The permafrost is not merely as a climate indicator, but as a living and dying surface—one that holds stories, secrets, and signals for the future.
Across the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, the frozen soil that has underpinned ecosystems, Indigenous cultures, and scientific certainty for millennia is thawing. Permafrost—once considered a stable, unmoving archive of Earth’s climatic history—is now in flux, collapsing both literally and symbolically under the weight of global heating. This transformation is not only geophysical; it is cultural, psychological, and political. Melting permafrost releases greenhouse gases, awakens dormant microorganisms, and disrupts traditional ways of life. But it also raises deeper questions about memory, loss, resilience, and how we relate to our changing planet.
In response to these urgent questions, Laser Talks Brussels brings together artists and researchers whose practices offer new ways of sensing and thinking through permafrost's material and metaphorical transformations.
Participants:
Elise Guillaume, interdisciplinary artist, in collaboration with Dr. Marine Severin, environmental psychologist, present the sound project Waves of Resonance. Focusing on the sensory and emotional landscapes of marine sounds, from the North Sea and the Arctic, the project investigates how listening can deepen human-ocean connectedness and encourage pro-environmental attitudes. (https://www.eliseguillaumeart.com/waves-of-resonance-sound)
Laure Winants, visual artist, and Anastasiya Halauniova, sociologist at Sciences Po, present ‘Time Capsule’. This project investigates how permafrost regions are inscribed with disappearing knowledge systems—linguistic, cultural, and environmental—and how those losses echo far beyond the Arctic. (https://laurewinants.com/words-from-a-tongue-we-are-losing-i)
Bios:
Elise Guillaume’s interdisciplinary practice includes film, video, sound, photography and sculpture—sometimes presented as immersive installations. The body is a central element in her work: it becomes a vessel for interpreting the interconnections between the beings that make up our world. Interested in the relationships between psychological states and environmental change, her work blends scientific research with personal introspection. This approach often takes her into the field, including to remote environments such as the Atacama Desert and the High Arctic. Through her work, she conceives of the intimate as environmental forms to explore the possibilities of a renewed relationship with the earth and one-another.(https://www.eliseguillaumeart.com)
Anastasiya Halauniova is an urban and environmental sociologist currently based in Paris. Informed by feminist theories of care, her research examines the entanglements of political power and technoscientific expertise around the instabilities of matter, focusing on how state actors and scientific experts engage with degrading environments and imagine life beyond promises of stability. Through ethnographic and historical methods, she traces how extractive logics collide with the fragility of more-than-human life. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Sociology at Sciences Po (Paris) with the Bruno Latour Fund, working on Unruly Ground: Rebuilding the Arctic Urban in the Age of Climate Crisis—a project exploring Russian and Norwegian settlements on Svalbard in a time when stable, frozen Arctic ground can no longer be taken for granted. She earned her PhD in Sociology at the University of Amsterdam.
Marine Severin is an environmental and clinical psychologist. She defended her PhD thesis on November 6, 2024, at the InnovOcean Campus in Ostend, investigating the relationship between coastal environments and mental well-being. She is currently working as a therapist in Leuven and Brussels, as well as continuing research projects based on Ocean and Human Health. (https://www.vliz.be/en/imis?persid=38302)
Laure Winants is a visual artist and researcher based between Paris and Brussels. Her practice is rooted in longterm, transdisciplinary collaborations with scientific institutions, where she explores the intersection of art, ecology, and environmental data.
She has worked alongside research teams such as the CNRS/CNES to investigate atmospheric pollution in the Pyrenees - Albedo, 2021 , the Volcanology Laboratory in Iceland to examine natural and anthropogenic phenomena like volcanic activity - Phenomena, 2022, and the Norwegian Polar Institute on polar research through her ongoing project - Time Capsule 2023–2024 that focuses on air bubbles with the prism of light. With a new project Future Fossils, she dives into the abyss and in collaboration with the ocean she translates in color the deep time.
Her work focuses on the interdependence of living systems and the environment, seeking to amplify the voices of more- than-human entities. Through the use of sensitive materials, she creates evolutive installations-works that respond to their surroundings, including light, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric conditions. (https://laurewinants.com)
Edith Doove (PhD) is a curator, writer and researcher, specifically interested in notions of emergence and contingency, cross and transdisciplinary collaborations. (https://bureaudoove.com)
Alexandra Dementieva is a multimedia artist based in Brussels and the initiator and main organiser of the Lasertalk Brussels. (https://alexdementieva.org)
