Sina Ribak

As an invitation to embrace the non-linear and changing world we live in, my keynote talk brings together biological facts and ethical values of socio-ecological justice around an usually unknown protagonist: the sponge.

For this international workshop on “Relationality and More-Than-Human Storytelling” organized by the Department of American Studies at the University of Augsburg, Germany, my suggestion is to look through the lens of coexistence as a counternarrative to extractivist practices that continue to poison our common ancestors, the beholders of both past knowledge and possible futures. Oceans are important sites of biological evolution, and sponge gardens can teach us about multi-kingdom becoming and the transformation of scientific understandings.

July 14, 2023.

Organized by: Ina Batzke, Milena Krischer, Linda M. Heß, and Fritz Bommas: The American Studies Department at the University of Augsburg has a long commitment to the environmental humanities as does the University of Augsburg overall, with the establishment of its Environmental Science Center in the early 2000s and the founding of the Center for Climate Resilience in 2021.

Long Hanging Fruits: Myths and Matter of the Oil Palm Complex is a collective presentation by Jan van Eyck participant Elia Nurvista, Michelle Lai, Sina Ribak, and Yoeri Guépin that weaves together stories around and between palm oil across the globe as an attempt to understand the multilayered processes surrounding this global commodity.

Palm oil may be seen as a hyperobject; the transmorphiguration of palm oil into a colourless, odourless raw material makes it a substance found in almost all of our daily products and consumables. Not having a fixed form or shape, to trace palm oil from its origins through the various objects it takes the form of, is a massive undertaking. Similarly, it seems impossible to grasp the manifold layers that define the global expansion of the oil palm complex for the past two centuries, covering earth’s tropical belts with vast swathes of oil palm plantations, accelerating the pace of climate change, resulting in cataclysmic environmental consequences for both human and other-than-human entities.
with Elia Nurvista, Michelle Lai, Yoeri Guépin, Moderated by Bruno Alves de Almeida, AC/KADEMIE JAN VAN EYCK, MAASTRICHT
4 May 2022 at 16:00 CEST in Jan van Eyck's Auditorium or online via Zoom, YouTube or Vimeo.

Inmitten ihrer Installation „Wald“, schildert Antje Majewski wie der Borkenkäfer den Nadelwäldern mehr und mehr zusetzt. Wie in anderen Arbeiten Majewskis nutzt sie auch hier die Malerei als Mittel, um ein Objekt – den vom Käfer befallenen Baum – zu verwandeln und eine andere Form der Betrachtung zu ermöglichen. Ihre Bilder fordern eine fast intime Nähe ein und erzeugen andererseits auch Befremdung.

Im Museumsdialog zur Ausstellung „Vom Leben in Industrielandschaften – Den Strukturwandel im Blick“ moderiert Anja Dorn, Direktorin Leopold-Hoesch-Museum & Papiermuseum Düren.ein interdiszplinäres Gespräch zwischn der Künstlerin Antje Majewski, der Forscherin für Ökologien und Künste Sina Ribak und Dr. Stephan Ebeling, Direktor des Amtsgerichts Düren, um verschiedene Perspektiven aufzumachen wer oder was der Wald ist oder sein könnte.

Donnerstag, 3.3.2022, 19 Uhr
"Der Wald – Ressource oder Produzent?"
mit der Künstlerin Antje Majewski, der Forscherin für Ökologien und Künste Sina Ribak und Dr. Stephan Ebeling, Direktor des Amtsgerichts Düren

Stories of the world are expressed in and through matter. By considering entanglement as a fundamental state, we understand that separateness is not the original state of being. This makes us rethink the concept of binary thinking, living and not living, sentient and insentient, conscious and inert, human and nature. researching biology and materiality of a single organism group in interaction with humans and other-than-humans.

The interdisciplinary research group LEARNING WITH THE MORE-THAN-HUMAN (Alen Ksoll, education and Sina Ribak, ecology) has the intention to experience pleasure in noticing small things and find ways to work with hybrid understanding of the world in our own practices.

The talk took place within the "Art for Nonhumans" seminar, with Alen Ksoll, Art Labor, Irene Snarby, Statens Konstråd, Cecilia Åsberg, facilitated by Grégory Castéra: SYMBIOTIC ORGANISATIONS, ROYAL INSTITUTE OF ART, STOCKHOLM.

