About the symposium
From January to July 2025, the CLEA ArtScience group will run a pilot series in Brussels of monthly 2-day symposia to collectively imagine the Imaginary Institute, a new initiative by the group. For the first symposium in February, imaginary protocols will be proposed by members of CLEA. Moving forward, we’ll develop a shared system so that future symposia are shaped by proposals for protocols for collective imagination by members and guests of the Imaginary Institute. Read more here.
Part of the February symposium will include a talk by Mixel Kiemen about his decade-long research on the System of Creation (SoC), exploring the evolution of cybernetic models and the emergence of novel phenomena. More info here.
Practical
When. Friday 14 and Saturday 15 February, 2025
Where. Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) House, Krijgskundestraat 33, 1160 Brussels (near the VUB)
How to apply. Please contact orion.maxted@vub.be or apply directly for a membership here
More info. Visit the ii webpage
Other symposia:
#2: 21 & 22 March, 2025
#3: 25 & 26 April, 2025
#4: 16 & 17 May, 2025
#5: 20 & 21 June, 2025
About the Imaginary Institute
CLEA ArtScience and Systems at Play propose an Imaginary Institute - a free-thinking laboratory dedicated to emergent complexity, collective imagination, play, collaboration, and developing collective intelligence protocols for manifesting new ideas...
We don’t know what the Imaginary Institute is - or what will, could, or should, happen within it - because the Imaginary Institute doesn’t exist. Currently, it’s a rumour. Like imagination itself, it lives at the threshold between what is and what could be.
The Imaginary Institute is imagined into existence anew each time by its co-imaginers. What will happen depends on you. Members and guests are invited to collectively envision its protocols, practices, and methods of collective intelligence and collaboration, and then enact them together. It is a space formed by imagination, for imagination.
As such, The Imaginary Institute is a free-thinking laboratory—a meeting place for artists, scientists, philosophers, and other creatives—human and non-human alike— It fosters intradisciplinary exploration, collective imagination, play, and collaboration. At its heart, the Imaginary Institute is an utterly serious, utterly playful, attempt to support the conditions for the manifestation of urgent new ideas, to envision beyond the present and bring forth what does not yet exist.
Read more here.