Understanding Practice
with Yael Eylat Van Essen
Thursday, 25 May, 18:00-19:30
Talk: Contextualizing Heritage – Past, Present, Future
Museums have undergone significant changes in the last decades as many have shifted their focus from institutions
representing the past to functioning as platforms for transformation and as sites for civic engagement. In her research, Yael
Eylat Van Essen explores how museums can better connect past heritage to the present reality, speculate, and even impact the
future.
As the current reality relies on intensive processes of datafication and technological
sensing, she explores the possibilities of contextualizing heritage by designing heritage sites as smart and dynamic platforms.
These platforms operate in real-time while being integrated within a broader interconnected technological ecosystem. Using
this approach as a curatorial strategy aims to identify concealed patterns within real and virtual spaces. Based on the ability
of new technologies to connect data from different ontological fields, this methodology enables exploring culture by connecting
human and non-human agents in new ways and thus offering new perspectives.
Friday, 26 May, 10:00-12:30
Workshop: Contextualizing Heritage in the Prater Neighborhood
The workshop, conducted jointly
by museum researcher and curator Yael Eylat Van Essen, and urban scientist Katja Schechtne, will explore the possibility of
converging rhizomatic curatorial strategies relating to the multi-faceted history of the Prater Neighborhood with practices
originating from smart cities systems.
Dr Yael Eylat Van Essen is a researcher and curator specializing
in the interface between art, design, science and technology and museology. She curated numerous exhibitions in Israel and
abroad, among them for the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for Architecture. Her research interests include digital
heritage and museology, digital culture theory, new-media art, post-photography, resilience studies and speculative design.
She is a senior lecturer in the Design Faculty at HIT Holon Institute of Technology and teaches at Tel Aviv University, and
she is currently on a research residency at MUSeum+ in the Czech Republic.
Katja Schechtner is
an urban scientist who develops new technologies and shapes innovative policies to keep cities on the move. In her research
she currently focuses on a reassessment of the rights of nature within urban governance with MIT LCAU and at the same time,
tackles questions of urban policymaking with a particular emphasis on understanding the human perception of - and interaction
with - the built environment with MIT senseable city lab. Previously, she negotiated international technology and innovation
policy and implemented smart city projects and strategies with global institutions e.g. OECD, Asian Development
Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, EU Commission etc. - all the while holding visiting professorships, research fellowships
and lecturer positions globally, e.g. at MIT Media Lab, Paris-Saclay, dieAngewandte, TU Vienna, or HDM Stuttgart. Her work
has been exhibited globally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism,
MAK, and ars electronica. Her current exhibition and latest book: "Frauen Bauen Stadt - The City Through a Female Lens" together
with Wojciech Czaja has been featured in international media, from Al Jazeera to El Pais, Fuji TV to Le Monde, and is currently
traveling internationally with the next stop being Shenzhen, China.
