Out of Thin Air

With Elise Misao Hunchuck, researcher.

VENUE: Casino Display, 1, rue de la Loge, L-1945 Luxembourg

In English

Elise Misao Hunchuck's talk traces the stories of objects we place into landscapes—from stone markers that shape coastal life to atmospheric infrastructure that imagines particles in the air as harvestable resources. Bringing together architecture, landscape architecture, ecology, and media studies, this transdisciplinary exploration exposes the hidden material practices that construct the so-called natural world. Recognising every landscape as an ongoing collaboration between human and non-human forces, together we'll ask: what futures become possible when we understand nature not as something to preserve, but as something we are continually shaping—and that, in turn, is constantly shaping us.

Biography             

Elise Misao Hunchuck (she/her, b. Toronto, CA) is a spatial researcher, editor, curator, and writer based between Berlin and Milan. Her transdisciplinary practice brings together architecture, landscape architecture, ecology, and media studies to document and archive the co-constitutive relationships between plants, animals, and minerals through text, images, and cartographies. Elise is currently a visiting adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in the M.S. Advanced Architectural Design program (2021–current). She serves on the editorial board of Scapegoat Journal: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy and was editor and discourse curator for transmediale, Berlin's festival for digital art and culture, from 2021 to 2025. She is a 2024–2026 Fellow (spatial, architecture and design) at Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Graphic design: Inès Hosni / Photo: Tsunami warning stone along the northeastern coast of Japan © Elise Misao Hunchuck