Kat Austen

Dr. Kat Austen

Fellow (Alumni)

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In her artistic practice, Kat Austen focusses on environmental issues. She melds disciplines and media, creating sculptural and new media installations, performances and participatory work. Austen's practice is underpinned by extensive research and theory, and driven by a motivation to explore how to move towards a more socially and environmentally just future. Working from her studio in Berlin, Austen is currently EMAP / EMARE Artist in Residence at WRO Art Center, Artist Fellow at Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam, Artist in Residence at the Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences, University College London and Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL Arts and Sciences.

Kat Austen's work focusses on interrogating the boundary between what we think of as the self and other(s). Her work relates to redefining and enriching our relationship to the environment, with a particular focus on the climate crisis. Her works span performance, installation and participatory workshops and explores our relationship to the environment through embodiment, aesthetics and experience. In her artistic research she collaborates with scientists and other artists, and incorporates DIY Science and Citizen Science as knowledge-making practices. Having gained a PhD in Chemistry, this science in particular informs Austen's work. Fundamental to her practice is the forging of links between people, disciplines and sectors.

  • Artistic Research
  • Sound
  • Identity
  • Environment
  • Climate Crisis
  • Interdisciplinarity

Publications prior to joining the RIFS

  • "Sounding Dispersal as a Route to Empathy with the Changing Arctic" (2019) Leonardo Music Journal, 29, 3-7, Kat Austen
  • "Multiple knowledges and the Redefinition of the Self in the Environment" (2018) Proceedings of the 9th SAR - International Conference on Artistic Research Kat Austen
  • "Mediating for Climate Change: Falling Up to Hyperignorance, Diving Down to Deep Waters, to Touch Other(s) (and Ourselves)" Kat Austen, (2017) Oxford Artistic and Practice Based Research Platform
  • Radical Change through Working Together | STUDIOTOPIA at Ars Electronica, Sept 2020
  • What is Noise? Ars Electronica, September 2020
  • don't stop 'til you feel it, Fusion, Germany, June 2018
  • Interdisciplinary Approaches to Environmental Impact, Weissensee Kunsthochschule, April 2018
  • Multiple Knowledges and Redefinition of the Self in the Environment, The Value of Life: Measurements, Stakes, Implications, University of Wageningen, June 2017
  • Citizen science for radical change - as research-based learning module at UCL, Connecting Higher Education, UCL, June 2017
  • Experiments in Interspecies Empathy: The Coral Empathy Device, University of Fine Arts Poznan, December 2016
  • In Search of Knowing, NYU Shanghai, April 2016
  • Fellow of the Royal Society of Art
  • Expert ICT and Art, Global Systems Science, DG Connect, European Commission 2013-2019
  • Consultant for Water Resilience Advisory Group, OfWAT 2015-2016