Symposium: Being Human Otherwise

9:30 Coffee

10:00
Lisa Rosendahl: Introduction

10:15 - 11:00
Suzanne Gieser: Toward a Non-Dual Understanding of Mind and Matter: Pauli and Jung

11:00 - 11:30
Damla Kilickiran: Appearances of Psychic Matter

11:30 - 12:00
Q&A and conversation with Suzanne Gieser and Damla Kilickiran

12.00 - 13.00 Lunch

13:00
Mark Vernon: William Blake, Owen Barfield and the Evolution of Consciousness

14:00
Simone Kotva: Vegetal Mysticism

15-15:30
Q&A and conversation with Mark Vernon and Simone Kotva

15:30 - 16:00 Coffee Break

16:00 - 17:00
Simon Critchley: Mysticism and Philosophy (and Possibly Some Music)
(online)

17:00 - 17:45
Mmabatho Thobejane
In Search of Ceremony: The Altar in Ubungoma and Curatorial Practice

17:45
Q&A with Mmabatho Thobejane and closing conversation with speakers and Lisa Rosendahl

18:30 - 19:30 Refreshments

Title: This Keynote Was Delivered by a Human

Abstract:
We are living in inhumane and inhuman times. In what feels like a singular death blow to the longstanding projects of humanism, the contemporary world rewrites our lives with the fonts of tomahawks and genocide, in scripts quickly read and summarized by ChatGPT. Today, one may conveniently produce masterpiece-adjacent works of art, create text that blurs the boundaries of genius, and - if you are the President of a particular country - proliferate racializing videos that depict Black people as monkeys. Today, the inhumane is so thoroughly at home in the inhuman that one might declare that "the human" is in crisis. What does it mean to be human when virtues once assigned exclusively to humans are now distributed across technologies, multi-species salons, algorithms, and arrangements?

Though grieving the loss of his authorial privileges as a producer of scripts and texts, Professor Bayo Akomolafe argues against the urge to an essentialism that seeks to restore what we've 'lost'. He suggests that the human was never a human phenomenon - and that truly celebrating the human requires touching the unspeakably material and posthumanist forces and speculative gestures that host the 'human'. By considering his concepts of white stability, the shrinking citizen, the rise of the minotaur, the Second Fall, accommodations, and cracks, Bayo Akomolafe aims to demonstrate that being human has always been a political category - and that this category seems to be reaching the creative limits of its tensile strength.

Bio:
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to EJ, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, self-styled ‘trans-public’ intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak (along with Professors Molefi Kete Asante and Augustine Nwoye), Bayo Akomolafe is the visionary founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide networking project and inquiry at the edges of the Anthropocene that seeks to convene new kinds of responsivities, sensuous solidarities, and experimental practices for a posthumanist parapolitics. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’ and curator of Dancing with Mountains, the educational consultation. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California – and, in November 2024, was appointed the Hubert Humphrey Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Macalester College, USA (beginning Fall 2025). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural W. E. B. Du Bois Scholar in Residence for Trans-public Intellectualism at the Schumacher Centre for a New Economics, the Inaugural Scholar in Residence for the Aspen Institute, the inaugural Special Fellow for the Council of an Uncertain Human Future, as well as Visiting Scholar to Clark University, Massachusetts, USA (2024). He was named Centenary Philosopher (Scots Philosophical Association) by the University of Dundee in March 2024, and has been appointed the inaugural Distinguished Philosopher-in-Residence at the J. Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History in Lagos, Nigeria (2025).

www.bayoakomolafe.net
www.dancingwithmountains.com
www.emergencenetwork.org

Title: Breathing Glaciers, Scents Creating Rain and Humans Walking as Trees

Abstract:
Artist Randi Nygård has a fundamental desire to see the world in a more vivid, open, and interconnected way. Through unexpected encounters with and between poetry and law, urban space and birds, scents and rain, breath and marshes, and glaciers, words and forms, and trees and movement, Nygård will talk about the meaning of poetic mindsets and quiet connections today.

Bio:
Randi Nygård (b. 1977, Bergen) is a visual artist living in Oslo. She holds an MFA from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, NTNU (2006). Nygård has exhibited widely including at the New Museum, New York; Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia; Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney; Kunstverein Springhornhof, Kunstmuseet KUBE; Kunstnernes Hus; Hordaland Kunstsenter; Tegnerforbundet; Tromsø Kunstforening; Trøndelag senter for samtidskunst and Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, as well as in the Chilean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2022). Her work is held in public and private collections, she has realised public commissions for among others KORO (Public Art Norway); Vestland County and Region Stockholm. In 2022 she received the Norwegian Government’s ten-year working grant. Nygård has participated in numerous residencies. She has joined research expeditions, written essays and texts for artists, curated groupshows and organised lectures and seminars, including at Kunstnernes Hus. Nygård is part of the artist groups MEANDER, Paviljongen Våtmark and Ensayos.

Title: Reclaim. Rebuild.

