February 15-18, 2023

The Center Leo Apostel for Transdisciplinary Studies (CLEA) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), organises its first international artscience symposium: ‘Systems At Play: The Self-Organising Symposium on Self-Organisation’ in Brussels from February 15 to 18, 2023.The symposium starts from the idea that art and science are mutually beneficial means of perception and insight creation. It thus provides a transdisciplinary contact zone for artists and scientists to meet, exchange, think, share, take time, and, ultimately, play together.

Then, what shall we talk and play about? Well, it’s up to you where it ends up, but our starting points are the ideas of ‘emergence’, ‘self-organisation’, and ‘goal-directedness’. More specifically, participating artists and scientists are invited to collectively tackle creative challenges in an embodied way. We will feed and facilitate this process with presentations, conversations, workshops and live games during the day, and performances, talks and film screenings during the evening.

Rather than simply organise a symposium simply about self-organisation, we are attempting to organise a self-organising symposium on self-organisation, one that determines its own final goals through all our interactions together. We recognize that we cannot fully predict the processes, outcomes and final goal, nor do we want to. The symposium will become a shared research object, as well as a strange loop in which topic and method merge and multiply.

Artists and scientists are invited to participate through two open calls: one, to participate in the symposium; and two, to participate as well as prepare an input presentation, in the form of a talk, performance, interactive game, or film screening.

For more (practical) info on how to apply and more, please visit our event page!

CLEA ArtScience Symposium ‘Systems At Play’ *OPEN CALL* – CLEA