Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat

Karen Lancel (*1963, NL) and Hermen Maat (*1963, NL) work and live in Amsterdam, NL. Lancel holds a Ph.D. from TU Delft, Participatory Systems Lab, focusing on intimacy, empathy, and technologically mediated social touch. Working as Studio Lancel/Maat, together they develop interactive performances and immersive media installations that function as “meeting spaces” and artistic social labs. Through their practice, they investigate empathy and intimacy, identity and privacy, isolation and kinship, vulnerability and responsibility, as well as control and trust in entanglement with (non-)human others. They critically engage with how bodily relations are shaped by biometric systems, AI interpretation, and digital infrastructures, proposing speculative “trust-rituals” and new models of shared social experience.