Call for Participants: A Transdisciplinary Autumn School during Mesh Festival 2026: Care Matters in Human-Ecological Infrastructures

When: 14–17 October 2026, one session per day (2 hours each)
Where: HGK Basel FHNW, Freilager-Platz 1, 4142 Basel-Münchenstein, Switzerland
Language: English
Places: 12–18 participants

Over four hands-on workshops, participants explore care as human-ecological infrastructure. Each workshop uses a different method: care and health narratives, fermentation as feminist archival practice, XR environments, and sound and sensing. Together, participants build a shared neighborhood AI dataset and co-author a multimodal manifesta, which is presented at the public roundtable and exhibit at Mesh Festival on Day 4.
Who we’re looking for: students, researchers, artists, activists, practitioners, and interested members of the public from any discipline or background. No prior experience with any of the methods is needed. Curiosity and a willingness to co-create are what matter.
SIGN UP (deadline: September 30): forms.gle/oJvnMT1UiRzrkK9A6

Good to know:
• Participation is free of charge.
• You must commit to all four sessions, because the work builds from day to day.
• Travel and accommodation are your own responsibility.
• The autumn school does not include access to other Mesh Festival events. For those, please get tickets at meshfestival.ch/en
• Application deadline: September 30, 2026. We will let you know by October 1, 2026 to confirm or let you know if you are on the waitlist.
Questions: metalab.hgk@fhnw.ch

Program
Day 1 — Methodologies of Care

Wed, October 14, 2026 · 13:00–15:00 Venue: HGK Basel
Tutors: Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe & Serena Cangiano (facilitators) · Max Frischknecht (contributor); communication, logistics, documentation, social media for the autumn school: Maja Sendecki (lead), supported by Emma Baumhofer, Juliette Luggen
• Opening with collaborative design methodologies bridging scientific inquiry and participatory practice.
• Introduction to neighborhood AI as a community-owned, community-governed civic infrastructure for environmental and health storytelling.
• Participants explore a toolkit and conduct structured interviews around care and health journeys in Basel.
• Closing hour: participants review and annotate the day’s material (interviews, field notes, recordings) into the shared dataset.

Day 2 — The Body as Living Archive: Body-Environment Relations

Thu, October 15, 2026 · 13:00–15:00 Venue: Food Culture Lab, HGK Basel
Tutors: Markus Krajewski (lead), with Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe · supported by Serena Cangiano, Florian Conradi, Max Frischknecht
• Fermentation as feminist archival practice — cooking and coding as cultural technique.
• Participants care for living cultures, moving from microbial transformation to environment through sound recording and embodied ethnography.
• Somatic and sensory methods engage body-environment relations as sites of ecological knowledge.
• A collective degustation closes the workshop segment.
• Closing hour: the day’s somatic experiences and recordings (graphic notations, sound fragments, written reflections) are added to the shared dataset.

Day 3 — Extended Reality Ecological Entanglements

Fri, October 16, 2026 · 13:00–15:00 Venue: Campus HGK Basel
Tutors: Ivo Schüssler (iart, lead) · contributors Dario Rodighiero, Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe, Saadia Mirza · supported by Serena Cangiano, Max Frischknecht
• XR workshop exploring how extended reality makes visible the invisible: ecological relationships, infrastructures of care, and more-than-human entanglements — building on metaLAB Basel’s Spatial Affairs research.
• Participants experience XR serious games and take auto-ethnographic, body-spatial observations for the manifesta exhibit.
• Closing hour: XR observations, spatial annotations, and reflections are mapped into the evolving dataset — developing the visual/cartographic layer of the final exhibit.

Day 4 — Listening to More-than-Human Urban Ecology

Sat, October 17, 2026 · 10:00–12:00 Venue: In the field — Basel urban environment
Tutors: Saadia Mirza (lead), with Kara Oehler and Florian Conradi · supported by Serena Cangiano, Max Frischknecht, Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe

• Sonic methodologies attune participants to environmental witnesses, drawing on multimodal fieldwork across glacial landscapes and interspecies/climate sound work.
• Participatory mapping and recording take place in the surrounding neighborhood.
• Closing hour: field recordings, maps, and sonic material are folded into the full manifesta archive; a final synthesis session identifies the threads and formats for the closing public presentation.

Day 4 (evening) — Public Presentation: Transdisciplinary Roundtable & Manifesta

Sat, October 17, 2026 · 14:30–15:30 Venue: AULA (roundtable)
Facilitated by: Mesh Festival

• Part 1 — metaLAB Community Roundtable: short thematic inputs from metaLAB members read through the autumn school’s findings and the festival’s core theme, followed by open interaction with the audience.
• Part 2 —Manifesta Exhibit: formats combining workshop methods, field recordings, XR annotations, and neighborhood AI, as a collaborative, multi-voiced manifesta on human-ecological health in urban communities, exhibited in the festival space (Aula corridor).

Neighborhood AI data collected during the school is shared within this community of practice and integrated in research. The manifesta will be open-access.