KISD talk by Martin Simpson and Breg Horemans
23.06.2026 – 17:00Online and KISD
Since 2014, TAAT’s work seeks to design spaces for encounter: between urban and natural contexts, between participants and art professionals, and between human and more-than-human life. In the last years, their design processes evolved from human-centred and result-driven to multispecies sensitive and process-based. In this presentation we follow their design gestures: from the shallow reed covered shores of an uninhabited fluvial island (in Lithuania), to the meanders of the Maas and Aa river (in The Netherlands and Belgium). Through Horemans’ PhD-research an eco-dramaturgical approach to spatial design unfolds, while Simpson’s river organs and wind flutes make attempts to tune in the body of the designer to the frequencies of wind and water. The presentation will be partly set in the Live Agora, a hybrid working tool that supports the emergence of new multispecies collaborations. TAAT’s practice, as part of a movement of practices, disorients the body of the maker into alternative ways to make worlds: by foregrounding and valorising the simple yet powerful gesture of tuning in with each other.
Martin Simpson is an artist and technologist based in Vienna. He studied integrated design at KISD in Cologne and electronic music and sound art at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics of the Kunstuniversität in Graz. His artistic practice centers on place-based music, building experimental musical instruments that sonify their environmental dependencies. His interventions incorporate river organs, wind flutes and sun harmonia. As a member of TAAT arts collective he specialises in the creation of participatory installations for interspecies encounters, resulting in a.o. the MaasLab Dataflow: a floating raft and webserver powered with a waterwheel.
Breg Horemans is an architect-research based in Brussels. He holds a Master in Architecture from KU Leuven and completed postgraduate studies in curating at Zurich University of the Arts. He obtained his PhD in Architecture at KU Leuven (2026) re-situating the design gestures of spatial practitioners in relation to more-than-human life. He is the co-founder of TAAT arts collective and associate member of Fluid Futures at LUCA School of Arts (Ghent, BE). TAAT’s research-based projects aim to bridge installation art, collaborative learning and multispecies kinship. In 2025, TAAT’s Live Agora, a cyber-inclusive tool for artistic commoning, has obtained the European Innovation Award for Digital Democracy.
The talk is accessible through the following link:
https://th-koeln.zoom-x.de/j/63973109869 (Meeting-ID: 639 7310 9869. password: 247041)