Event Details

Unsecurities Lab is a cross-disciplinary workshop series exploring how immersive art environments can function as infrastructures for rethinking security. Developed at Security Lancaster and led by artist-researchers, the Lab invites participants to encounter complex artworks as provocations for collaborative sense-making, disciplinary recomposition, and speculative policy reflection.

About Cycle 2

This second Lab centres on LUMI—a film by Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka—which explores planetary light, synthetic intelligence, and environmental restoration. The film is screened inside Lancaster’s 180° Data Immersion Suite, followed by a collaborative workshop on visual sovereignty and the defence of landscape. The second part of the session draws on satellite image timelapses curated by Gil-Fournier, allowing participants to consider how datafication, image manipulation, and algorithmic modelling reframe geopolitical and environmental realities.

Workshop Aims

Cycle 2 explores:

• How landscape becomes a dataset
• The aesthetics and politics of planetary sensing
• The implications of visual control, environmental speculation, and image-based governance

Participants will work together to discuss, map, and prototype responses to the question:

What does it mean to secure a landscape you can only see through a machine?

Schedule

11:00–12:00 | Welcome, introductions & lunch

12:00–13:00 | LUMI screening and facilitated discussion

13:20–13:40 | Coffee & cake break

13:40–15:00 | Image-based provocation: satellite landscapes and security

15:00–16:00 | Refreshments and reflective dialogue

Who Should Attend?

We welcome expressions of interest from researchers, artists, technologists, policy practitioners, and cultural theorists with an interest in:

• Environmental sensing and planetary imaging
• Synthetic intelligence and machine vision
• Geopolitics, security, and visual infrastructures
• Artistic and speculative approaches to research

This is a curated event with limited spaces. To apply, please register here and submit 2–3 lines about your interest or perspective to Mark Bellwood at m.bellwood1@lancaster.ac.uk