META 5 · CONVOCATION ZERO: A Grammar for Planetary Futures

Presented with the Art, Culture, and Technology Program
Part of the MIT Fall 2026 Architecture Lecture Series.
META 5 · CONVOCATION ZERO: A Grammar for Planetary Futures, in honor of Professor and ACT Founding Director, Ute Meta Bauer.

META 5: Convocations for Planetary Futures is an edited volume honoring Ute Meta Bauer. It continues META, a thematic art magazine she founded at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart in 1992. Contributions will be gathered through a series of convocations in institutions and places where Ute has worked, including online encounters.

The project asks: What do we need to understand and practise differently to sustain life together, and what can art and culture contribute?

It approaches planetary futures through particular practices and places. Its biocultural perspective attends to relationships between cultural knowledge and living environments: how people make, inhabit, remember, transmit, and care. Its civic dimension concerns how cultural practices enter shared life, shape public attention, and enable people to participate in institutions and collective decisions.

Inspired by Dictionary of War, the convocations invite contributors to develop concepts through the means of their own disciplines. Each contribution begins with a concrete example and draws from it three terms: a verb, a matter, and a relation. These terms form a sentence expressing a lesson from practice.

The grammar develops through relationships among the entries. In discussion, one contributor’s action may encounter another’s matter or relation, opening a new question. These combinations are examined together: what becomes possible, what changes across contexts, and where does the analogy fail? Differences between disciplines, languages, and cultural settings become part of the inquiry.

Convocation Zero at MIT opens this process through two panels: Institutions and Publics, followed by Civic Life, Ground, and Repair.

This lecture will be held in person in the Sidara Auditorium (W41- 1216) and record to be shared on YouTube at a later date. 

Lectures are free and open to the public. Registration is required.