Open Lecture: Shaken Grounds, University of Iceland
Iceland University, Fine Art Department
Welcome to an open lecture at the Fine Art department; Shaken Grounds. Seismography of Precarious Presences.
The Shaken Grounds group consists of interdisciplinary art researchers, Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek and Lucie Strecker in collaboration with Victor Jaschke, Werner Moebius and others. The lecture will take place in the lecture hall, L193 at IUA Laugarnes and is open to all.
The Fine Art department’s lecture series is held every semester and is open across departments and outside the school.
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Shaken Grounds is a cross-disciplinary artistic research project that began in October 2023, funded by the Austrian Science Fund and based at the Angewandte Performance Lab (APL). It explores fragility, resilience, and transformation in unstable geological, social, and existential contexts. Combining artistic research, performative practices and film, it investigates the literal and symbolic tremors shaping our shared world.
Once seen as purely natural events, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are now often linked to human activities such as climate change, groundwater extraction, geoengineering, and renewable energy production. In this shifting context, Earth is understood not as a passive backdrop but as a living, responsive body—one that trembles, resists, and transforms.
The project engages contemporary artistic perspectives to reflect on the challenges of the Anthropocene, emphasizing the importance of collective resilience. It highlights art as a seismographic practice—an act of witnessing and engaging creatively with a world defined by instability. By weaving artistic, mythological, scientific, and political views, Shaken Grounds develops layered narratives that aim to open up new ways of sensing and responding.
www.lhi.is/vidburdur/open-lecture-shaken-grounds-seismography-of-precarious-presences
