Learning Session 5: I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp - Resonating Worlds
Online learning sessions using dialogue to explore the workings, developments, (im)possibilities, and emerging insights of diverse approaches and praxes for Co-creation with the More-than-Human world
This 5th learning session of the Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox in July 2025 explored I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp: Resonating Worlds, with Svenja Keune, connected to the Design + Posthumanism network.
The I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp is an experimental, multi-day gathering that brings together designers, artists, and researchers to explore how humans might relate differently to insect worlds. Through a combination of fieldwork, artistic practices, and collective inquiry, the camp creates a space to engage with insects not as objects of study, but as beings with their own sensory worlds and modes of existence.
What follows is a synthesis of key questions, insights, and cross-cutting threads from the dialogue.
🌿 Learning Session 5 (July 2025) — Synthesis
I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp: Resonating Worlds, with Svenja Keune (Swedisch School of Textiles)
What does it mean to engage with forms of life whose sensory worlds are so radically different from our own—and how far can we meaningfully relate without projecting human interpretations onto them?
1. What is the I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp trying to do?
An exploratory space rather than a defined method
The I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp is not designed as a structured methodology with predefined outcomes, but as an open, experimental space where participants can explore different ways of relating to insect worlds.
Shifting attention toward non-human sensory realities
Rather than focusing on ecological function alone, the camp invites participants to consider how insects perceive and inhabit the world—through sensing, movement, and interaction patterns that differ significantly from human experience.
Working through artistic and embodied practices
Approaches include observation, sound work, movement, and other forms of artistic inquiry that allow participants to engage beyond purely analytical modes.
🌱 Seed:
The aim is not to understand insects better in human terms, but to encounter the limits of how we understand at all.
2. How is the I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp structured in practice?
A temporary, immersive setting
The camp takes place over several days, creating a dedicated environment where participants can step out of everyday routines and engage more fully with the surrounding ecosystem.
Combination of individual and collective exploration
Participants alternate between solitary observation or practice and shared reflection, allowing different forms of engagement to emerge.
Open-ended process rather than fixed curriculum
While there is a framework, the direction of the camp evolves through the contributions and explorations of participants rather than following a strictly predefined path.
📌 Practitioner takeaway:
The format relies on immersion and openness, which makes it generative—but also difficult to translate into conventional formats.
3. What do participants actually experience?
Heightened attention to the more-than-human
Participants often begin by noticing how little attention they typically give to insect life, and how much becomes visible when that attention is deliberately shifted.
Encountering difference rather than similarity
Rather than finding easy points of connection, participants are often confronted with how fundamentally different insect ways of being are.
Moments of resonance and disconnection
There can be instances where participants feel a sense of connection or alignment, but these are interspersed with moments where the limits of understanding become very apparent.
🌱 Seed:
The experience oscillates between connection and incomprehension—and both are part of the practice.
4. What are the challenges or limitations of this approach?
Risk of projection
In attempting to relate to insect worlds, participants may unintentionally project human interpretations or meanings onto what they observe.
Difficulty in articulating outcomes
The kinds of experiences generated in the camp are not easily translated into clear outputs, frameworks, or actionable insights.
Limited direct applicability
Compared to other approaches, the connection between the camp and concrete decision-making or design processes is less immediate.
5. What has been learned through running these camps?
Value of sustained attention
Spending extended time observing and engaging with insect life reveals patterns and dynamics that are otherwise overlooked.
Importance of collective exploration
Sharing observations and interpretations with others enriches the process, as different participants notice and interpret different aspects.
Limits of human-centered frameworks
The camp repeatedly exposes how quickly human-centered assumptions reassert themselves, even when participants attempt to move beyond them.
6. How does this connect to broader more-than-human practices?
A different layer of engagement
While approaches such as legal frameworks or design methodologies operate within decision-making contexts, the I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp operates at the level of perception and experience.
A shift in entry point
Rather than starting from problems to be solved, it begins with how humans perceive and relate to other forms of life.
Indirect but foundational influence
The shifts in attention and perception developed through the camp may influence how participants engage in other contexts, even if this influence is not immediately visible.
🌱 Seed:
This work does not directly change decisions—it changes the way we arrive at them.
Cross-cutting insight threads
Across the session, several deeper shifts become visible.
Knowledge → Perception
The focus shifts from accumulating knowledge about insects toward engaging with how they might experience the world, even if only partially and imperfectly.
Understanding → Limits of understanding
Rather than aiming for full comprehension, the process makes visible where human understanding breaks down and cannot easily extend.
Application → Exploration
The value lies less in immediate application and more in opening up different modes of attention, perception, and relation.
Engagement → Projection (unresolved)
Attempts to engage with more-than-human worlds remain entangled with the persistent risk of projecting human meaning onto them.
Closing
These sessions are not designed to arrive at fixed answers, but to surface how different approaches work in practice. Each conversation reveals not only how and where they hold, but also the tensions and questions that remain unresolved—and that continue to invite further inquiry.
Over time, these syntheses form a growing body of insights into what co-creation with the more-than-human world might require, across contexts and practices.
The Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox is a collaboration between The Repatterning Collective and Kincentric Leadership.
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