Serendipity Session: Darkness
Talks
What is the importance of darkness in the world and the universe that we inhabit? How do we deal with dark impulses? Is the dark inherently bad?
The ‘Serendipity session’ is a concept by Radboud Young Academy. One theme. Insights from four completely different academic fields. And an exchange. Because a genuine curiosity about developments outside one’s immediate field can be a catalyst for fresh discoveries: a serendipitous meeting of different disciplinary perspectives may reveal bridges where others see gaps.
This special InScience edition of the Serendipity session is inspired by the short film Strangers in the Dark, in which we learn how light pollution makes the love lives of fireflies a living hell. How are they supposed to find a partner when it is no longer dark at night? A story that zooms from planetary scale to microscopically small, that takes us from quiet nature to urban hectic and from artificial light to green glowing firefly buttocks.
After the film, three researchers will discuss the relevance of darkness in their field of study, before engaging in a debate with one another and with the audience, to find out how ‘darkness’ may help us shed light on things that we do not yet know. Janna Vrijsen (Radboud University, Radboudumc) will talk about depression, Richard van Wezel (Radboud University) about blindness, and László Munteán (Radboud Unviversity) about dark tourism – why do we want to visit sites of (past) horrors?
Language Talk: English
- Director
- Jenni Pystynen, Perttu Inkilä
- Country
- Finland
- Length
- 12 min
- Theme
- -
- Type Film
- Experimental, Documentary, Animation, Short
- Premiere
- Dutch premiere
- Year
- 2023
- Language
- Finnish
- Subtitle
- English
- Producer
- Oona Saari
- Editor
- Jussi Sandhu