Climate Change: Indigenous Perspectives and Artistic Utopias - 2026
The Summer School “Climate Change: Indigenous Perspectives and Artistic Utopias” explores urgent questions surrounding climate change through an interdisciplinary lens, bringing together scholars from diverse and seemingly distant academic fields. The program examines how cultural practices can generate responses – speculative, concrete, political and communal – to the multiple crises of climate change, from perspectives beyond Western paradigms. The course combines lecture-based sessions with interactive workshops, including a videogame development jam, alongside sound performances, an artistic VR installation, and other practice-led, horizontal and participatory activities designed to foster dialogue and active engagement among participants. The program also includes a visit to a local cultural space.
June 8-12, 2026
Department of the Arts
Santa Cristina
Piazzetta Morandi, 2, 40125 Bologna – Italy
University of Bologna – Francesco Maria Spampinato
University of Helsinki – Nicola Renzi
Jagiellonian University – Michał Pałasz, Marta Wojnowska
Universidad Complutense de Madrid – Julia Ramírez-Blanco, Mireia Campanera Reig
DAY 1 June 8
Getting Together: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change
9.30 Coffee and Registration
10.00 Welcome Session
• Francesco Maria Spampinato UNIBO
• Nicola Renzi UH
• Michał Pałasz, Marta Wojnowska JU
• Julia Ramírez-Blanco, Mireia Campanera Reig UCM
10.15 Integration & Interknowledge, Michał Pałasz JU
11.00 A Joint UNIBO, JU, UH, UCM Effort Presentation: UNA Europa Micro-credential in Sustainability and UnaVEx – UNA Europa Virtual Exchange for Sustainability, Mireia Campanera, Maciej Grodzicki and Francesco Spampinato, UNIBO
12.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Individual Perspectives
• An Itchy Democracy of Species: Everybody, Under the “Mosquito Shower”!, Nicola Renzi (UH)
• Ecological Aesthetics, Julia Ramírez-Blanco (UCM)
• Never Mix Indigenous With Utopian, Michał Pałasz (JU)
• Climate Change and Artistic Speculations, Francesco Spampinato (UNIBO)
15.00 Saami Games Now! Process and Practice in Indigenous Game Design, Outi Laiti (UH)
DAY 2 June 9
Flipping the Gaze: Indigenous Ecological Perspectives
9.30 Coffee
10.00 Introduction: Other Ways of Worlding, Elena Brianzi (UNIBO)
10.20 “Contested Visions” in the Early Modern Andean and Amazonian Americas: Indigenous and Missionary Agencies on Cataclysm, Environments, and Survivance, Maria Vittoria Spissu (UNIBO)
11.20 The Owners of the River? Kukama Ontologies and Other Perspectives Beyond Extractivism, Mireia Campanera (UCM)
12.20 Lunch break
14.00 Oceanic Archives: Deconstructing the Western Canon, (Re)Enacting Indigenous Epistemologies Through Artistic Practices, Cristina Baldacci (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
15.00 Indigenous Listening and Co-Creation With the Land, Nicola Renzi (UH)
16.00 Indigenous Eco-Futurisms: Worlds Already Under Construction, Simona Maria Pagano (UNIBO)
17.00 Keynote speech – Contemporary World-Making, Jacob Lund (Aarhus University, Denmark)
DAY 3 June 10
Counterworlds and Artistic Reconsiderations of the Real
9.00 Coffee
9.40 Introduction: Prompting The Not-Yet. Art, Ecology, Indigeneity Simona Maria Pagano (UNIBO)
10.00 Proto-Ecological Artistic Counterworlds: Revisiting Monte Verità, Elena Brianzi (UNIBO)
11.00 Ecological Utopianism and Aesthetic Imaginaries, Julia Ramirez-Blanco (UCM)
12.00 Utopia ≠ Dystopia ≠ Protopia: On Artists’ Eco-Imagination, Francesco Spampinato (UNIBO)
13.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Contemporary Virtual Ecologies in Artist-Made Gaming Worlds, Beatrice Sartori (UNIBO)
15.00 Utopia Games Jam, workshop with Outi Laiti (UH) and Beatrice Sartori (UNIBO)
DAY 4 June 11
Climate Storytelling and Degrowth Practices
9.30 Coffee
10.00 Introduction: Building Utopia from the Ground Up, Beatrice Sartori (UNIBO)
10.20 Stories That Grow Roots: A Climate Storytelling Workshop (Part I), Marta Wojnowska, (JU)
11.20 The Collective Zine of Inner Climates and Emotional Uprisings (Part II), Marta Wojnowska, (JU)
12.20 Lunch Break
14.00 Degrowth: Living Good for All Life? An Introductory Lecture, Michał Pałasz, (JU)
15.00 Tactics for Strong Degrowth: An Illustrated Workshop on Applied Utopianism, Michał Pałasz, (JU)
16.00 Visit to Serra Madre and presentation by Nicoletta Tranquillo (Kilowatt)
16.30 Eccesso di Ablazione, multichannel audiovisual installation, Sergio Maggioni (artist)
DAY 5 June 12
Salon of Utopias
9.30 Coffee
10.00 Presentation of Group Projects: Putting Threads Together – Peer and Teacher Feedback Toward Students’ Collaborative Work
11.00 Presentation of Utopia Games Jam workshop
12.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Debriefing Session
15.00 A presentation by Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), including excerpts of machinimas created by artist Skawennati and a virtual tour of AbTeC Island in Second Life. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.