is a designer at the EU Policy lab. She designs tools, methods and processes for creative collaboration between the scientists and the policy makers. Before joining the EU commission, Elahe was the creative lead at the Open Innovation Centre of the University of Bologna. She led dozens of multidisciplinary and cross-generational teams in designing new product and services for various companies in pharma, food, automotive and entertainment industry. She was also a design educator and coach for student programs at the Design Factory Global Network and the Challenge Based Innovation at CERN IdeaSquare. She is passionate about Design in all its forms and functions and strives to bring speculative design and visual thinking into policymaking.
Ersin Han Ersin
Artist & Director — Marshmallow Laser Feast
Ersin Han Ersin (b. 1984, Turkey) is an artist and director of Marshmallow Laser Feast, a London-based artist collective renowned for its pioneering experiential artworks. His practice spans sculpture, installation, live performance, merging art, ecology and technology to reveal the hidden natural forces that govern our shared Earth. Ersin’s works invite audiences to explore realms beyond ordinary perception, often stripping away the visible physical world to uncover interconnected networks, systems, and processes fundamental to life on Earth.
Tatiana Rosa & Pedro Matias
Artist — S+T+ARTS AQUA MOTION
Tatiana Rosa and Pedro Matias create immersive, multisensory artworks exploring imperceptible ecologies and social phenomena. Tatiana foregrounds sound as agency, crafting experiences that reveal hidden materialities and invite a reconfiguration of how we listen and relate. Pedro, a transmaterial artist, investigates encounters across bodies, materials, and more-than-human worlds, blending poetry and politics in layered environments. Together, their collaborative practice transforms absence and silenced narratives into tangible, affective forms. Working across intermedia, performance, and installation, they merge critical reflection with sensory storytelling, inviting audiences into poetic, speculative engagements that challenge perception and cultivate new ways of sensing ecological and social realities.