Traces and atmospheres of disasters

CHROME and PROJEKT research labs of Nîmes University and the Kobe Institute for Atmospheric Studies (Kobe University, Japan) have the great pleasure of announcing the organisation on the international symposium Traces and Atmospheres of Disasters which will take place on May 20 and 21 of 2026, on the Vauban site of Nîmes University.

This two-day international symposium sheduled meetings on the Vauban site and the exhibition "An Invitation through Living Atmospheres" will take place in the recently opened chapel of Hoche.

In order to receive the participants in the best conditions, registration through this link is required, w. The link for online participants will be communicated later.

Program :

May 19th, 2026

Hoche Campus, Chapelle Hall

Vernissage of the exhibition “Living Atmospheres / Atmosphères vivantes” in presence of the artist Season Lao

Day 1 – May 20th, 2026

Vauban Campus, Lecture Hall A3

8:30 - Arrival of participants / Welcome Coffee (H001)

9:00 - Introduction talks - Benoît Roig (President of Nîmes University), Yuho Hisayama (Director of Koias and organizer), Patrizia Giannoni & Oscar Navarro Carrascal (Directors of Chrome lab), Michela Deni (Director of Projekt lab. and organizer), Mathieu Gaulène (Organizer, Chrome lab.)

First session: Layers of Traces and Atmospheres. From Art to the Sea and Back

9:20 - Patrizia Violi - Atmospheres of disasters, memory and oblivion: fake traces, false traces and non-traces

10:00 - Yukiko Kuwayama - Verbalizing Disaster Atmospheres at Minamata Eco Park: A Phenomenological Critical View

10:40 - Coffee break

11:10 - Cristina Demaria - Atmospheres of a Future Past: Traces and Memories of the Anthropocene

11:50 - Yuho Hisayama - Higashi Yuenchi as an Atmospheric Archive: Toward the Unsayable Memory of the Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake

12:30 - Lunch break

Second session: Crafting Memories in Space through Traces

14:30 - Sophie Houdart - Re-membering by Walking. The Michinoku Coastal Trail as many ways to leave traces

15:10 - Mathieu Gaulène - On the Authenticity of Traces: Shifting Atmospheres of Sorrow and Hope in Rikuzentakata

15:50 - Coffee break

16:20 - Ching-Yuen Cheung - Fukushima and atmospheric studies

17:00 - Carlo Severi - Relational Spaces: From the anthropology of art to the study of space and form

Day 2 – May 21st, 2026

Vauban Campus, Lecture Hall A3

8:30 - Arrival of participants / Welcome Coffee (H001)

Third session: Conveying, Coding, and Coping with Disasters through Atmospheres

9:00 - Bruce Bégout - Atmosphere and Zeitgeist. Toward an Atmospheric Reading of an Epoch

9:40 - Francesco Mazzucchelli - Who testifies when humans are not watching? Regimes of visibility and narrability in a new fog of war

10:20 - Simon Levesque - The living must carry the dead: Charlotte Delbo on conveying the deathly atmosphere and feelings of the Auschwitz concentration camp

11:00 - Coffee break

11:30 - Béatrice Gisclard & Pierre Fournier - Schrödinger’s Cat-astrophe

12:10 - Natalie Depraz - Emotional diffusivity and permeability

12:50 - Lunch break

Fourth session: An Invitation through Living Atmospheres

Hoche Campus, Chapelle Hall

15:00 - Season Lao - Visit of the exhibition “Living Atmospheres / Atmosphères vivantes” in Chapelle (Hoche Campus)

“Living Atmospheres” presents important artworks by Season Lao that propose an aesthetic meditation on atmosphere, vulnerability, and survival. Installed in the historic Chapel of Nîmes University, the exhibition brings together paintings, site-specific installations, performances, and archival documents to explore how devastated landscapes, salvaged wood, mist, light, and silence can serve as the setting for a living memory. Rather than viewing disaster as pure loss,
the exhibition suggests that places and beings exist in states of ongoing transformation. Through philosophical references to Japanese philosophy, for instance, the exhibition proposes that atmosphere is not merely a backdrop but a shared condition of existence and survival.

15:30 - Romaric Jannel - Non-Determination as a Method: Silence, Interval, and the Making of Living Atmospheres Through Asian and Japanese Conceptions (In the presence of the artist, Season Lao).

Registration

Contacts

Michela Deni
Director of PROJEKT lab and organizer

michela.deni@unimes.fr (michela.deni @ unimes.fr)

Mathieu Gaulène
CHROME lab, organizer

mathieu.gaulene @ unimes.fr (mathieu.gaulene @ unimes.fr)