CHIARA LAMPIS TEMMINK

As a third-year EUC student in Political Science, CHIARA is very engaged with topics such as the environment, human-nonhuman relations and decolonisation. She is currently enrolled in the RASL minor and is working on the topic of ecology from both academic and artistic perspectives.

Why did you choose this minor? 

Actually, I knew since my first year at EUC that I wanted to do this minor. I attended the Arts and Culture Programme events and heard that the minor was going to be created. These events really sparked my interest, I always wanted to explore how I could incorporate the arts with other disciplines that aren’t necessarily academic into the things that I do. The RASL minor was a perfect opportunity to try this out.

How would you say the arts and sciences reinforce each other?

For the minor, we read a text about this that I really liked and agreed with. It’s called ‘Asters and Goldenrod’ and is published in a book called Braiding Sweetgrass. The author talks about how scientific knowledge is too narrow to know all the things that we can know. I think the arts really enables you to see that there are other ways of knowing. For instance, you can know things emotionally and that's not less worthy knowledge than something that you gathered through empirical practice and scientific methods. With the arts, there's much more production instead of reproduction, more creation and exploration. And then the combination of arts and science gives a more holistic understanding of things in the world. 

Can you tell us a bit about the project you’re now working on in the minor and the social issues you are engaged with?

Sure! We are a group of students from EUC who are studying humanities and social sciences, students from EUR who do econometrics and arts and culture studies, students from WdKA studying fashion and graphic design and a jazz vocals student from Codarts. The theme we are working on has changed a lot throughout the process. We started with eco-feminism and are now working with eco-philosophy in order to oppose the traditional conception of nature. I think this project is especially cool because it breaks away from the linear, question-answer projects I am used to. 

What does collaboration across and beyond disciplines look like in your minor group? 

In the beginning, we did a lot of research about how we were going to work together. With everyone coming from different disciplines, you can't just assume that people are going to work the way you do. So, we pitched ourselves: who we are, how we work and how we learn, just to have a sense of what everyone brings to the group. From then on, it has been very organic. We have been doing quite some reading, but also, we've been going to a lot of events and have been doing different things together, also in an informal setting. I find that really important because it helps you create a common mindset, so to say. 

How does the teaching method of the minor differ from that of your major at EUC?  

The minor definitely allows you to be more yourself. I feel like personal experience often blurs with the things we're talking about, and that's really cool. Also, when we do artistic things like making a zine or writing a little fictional story about ourselves, it is quite personal, and you’re being more vulnerable than when you’re doing something like writing a paper and reproducing what other people are saying, for instance.

How do these learning experiences translate into your current practice?

I really think this concept of transdisciplinarity and these different ways of knowing things have become super relevant to me. In my view, it is two-sided. First, you can address one problem through different disciplines. So, for example, I have a close connection to Bosnia Herzegovina because I lived there. When I think about the war there, I am not just looking at it only through the lens of the social sciences, but also through things I've learned from the arts. For instance, how the city is designed and how that affects conflict. Secondly, I feel like working across disciplines enables you to connect different problems. I think about Bosnia and then I think about what's going to happen to this country as climate change escalates. Transdisciplinarity gives me a more holistic understanding of the world, and I also want to take this with me when writing my capstone at EUC.

Does this minor help you with the creation or development of your network?

Yeah! What's also really cool about the minor is that it brings people from different fields together. For example, we meet designers, architects, scientists, philosophers. It also shows you that people are actually implementing these practices beyond disciplinary boundaries. We meet them and we can ask them questions and they tell us about their work and listen to our ideas and our questions. There’s no hierarchy of knowledge: they're equally as interested in learning from us as we are from them.

How do you imagine the future of this project after the minor?

I feel like the project is a small taste of what’s to come. We've talked a lot about our own small utopia and about a philosophy called ‘compositionism’, which means we have to continuously build the world we want to see together, by collaborating, thinking and then rethinking and collaborating some more. What I would like is to help build a space to really explore this connection between ecology, the arts and being human. I feel like all those things tie together really well. In my head, I picture it as this alternative place where you can go and you don't have to abide by the normal rules of the society we live in, a place where you can explore different ways of doing, embodying, and practising, not just thinking. A place where what you learn from being together, or from dancing together, or cooking together, is equally valuable as something you learn from a book or a professor.