See You There
See You There
Explore the Travel Bag
We live in a time that offers seemingly boundless opportunities for travel and connection, yet paradoxically, we are more lonely and divided than ever. Dating apps conjure romance within a chosen radius; GPS offers pathways to dreamy holiday destinations; while generative AI interprets unfamiliar sounds into digestible multilingual summaries. Marks of time and space have bent to market desires; outer space travel has become the next horizon for conspicuous consumption; while we keep investing in the illusory capacity to commercialise all forms of human experience.
In a context of global climate crisis and widening economic disparity, the eco-social cost of global mobility is impossible to ignore. The occupation of placescolonised lands and global movement of bodiesdisplaced peoples through conflicts and environmental disasters, sits in stark contrast to the techno-utopian reveries of oligarchs. For many, the everyday experience of a technologically-mediated community increasingly complicates and confuses perceptionsa sense of belonging to one, or any, place on this earth. At the same time, contemporary technologies may offer vital networks of support and distributed spaces for deep connection that should not be underestimated.
How do we find community and connection, in an ever expanding and complex spatial imaginary? What are the images, ideas and questions that shape our multilayered sense of belonging today?
See you there is a publishing project that facilitates contemporary conversations about space, place, community and mobility. Through a series of linked interventions, it showcases the work of a selected group of international practitioners to provoke reflection about how and where we might find our communities (and at what cost).
Travel bags
For Ursula K. Le Guin, stories serve as ‘carrier bags’ to gather and share knowledge. They are woven through complex fibres of word and image, and form a fundamental technology for human survival. For the editors of See You There, the ‘travel bag’ offers a way to re-imagine knowledge exchange, connection and creation. It reflects an incomplete process that holds images and ideas, which are transported between people and places.
On April 11th 2024, a group of artists, theorists, designers and curators met at the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles (CWB). Some travelled across countries, continents and hemispheres, while others arrived on foot. In the CWB theatre, they shared stories and unravelled urgent questions about living across new frontiers of space, community, ecology and technology. How do we situate ourselves in today’s complex and ever expanding, technologically mediated space? How do we find one another (whoever we are), once we are there?
‘Travel Bags: 9 Pockets for Celestial Bodies/Terrestrial Beings’, responds to the tradition of publishing conference proceedings, offering a generous carrier bag for the concepts, images and questions gathered through the bilingual (English and French spoken) colloquium ‘Celestial Bodies/Terrestrial Beings.’ Published as a series of postcards and an online syllabus, it is the first experiment by See you there, which seeks to consider how knowledge weaves diverse paths across the globe.
Contributors
Golnaz Behrouznia
Amélie Bouvier
Annick Bureaud
Louise Charlier
Natacha Duviquet
Manuela de Barros
Inte Gloerich
Vidya-Kelie Juganaikloo
Adriana Knouf
Ania Molenda
Elise Morin
Plant Sex Consultancy (Pei-Ying Lin, Dimitris Stamatis, Jasmina Weiss Špela Petrič)
Baden Pailthorpe
Denise Thwaites
Pocket 1: Lost bodies
Combien d’échelles de temps ta vie traverse-t-elle ?
How many time scales does your life pass through?
Reading material
Adam Goodes and Baden Pailthorpe, Ngapulara Ngarngarnyi Wirra, 2022.
Baden Pailthorpe, Rematriement spéculatif après la surveillance par satellite: vers la souveraineté des données indigènes, 2024.
Robin R. R. Gray, “Rematriation: Ts’msyen Law, Rights of Relationality, and Protocols of Return,” Native American and Indigenous Studies, Volume 9, Issue 1, Spring 2022, pp. 1-27. Courtesy of Carrying Our Ancestors Home.
Golnaz Behrouznia, Dissimilarium 0.2, 2021.
Annick Buread’s website, including publications and project archive.
Chris Pak, Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2026.
If you have tips for more materials to add here, please reach out to us at editorial [at] amateurcities [dot] com.
Art works
Adam Goodes and Baden Pailthorpe, Wirra on Adnyamathanha Yarta (2024). Copyright and courtesy of the artists.