15 November 2021, 14.00–17.30
The event takes place simultaneously at the Royal Institute of Art and online via Zoom.

Emerging from programs that already took place at the natureculture learning site of the Floating University Berlin, the dialogue “The Future of Environmental Pedagogies” wishes to dismantle artificial divisions between forms of practice. At this talk I will share from my ‘Thinking through the web of life with sponges’ research:
"Sharing stories about sponges, is an invitation to rethink the frames defining how and what we are learning about the world we live in. While getting to know sponges, we might meet our ancestors or even ourselves."

17th of October 2021 SUNDAY 20:00, “Bureau for Hybridising Encounters” at the ICC as part of “The Sun Machine Is Coming Down”, a project by Berliner Festspiele, Berlin.
• The Future of Environmental Pedagogies, with: Katherine Ball, Ignacio Farias, Sandra Jasper, Sina Ribak and Ela Spalding moderated by Gilly Karjevsky & Rosario Talevi.

Urban areas offer an often untapped potential for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration. The concept of “rewilding” is gaining momentum in public debate and has been both promoted and criticised. Central elements in these discussions are social acceptability and benefits – especially in densely populated areas – and the role of humans in the restoration efforts more broadly. Discussions around different restoration and conservation strategies have also gained prominence, because climate change damages are increasingly felt – also in urban areas. In this conversation, the role and potential of rewilding will be discussed, both as a concept for conservation in urban areas and in the context of a warming climate. To what extent is rewilding useful as a strategy in urban areas to a.o. mitigate and adapt to the changing climate?

The conversation is moderated by Johanna Wehkamp and Barbora Sedova both alumnis of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). Panelist are Dr. Andrea Perino, ecologist at the German Centre of Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig, Ulrich Stöcker/Katrin Schikorr, NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) and the initiative “Rewilding Oder Delta”, Sina Ribak, researcher for ecologies and the art, Aljoscha Hofmann, team leader of the strategy team Tempelhof Project GmbH.

11.09.2021, 14:00-17:00, FLOATING UNIVERSITY BERLIN
The Conversation took place within Climate Care 2021: The Rewilding Years – Theory and Practice on a natureculture learning site WITH ROSARIO TALEVI, GILLY KARJEVSKY, CLIMATE CARE FESTIVAL FLOATING UNIVERSITY BERLIN

Botanisches Museum Berlin
Talk Thursday 30th of August 2018, at 6 pm

Prof. Dr. Matthias Rillig
group leader – plant, fungal and soil ecology lab
Freie Universität Berlin, Dahlem Center of Plant Sciences

Sina Ribak
cultural & environmental manager
co-founder of the reading club “Between Us & Nature”

Karine Bonneval
artist

hosted by Kathrin Grotz
senior curator - Botanical Museum Berlin

as part of the finissage 'Sometimes I hear the plants whisper'
by Karine Bonneval

Botanical Museum Berlin
Königin-Luise-Str. 6-8, 14195 Berlin

Planetary Health: Scoping the German Research Landscape | Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS)
August 29, 2019

The IASS planetary health workshop invites selected research pioneers and policy makers with a broad range of expertise: on health, climate change, air quality, nutrition and food security, governance, education, and more. The majority of participants are associated with German research or policy institutes; this focus is complemented by perspectives from key international participants.

My talk included human and human aspects of planetary health, focusing on land use and sustainable agricultural practices as priority areas for planetary health research. As a research gap, I pointed out collaborative, transdisciplinary programs and their funding.

Organized by
Dr. Maka Maglakelidze Fellow, IASS
Dr. Kathleen Mar Group Leader, IASS
Dr. Kathryn Bowen, Affiliate Scholar, IASS
Hon. Assoc. Prof, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS)
Berliner Straße 130 Potsdam, Germany

University Alliance for Sustainability, Freie Universität Berlin
Spring Campus, April 1-5, 2019

Workshop: “Transitions to a Low-Carbon Economy in Comparative Perspective”, April 02-03, 2019
Organized by Dr. habil. Berthold Kuhn, Freie Universität Berlin, Prof. Kurt Hübner, University of British Columbia and Anna-Lena Guske, Freie Universität Berlin

With the aim to show the diversity of strategies and challenges in different countries aiming at accelerating emissions reduction and promoting the transition to low-carbon economies, I introduced Amy Balkin's work 'Public Smog': http://www.publicsmog.org/
Amy Balkin's artistic research focuses on complex nature - finance systems by setting up a “clean air park” over Los Angeles through the purchase of emission credits. Her works showcases how 'innovative financial mechanisms’ fail to address the drivers of environmental and social damage.
Through the example of art & science & activism, the workshop participants grasped critical social aspects of transition policies and programs.