Svenja Keune

Svenja Keune‘s relationship with textiles is characterised by an everlasting need to explore them in relation to other disciplines, concepts and materials. She holds a BA and MA in textile design from the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, where she collaborated with the Department of Computer Science in order to explore the potentials of merging textiles with electronics to create ‘communicative surfaces` and explore ‘poetic interactions’ between textile surfaces, objects and people. She co-founded the ‘Emotionlab‘, a platform for students to broaden their perspectives and engage in cross-disciplinary projects in order to harness the potentials of bridging the Faculties (Engineering & Computer Science, Life Sciences, Design, Media & Information, Business & Social Sciences) and Departments. Within the ArcInTexETN she found herself between the academia and the industry, an international research network and a local family owned business, and placed herself between its interior textiles and climate screens department. Questioning her role as an artist/designer towards environmental issues, two major questions arised: How does one design and how does one live in a time in which we are dealing with an environmental crisis and experiencing its consequences first-hand? In search for answers she started to use seeds as a dynamic material for textile design and built her own hybrid house to be able to ‘live her research’ and to explore first hand how sustainable living could look and feel like. As a result of this experience Keune is now interested in two additional questions: “Who to design for?” and “How to live with what was designed and fabricated for humans and other organisms (plants, fungi, insects, bacteria)?” This hence generates an impetus for new aesthetics and perspectives to design, live and educate to unfold.