Dr. Susanne Schmitt
Fellow (Alumni)
Susanne Schmitt is a sociocultural anthropologist and sensory ethnographer, interdisciplinary artist, and facilitator. Her work focusses on creative collaborations within and beyond the label of "art meets science", multispecies worlding, and the aesthetic dimensions of the workplace and sites of knowledge production like Museums of Natural History, aquariums, historical textile and fashion collections or Botanical Gardens.
Her work includes choreographic audiowalks for Natural History Museums across the globe ("How to Not be A Stuffed Animal. Moving Museums of Natural History through Multispecies Choreogaphy", Creative Director/PI, funded by Volkwswagen Stiftung, with Laurie Young), broken cocktails for broken worlds ("Barfly, Danish National Gallery and other sites, with Kat Petroschkat), and ethnographic writing on workplace atmospheres and multispecies encounters. Her teaching and cooperation work includes guest professorships (MCTS Munich) and transnational residencies (Sense Lab, Montreal).
During her fellowship at the RIFS she works on an installation on touch, routine, and politeness for the Botanical Gardens Berlin, accompanying and responding to an ethnographic research project on affective and sensory encounters between plants and humans by anthropologists at the FU Berlin: (https://www.fu-berlin.de/presse/publikationen/tsp/2020/tsp-juni-2020/affectic-societies/index.html)