The 2026 BioCriticism webinar series offers interdisciplinary approaches to “Health across Scales”. Guest speakers will discuss how scientists, writers, and artists imagine the networks and dynamics that shape health across scales, from the microbial to the planetary. Each session consists of two talks followed by discussion. Please join us for the first session on popular science and participatory theatre with Gregory Crocetti, Aviva Reed and Eliane Beaufils:
“Imagining Ecosystem Health”
a BioCriticism webinar with Gregory Crocetti, Aviva Reed and Eliane Beaufils
6th of February 2026, 2 pm CET
Join zoom meeting : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81184310957?pwd=aBKnOBVvPfRLbaG8DHcLbXUGOY1XIz.1
meeting ID : 811 8431 0957
passcode : 714881
Dr Gregory Crocetti (Microbial Ecology, Scale Free Network) and Dr Aviva Reed (Visual Ecology, Scale Free Network), “Small Friends Books: Symbiotic Narratives for Understanding More-Than-Human Worlds”
In this presentation, microbial ecologist and science educator Gregory Crocetti and visual ecologist Aviva Reed examine how narrative and visual storytelling can serve as critical tools for rethinking biological relations. Through their collaborative Small Friends Books project, they explore symbiosis as both scientific concept and narrative framework, offering accessible ways of understanding organisms not as isolated entities but as participants in complex, interconnected relationships. Their work brings children and adults into contact with the often-unseen systems that sustain life—microbial ecologies, molecular reciprocities, and dynamic, multispecies partnerships—while giving voice to the more-than-human world. Together, they consider how illustrated narratives can cultivate ecological attentiveness, challenge anthropocentric assumptions, and expand the pedagogical possibilities of art–science practice.
Prof. Eliane Beaufils (Theatre Studies, Université de Paris 8), “The Democracy of Organisms”
This contribution aims to shed light on how a participatory theatrical device can help spectators to imagine ecosystem health. The Democracy of Organisms is a political-theatrical device that has been set up on a wasteland in Berlin, and that requires the participation of spectators. Inspired by Latour’s parliament, Club Real extends the democratic experience to other species to manage the wasteland. This presentation will first describe the processes of this theatrical democracy rooted in urban space. It will then explore how art becomes an interspecies behavioral laboratory that not only relies on concepts, representations and thought experiments, but also imagines practical extensions of theories. This kind of experiment could pave the way for the integration of plants and animals into urban management systems, and even into the functioning of Western politics.
Speaker biographies
Dr Gregory Crocetti is a microbial ecologist, science educator, and co-founder of art-science collective, Scale Free Network. His work integrates microbial ecology with narrative, visual art, and public engagement, using storytelling and participatory methods to re-frame all living creatures as components of dynamic, interconnected relationships. His recent work has focused on fore-grounding First Nations Knowledge systems into science education, to develop place-based, relational approaches built on Indigenous expertise to help expand ecological literacy.
Dr Aviva Reed is a transdisciplinary visual ecologist. Her practice reframes scientific theories, particularly concepts associated with evolution and ecological categorisations. Her work moves between performance, ritual, lecture, publications and visual art. She explores time, scale and relationship using storytelling, visualisations, soundscapes and conversation. She has recently completed her PhD at La Trobe University reframing ecology through practice based research through thinking with Carbon.
Eliane Beaufils is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Paris 8, and a member of the “Scènes du monde” research unit. Her doctoral research focused on violence on contemporary stages in the German-speaking world. Since then, her research has adopted various focuses on contemporary theatricalities and performances, and on spectatorial autopoiesis, as in the books Being-With in Contemporary Performing Arts, edited with Eva Holling and published in Berlin by Neofelis in 2018, and a book whose title in English would be: Touched by Thought. Theatrical Criticality and Poetic Resonance (Toucher par la pensée. Théâtre critique et résonances poétiques, Paris, Hermann, 2021). Since 2018, she has been researching the theatricalities of the Anthropocene, in the projects Theater facing Climate Change (“Le théâtre face au changement climatique”) and Stages for a new world (“Scènes pour un monde nouveau”) led at EUR ArteC with Flore Garcin-Marrou. In this context, she has published twenty articles and two collective works, Dramaturgies des plantes (Tangence, n° 132, published in December 2023 in OA), and the book co-edited with Climène Perrin, L’Écologie en scène. Théâtres politiques et politiques du théâtre, published by Presses Universitaires de Vincennes in September 2024.
BioCriticism is organised by Liliane Campos with the support of PRISMES EA4398 and the Institut Universitaire de France. For information and links, please contact liliane.campos@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr or check the BioCriticism website.