Abstract:
Ahmed Umar invites audiences into a deeply personal artistic journey shaped by experiences of religion, sexuality, authority, and alienation. Rooted in autobiographical narratives, his work explores tensions between imposed identity and self-realization, positioning art as both resistance and healing. Working across sculpture, performance, and photography, Umar reclaims silenced voices and reconstructs fractured histories, confronting inherited power structures while imagining new forms of existence. Through intimate storytelling, he demonstrates how art can rebuild the self, memory, and belonging, framing artistic practice as a means of survival, transformation, and the creation of new realities.

Bio:
Ahmed Umar (b. 1988) is an Oslo-based interdisciplinary artist and visual autobiographer. Working across media including sculpture, textiles, ceramics, video, photography, installation, and performance, his practice articulates narratives of queerness, migration, and spiritual negotiation. Rooted in lived experience, his work examines conditions of suppression and alienation alongside processes of liberation, resilience, and self-reclamation. He graduated with an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2016 and has since developed an extensive exhibition practice, including works in the 60th Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, the Biennale of Sydney, and the Toronto Biennale of Art.

Title: Introfada Introvert Liberation vs The State

Abstract:
Artist Hamja Ahsan will speak about his book and film Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert as well as his curatorial practice and speculative activism. Shy Radicals is an anti-systemic manifesto for the introvert class, a quiet and thoughtful polemic using satire and anti-colonial theory to build a critique of state institutions and the rising tide of Islamophobia while outlining introvert struggles and the political demands of shy people.

Bio:
Hamja Ahsan is an award-winning artist, writer, curator and activist based in London. His art practice draws from the language and formats of Liberation movements. He is best known for the book Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert, recently made into a film, that envisions a utopic homeland for quiet, awkward and neurodiverse peoples. He was awarded the Grand Prize at Ljubljana Biennial 2019 for the art work Aspergistan Referendum based on this book. His art practice weaves inside and outside the artworld, progressive movements, muslim diasporic spaces, in the form of speaker-tours, coining critical languages, zine fairs, building archives and collections, as well as exhibition spaces. He recently curates Zine Mela the South Asian DIY Cultures festival and archive, and has presented art projects at the NY Art Book Fair at MOMA PS1; Tate Modern, London; Gwangju Biennale; Shanaakht festival, Karachi; and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Warsaw. He co-curated the Radical Accessibility Festival at Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum in 2025.

Title: Toward a Non-Dual Understanding of Mind and Matter: Pauli and Jung

Abstract:
The meeting in 1932 between the physicist Wolfgang Pauli—one of the founders of quantum physics—and the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung marked the beginning of the first modern attempt to formulate a non-dual worldview grounded in emerging insights into both the human mind, particularly the unconscious, and the nature of matter.

This lecture will examine the encounter between these two thinkers and explore some of the central themes that emerged from their dialogue. It will also address the development of the concept of synchronicity, a theory that can be understood as a collaborative intellectual creation arising from their exchange.

Bio:
Suzanne Gieser has a PhD in the History of Sciences (specializing in the history of psychiatry and psychotherapy) and is a licensed relational psychotherapist, trauma specialist and supervisor. She works both in private practice in Sweden and as employed. She has studied the psychology of CG Jung since 1981, and the relationship between Jung and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Her book, The Innermost Kernel: Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics. Wolfgang Pauli’s Dialogue with C.G. Jung was published in English in 2005. In this book a chapter is devoted to how Paul and Jung cooperated around the phenomena and theory of Synchronicity resulting in a conjoint publication in 1952. Suzanne was a senior lecturer and associate professor for ten years at The Institute of Analytical Psychology (IAP), a private institute of Jungian scholarly studies in Stockholm, and has authored several articles and prefaces related to C. G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli in Swedish and English, including the article on Jung in the Swedish National Encyclopedia. She is a member of the board at the Swedish C. G. Jung Foundation and is co-founder of the Swedish Association for Imago Therapy. She is the editor of Jung’s 1937 and 1938 seminars in Bailey Island and New York, published in 2019 in Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process: Notes of C. G. Jung's Seminars on Wolfgang Pauli's Dreams.

Title: Appearances of Psychic Matter

Abstract:
Damla Kilickiran’s artistic practice deals with questions on where and how the boundary is drawn between the subject and the world; what this threshold is made of, what practices have played a historical role in creating this division, and what the implications potentially could be when the boundary is expanded, blurred or temporarily erased. The presentation at KhiO will take the form of a séance on atomic self-reflexivity and the ambiguity of image productions located in dimensional thresholds. Kilickiran will talk about her collaboration with material researchers Andreas Rosnes and Cana Elgvin at The Center for Materials Science and Nanotechnology (SMN) at the University of Oslo, and present fragments of an unfolding video-work that will be shown at K.O.S.A in Maridalen later this year.

