Fluid Compostings

This interview of Brandon LaBelle with curator, artist, and researcher Berit Fischer offers insight into her transformative approach to contemporary art practice that challenges conventional notions of empathy and ecological awareness.

Conducted between 2022 and 2023, the conversation explores Fischer’s pioneering work in creating embodied, transdisciplinary experiences.
Fischer discusses her Radical Empathy Lab and the (Re-)Gaining Ecological Futures curriculum at Floating University Berlin, where she facilitates “affective encounters” grounded in alternative pedagogies and experiential knowledge production. Reframing empathy as “affective translation” Fischer articulates her vision of what she terms “energetic ecological citizenship”—a holistic knowledge formation engaging both body and mind.
Her post-representational curatorial and artistic approach emphasizes unmediated, embodied experiences that foster critical consciousness and interconnectedness, challenging anthropocentric worldviews. The interview also addresses Fischer’s 2023 co-founding of the International Forum for Eco-Embodied Arts (IFEEA) and explores themes of technology, spirituality, and political love as agents for social and ecological transformation in an age of ecological crisis.
Complementing the interview the publication also includes an original essay by Fischer, which elaborates the notion of “fluid compos(t)ings” as a conceptual and practical methodology.