TEDxMünster:
In Transit
June 2021
Speakers
Jule Wanders
The Antiselfie - Performance Art Against the Ego-Mania
People present their best side online: happy moments, laughter, doing sports, on the beach, in beautiful situations. Jule Wanders posts photos of herself lying flat on her face, on her Instagram account. This disturbs many people. At first glance it seems ridiculous, but there is an idea behind her ‘anti-selfies’. In her TEDxMünster talk, Jule explains how she uses them to generate attention for art and culture, and thereby challenges the distorted image of selfie culture. She spent 18 years at the municipal music school in Bocholt/Germany, where she composed librettis while teaching. She won prizes, had many TV appearances and solo concerts. Since 2016, she has been "Head of Department Culture & Education" in Bocholt cooperating with the music school, the adult education center, the Young University, the public library, the theater, the archive, the museum. The press always writes "Head of Culture" but she prefers to call herself #kultussi - the culture chick. She is a member of the advisory board of the heads of cultural departments in the association of cities and sits in various committees and associations. She is a world traveler, reads a lot and has a position in the animal shelter as a turtle catching officer.
Colin Skelton
The Seduction of Slow Movement. A Creative Journey into Liminal Space
Between a stimulus and our response, says Colin Skelton, there is a liminal space. In that space we have the power to choose our response, and there lies great potential for our personal growth and freedom. “We are, who we are becoming”, is Colin’s motto. In his TEDxMünster talk, he shows how to access this liminal space through the art of slow movement, and he takes us on a journey through different kinds of theatre and performance around the world, where he was able to experience slow movement and found space to grow. Colin is a cultural creative who draws on principles and practices from various theatre making traditions, in his facilitation style and design work. He believes that a greater emphasis on the practice and application of embodiment insights, together with supporting evidence in neuroscience, will strongly drive desired personal and organisational change into the future.
Gianni Valentini
How Garbage Fuels Ocean Cleaning
Gianni Valenti’s idea is that if we take plastic waste back to its raw elements, we can generate hydrogen energy, a cleaner energy more powerful than diesel. With 10 kg of plastic, a hydrogen car can travel 350 km. In his TEDxMünster talk, Gianni tells us about his plan to install floating power plants on ships, feed them with plastic waste and clean up the great garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. He is the president and founder of the environmental NGO Gaia First. With years of experience in creating, structuring and guiding businesses, Gianni also has a deep passion for scientific innovation, that has led to his contribution to several products on the market today, international patents and award winning solutions. With a strong love for the environment, his life goal is to change the way we relate to nature.
Benedikt Dunse
Inviting Industry Leaders for a Chat With the Next Generation
In his TEDxMünster talk, Benedikt Dunse puts forward the idea that change in an industry can be driven by dialogue, particularly dialogue between generations. Benedikt applies this approach on the sports business. He tells us how, as a group of young students, they invited leading sports business executives, professional sports people and athletes to talk freely, without corporate constrictions, and discuss ideas with them. And he tells us what it takes to open up this safe space for world industry leaders. Combining a passion for sport with ongoing business studies, Benedikt joined the Sports Business Club at the University of St. Gallen at the beginning of his studies and recently co-founded the Impulse Network, a Swiss non-for-profit organization built on top of the student intiative and focusing on exchange within the sports industry. Together with a team of 25 engaged students, he organizes an annual conference, the Impulse Summit, to foster intergenerational dialogue, complete industry projects with the European sports industry and bridge the gap between the university context and the sports industry.
Mouhanad Khorchide & Johannes Schnocks
A Campus of Religions for Better Dialogue
The world’s most important religions can learn a lot from each other – and they have a lot in common. If we institutionalized an ongoing dialogue between Christian and Islamic theologies, we would be able to focus more on common things and facilitate understanding. Prof. Johannes Schnocks and Prof. Mouhanad Khorchide, in their TEDxMünster talk, present the first interreligious campus in Europe, currently being built by the University of Münster, which is meant to do exactly that: bring students and researchers of different theological faculties together and get the conversation going. Mouhanad is Professor for Islamic Religious Education. His academic career brought him from Lebanon to Vienna/Austria and then to Münster/Germany. He is renowned for his commitment to the training of islamic religious teachers. He is the author of numerous academic publications, and his passion is to promote understanding between religions. Johannes is Professor of Contemporary and Religious History of the Old Testament and teaches and researches at the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics". His passion is to show how we can promote interreligious dialogue.
Sven Köppel
More Computing Power and Less CO2 Damage – a Plea for Analogue Computers
Computers are becoming more and more powerful, but they also consume more and more electricity. Data centres already emit as much CO2 as air traffic. Sven Köppel, founder of a start-up, explains at TEDxMünster how analogue computers, an old technology, can become an important building block in creating more efficient computing power whilst drastically reducing the impact on climate. Sven's analog journey started three years ago when he inherited a computer museum. Puzzled by the achievements of old analog computers from the 1960s, he wondered about the efficiency of modern day computing. After graduating in theoretical physics, he joined a startup developing modern day non-traditional computers, comparable with quantum computers. He knows a lot about the leap innovation possible with future analog processor chips, and why this is neccessary for a sustainable world.
Natalie Knapp
Why Our Uncertainty is Helpful
Digitalization, the pandemic, the climate crisis - all of these are rapidly changing our world. Change always means uncertainty, and most people dislike uncertainty and try to avoid it, because they find it difficult to cope with it. In her TEDxMünster talk, philosopher Dr. Natalie Knapp talks about how it is possible to use this lack of certainty to create something new. And she tells us why, from a neuro-scientific point of view, uncertainty as we all experience it during adolescence is really nature’s most valuable life hack. Natalie leads seminars, advises executives and gives lectures on coping with complexity, the crisis as an opportunity or how to come to terms with uncertainty. As an author of popular nonfiction books, she published "The Infinite Moment: Why Times of Uncertainty Are So Valuable," "Compass New Thinking: How We Can Orient Ourselves in a Confusing World," and "The Quantum Leap of Thinking: What We Can Learn from Modern Physics."
Iris Dzudzek
How the Pandemic Can Help Us to Improve City Planning
The COVID pandemic has shown us cities' weak points. How people are being affected by the disease, varies widely in different quarters of the city. Instead of choosing a dystopian view, primarily looking at the virus as if attacking an enemy at war, however, urban geographer Iris Dzudzek suggests a different approach: intelligent city planning. At TEDxMünster, Iris shines light on how cities of the future could look to minimize health risks and make cities a better and healthier place for all humans. Iris is a junior professor for Critical Urban Geography at the University of Münster and works from a translocal perspective in the intersection of city and health. Her passion is to make city planning better for all humans.
Bodo Wartke
Black Keys Matter - With twelve-tone music to a better society
Classical music is a very Eurocentric concept. Composer Arnold Schoenberg, who invented twelve-tone music one hundred years ago, democratized music and liberated it from the feudal reign of the circle of fifths. For the untrained ear, however, this music is not easy nor pleasant to hear. In his talk at TEDxMünster, Bodo Wartke, with his very unusual approach, helps us to better understand the concept of twelve tone music (and reveals its revolutionary power). Disclaimer: the theatrical scene at the end of Bodo’s talk is only fully understandable in German. Bodo is a musician and cabaret artist. He studied piano and singing at the University of the Arts in Berlin from 2000 to 2005. He composes and performs songs with excellently rhymed lyrics full of wit - poetic, political, and outspoken - to which he accompanies himself confidently on the piano. In the 25 years of his artistic career, he has won numerous awards like the renowned Deutscher Kleinkunstpreis and others.