International symposium
Screens and Streams in the Age of Climate Crisis
26+27 august 2026
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
What is the planetary footprint of media technology?
The two-day symposium media/environment: Screens and Streams in the Age of Climate Crisis brings together some of the most prominent voices in the global debate surrounding media’s entanglements with the living world.
Join us for talks and Q&As on how media shape, record, and strain our environments. Speakers from three continents will present the latest research on themes ranging from the colonial materiality of film and operative images of extraction to film archives in a warming world, media’s role in the environmental transformations of the Great Acceleration, and the ecological footprint of digital screen culture and artificial intelligence.
Whether you are interested in media studies, environmental humanities, STS, history, or the arts – and whether you are a scholar, student, practitioner, or simply curious – this symposium invites you to rethink media’s planetary footprint from the archive to the algorithm, from screen to stream.
By bringing into conversation an international cohort of scholars, artists and students whose work is rooted in distinct methodologies and ecological contexts, the symposium serves as a platform for a more globally attuned research agenda on media and environmental futures.
Confirmed speakers
The symposium program is currently being finalized. More speakers and the full program will be announced soon.
Kirsty Sinclair Dootson
University College London
Michelle Henning
University of Liverpool
Sigrid Kannengießer
University of Münster
Ryo Okubo
Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo
Michał Pabiś-Orzeszyna
University of Lodz
Elena Past
Wayne State University, Detroit
Hunter Vaughan
Emerson College, Boston
María Vélez-Serna
Independent scholar
Anne-Katrin Weber
University of Lausanne
Wu Chi-Yu
Media artist, Taipei
Interested? Register here.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. Presentations will also be streamed online, but this is primarily an in-person event.
stay updated
Follow this website to stay updated – more information and the full program will follow soon.