After being able to gather our speakers at the Hybrid Lab for the last edition of the Hybrid Talks in 2020, this time the 41st edition of the Hybrid Talks was fully digital. Ranging from arts to chemistry and sustainability the four speakers tackled the topic “Nature” through their webcam and composed an interesting livestream.
Ewelina Dobrzalski, coordinator of the Hybrid Platform, guided the viewers through the evening and introduced us to the digital space, where one was able to meet after the talks, ask questions and exchange thoughts.
The first speaker of the talk was Dr. Daniel Irrgang who had prepared a presentation about his exhibition “Critical Zones”. Changing the perspective on our planet by not viewing it from above but from within, we were encouraged to ponder nature's vulnerability. To slow down or eventually stop that process of decay our next guest, Prof. Dr. Reinhard Schomäcker, who leads the department of technical chemistry at the TU Berlin, proposed different ways to use renewable energies. We have to revolutionize today's industry and optimize existing methods to process CO2 as an energy source instead of sending it straight to the atmosphere.
“New perspectives, animals in the city” is the title of Lilli Kuschel’s new seminar that she teaches at UdK Berlin. Being an artist, director and cinematographer, she collected over 50 hours of material of crows in Berlin and Mumbai and shows how animals are treated differently in the two cultures.
The last person who caught the attention of our viewers was Prof. Dr. Susanne Hauser, who compared the developments of wilderness and civilisation and examined how our view of nature changed during the countercultural revolution of the 60’s. The aforementioned digital space was quickly filled with guests who had to fill up their glass of wine on their own but seemed grateful for the opportunity to talk to like-minded peers afterwards. We saw that our topic of “Nature” hit a nerve in these pandemic times and that our guests looked forward to sharing outside experiences with their friends and family again.
– Aljoscha