D Mitriy, Almost Terraformed Mars (2007). Creative Commons license Share Alike 3.0
Check back soon for more
Pocket 2: Fertile Cosmos
Did we grow as planned?
Avons-nous grandi comme prévu ?
Reading material
Dorian Sagan, “Gaia versus the Anthropocene: Untimely Throughts on the Current Eco-Catastrophe”, Ecocene 1.1, 2020, pp. 137-146. Shared by Environment and Society portal.
SIANA: Vers de nouveaux imaginaires (Laboratoire Artistique du Sud Francilien).
Pei-Ying Lin, Dimitris Stamatis, Jasmina Weiss Špela Petrič, The Plant Sex Consultancy: Giving Small Pleasures to the Planted, 2014-ongoing.
Amelie Bouvier, But Keep Your Feet on the Ground, 2014-2016.
Manuela de Barros, Cycle de conférences “Sciences & Fictions”, Université Paris 8, d’octobre 2017 à mars 2023. Retransmis et en partie archivé par la radio P-node.
If you have tips for more materials to add here, please reach out to us at editorial [at] amateurcities [dot] com.
Art works
Pei-Ying Lin, Dimitris Stamatis, Jasmina Weiss Špela Petrič (Plant Sex Consultancy), Mutation ritual for Curcuma (2014). Copyright and courtesy of the artists.
Amélie Bouvier, But Keep Your Feet On the Ground #3 (2015). Stills from HD video, 3 min video © Amélie Bouvier & Harlan Levey Projects.
Check back soon for more
Pocket 3: Tender ruins
What can be foraged in postdigital ruins?
Que peut-on glaner dans les ruines post-numériques ?
Reading material
Annick Bureaud, ‘More-Than-Planet’, Olats, 2022 - 2025.
Elise Morin, Spring Odyssey, 2018 - 2020.
Anna L. Tsing, ‘A look inside The Mushroom at the End of the World’, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
Anna L. Tsing, Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena and Feifei Zhou, [Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene](https://feralatlas.org/)
Angels in America, ‘Belize describes Heaven’, extract from HBO miniseries directed by Mike Nichols, 2003, adapted from the play ‘Angels in America’ by Tony Kushner, 1991.
If you have tips for more materials to add here, please reach out to us at editorial [at] amateurcities [dot] com.
Art works
Elise Morin, Mapping the Red Forest from Spring Odyssey (2020). Copyright and courtesy of the artist.
Sandip Katel, Little Mushrooms World, (2021). Creative Commons license Share Alike 3.0
Check back soon for more
Pocket 4: Future organisms
How porous are you?
À quel point es-tu poreux·se ?
Reading material
Marylou, artist website and residency at SIANA, 2023 - 2024.
S+T+ARTS: Adriana Knouf: Amateur Lithopanspermia, Art Hub Copenhagen, 2022.
Helen Pynor, 93% Human, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 2023.
Mikaela Karlsson, {queering space}, Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Studies (daas), n.d.
Donna Haraway, “Sympoiesis: Symboigenesis and the Living Arts of Staying with the Trouble”, in: Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
If you have tips for more materials to add here, please reach out to us at editorial [at] amateurcities [dot] com.
Art works
Adriana Knouf, Amateur Lithopanspermia (2022).
Artist Marylou at SIANA (2024), Image credit and copyright Zoé Thiburs.
MallardTV, Lichen on fallen tree branch, 2024. Public domain accessed wikimedia commons.
Check back soon for more
Pocket 5: Horror Vacui
Où sont-iels tou·te·s passé·e·s ?
Where did everyone go?
Pocket 6: Alien wayfinding
Quelles traces laisseras-tu derrière toi ?
What traces will you leave behind?
Pocket 7: Control systems
Did we miscalculate?
Avons-nous mal calculé ?
Pocket 8: Unknown unknowns
Zero is the largest number, holding potential for all that is unknown. Draw your own zero.
Zéro est le plus grand des nombres, porteur de tout ce qui est inconnu. Dessine ton propre zéro.
Pocket 9: Eternal eclipse
Which story will we tell?
Quelle histoire allons-nous raconter ?