BIO:
Damla Kilickiran is an artist based in Olso (b. 1991, Stockholm). Her installations involve sculpture, drawing, text and experimental film where uncertainty and transitions between materials and other reality-segments reign. Sampling new circuits of spiritual technologies, she engages practically with a new metaphysics that proposes life-like impulses in industrial materials like asphalt, metals and minerals. Damla Kilickiran graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo in 2020. Recent exhibitions include Haugar Kunstmuseum (2026), Lunds Konsthall (2025), the 8th Yokohama Triennale (2024), Bergen Kunsthall (2022), Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA); UKS, Oslo (both 2021); Destiny’s Atelier, Oslo (2020); Lofoten International Art Festival (2019). She has created a public artwork for KORO that will unfold at the new government quarter in Olso (2029) and is currently working towards a solo-presentation at Femtensesse in Oslo in April 2026.

Title: William Blake, Owen Barfield and the Evolution of Consciousness

Abstract:
'Awake oh sleepers of the land of shadows’ cried the poet and painter William Blake. But what did he mean? The poet and philosopher, Owen Barfield, had a proposal. This great friend of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien proposed that human awareness changes over periods of cultural time, which is why we talk about being modern. But with each shift, there are gains in perception and losses. Hence the need to awaken. So how did Barfield understand our times? Why did he suggest reading Blake as a remedy? And can these insights help us now?

Bio:
Dr Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist, podcaster and writer of journalistic articles as well as books. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and degrees in theology and physics. His books include "A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness"; "Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey" and most recently "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination". He used to be a priest in the Church of England and lives in south London. For more see www.markvernon.com.

Title: Vegetal Mysticism

Abstract:
Why do mystics love plants? In mysticism, it is common to find vegetal imagery. Mystics often favour green milieus, describe themselves and their minds as plants, and generally understand mental absorption as a return to a vegetal state. In this talk I want to compare mystical descriptions of plants to the way plants are being discussed in recent philosophy. For philosophers like Emanuele Coccia and Michael Marder, both plants and humans engage in contemplation. What do these metaphors mean? And how do they relate to the lives of plants – and mystics?

Bio:
Simone Kotva teaches theology in the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She us the author of two books:
Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy (2020), and Ecologies of Ecstasy: Mysticism, Philosophy and Vegetal Life (2026). Simone is currently working on a new project, "Folklore Theology," which addresses the relationship between spirit ecologies in Northern Europe

Title: Mysticism and Philosophy (and Possibly Some Music)

Abstract:
My talk will introduce people to the themes addressed in my recent book, Mysticism (NYRB, USA/Profile Books, UK) and consider the way in which mysticism fundamentally shift our understanding of philosophy and how it lives on in the experience of music.

Bio:
Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. His books include Very Little…Almost Nothing (1997), Infinitely Demanding (2007), The Book of Dead Philosophers (2009) and The Faith of the Faithless (2012). He has also written a novella, Memory Theatre (2015), a book-length essay, Notes on Suicide (2020) and studies of David Bowie, Football and Apply-Degger (Onassis, 2020). More recent books are Tragedy, The Greeks and Us (Pantheon, 2019) and Bald (Yale, 2021). He was series moderator of ‘The Stone’, a philosophy column in The New York Times and co-editor of three volumes connected to the series, most recently Question Everything (2022). He is 50% of an obscure musical combo called Critchley & Simmons, whose last album, Gone Forever, was released in 2024. The book Mysticism was published by The New York Review of Books (USA) and Profile (UK) in November 2024. A short book called I Want To Die, I Hate My Life – Three Essays on Tragedy and One on Beckett was published in 2025 with ERIS.

Title: In Search of Ceremony: The Altar in Ubungoma and Curatorial Practice

Abstract:
In this presentation I trace and explore the place and function of the altar in my practice as a curator who is also a sangoma (Nguni traditional healer). My work encompasses altar sessions, which draw from ubuNgoma (the tradition within which a sangoma is initiated) and from broader Bantu cosmologies in an effort to foster deeper connection and belonging between friends and strangers alike.

altar sessions are an implicit collaboration between myself and my guiding ancestors. They form part of my distinct, but sometimes overlapping practices, as both sangoma and curator. By centering the altar and altar sessions, this presentation unpicks and explores the questions that arise from the intertwining of curating and ubuNgoma in my work.

I am interested in how ubuNgoma reorients curatorial practice and how curatorial practice, in turn, reframes my vocation as a sangoma. Thinking alongside Sylvia Wynter, I ask: what genre of the human is proposed through a marriage of these two seemingly disparate vocations? In my work, can the altar and altar sessions be understood as a search for ceremony in pursuit of a somewhere beyond and after humanism?

Bio:
Mmabatho Thobejane (she/they) is a sangoma and cultural practitioner working across curating, craft and text as material practices. Mmabatho’s curatorial practice encompasses pono ya moya, an African Traditional Health practice focused on ancestral healing, through which, guided by and in collaboration with their ancestors, they curate and facilitate workshops like altar sessions. Mmabatho’s practices take up the triad relationship between ourselves, each other and the earth.