Sacha Kagan's Page

Founding Coordinator of Cultura21 International (www.cultura21.net) and Research Associate at the IKKK, Sacha Kagan launched the concept of this Summer School in mid-2009, through conversations with Ines Sanguinetti (Red LATS), Nadezhda Savova (I3C), Oleg Koefoed (Cultura21 Nordic), Hans Dieleman (Cultura21 Mexico), Francesca Cozzolino (Cultura21 International) , and with hindsight on his direct experience of previous activities by Cultura21 and other organizations engaged for arts and sustainability, such as: Cultura21's workshop during the Venice Biennale in 2007, 'Tipping Point' at the PIK (Potsdam) , 'Burning Ice' at Kaai Theater (Brussels), the 'Asia-Europe Dialogue on Arts, Culture and Climate Change' initiated by ASEF (Beijing) with Cultura21's collaboration, and the Europe-Latin-American Symposium “Focus on Art for Social Transformation" (Dresden)...

What I felt was missing in all those inspiring and stimulating encounters, conferences, workshops, etc. (and am still missing in more recent events such as "Culture|Futures" alongside COP15), was the possibility to work deeper, with more focus, and with more time available, on each other's work, and to really learn from each other. The goal of ASSiST is to offer such a framework, allowing to build transdisciplinary action-research, beyond the stimuli of already existing frameworks for interdisciplinary encounters.

Sacha Kagan is Research Associate at the Institute for Cultural Theory, Research and the Arts (IKKK), Leuphana University Lüneburg (directed by Prof. Dr. Volker Kirchberg) : www.leuphana.de/ikkk

Personal website: http://sachakagan.wordpress.com