Since the beginning of time, people have been going into the wild and exploring the unknown – both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Into the Wild could be about exploring undiscovered land – but it could also be a gazillion other things. It could be about travelling the world, pushing your limits, breaking the rules, conquering your fears, you name it.
At TEDxAarhus 2017 we met speakers who have gone Into the Wild in ways we couldn’t have ever imagined.
2017 Talks and Performances
Mathias Clasne
Associate Professor of Literature and Media at Aarhus University
Mathias Clasen is a specialist in horror media and has spent years getting to the bottom of the paradox of horror: Why do people seek out the kind of entertainment that’s designed to make them feel bad? Drawing from research on human cognition and evolution, Mathias argues that our appetite for horror and our fascination with monsters run deep in our nature. Horror entertainment serves important functions for us by satisfying a deep-seated need for imaginative experiences with scenarios of danger. Despite his sustained professional engagement with the genre, Mathias still cannot watch a horror film alone.
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Joe Wasilewski
Wildlife Expert
Joe Wasilewski is a Wildlife Expert currently working for Jadora International LLC as Vice-President of biodiversity. Jadora is involved in a REDD+ project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The project is located in a former logging concession of 345,000 hectares and Joe is responsible for measuring, understanding and developing conservation measures for the biodiversity within the concession. Joe is dedicated to conserving endangered wildlife worldwide. In order to do so, it is necessary to understand the complicated cohesion between flora and fauna along with the needs for local sustainability.
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Morten Kirckhoff
Creative Director & Adventurer
Morten Kirckhoff is a creative director and partner at one of Denmark’s top creative agencies and furthermore a board member of Adventurers’ Club Denmark. Together with his childhood friend Jan Elhøj, Morten travels all over the world to visit abandoned places. Their adventures started out as a hobby, but today Morten and Jan are publishing books and giving talks about their experiences. The phenomenon is called Abandoned or Urban Exploration, and it recieves still more interest all over the world. For Morten and Jan it has become about more than just the adventure they go on themselves.
Stephen Willacy
City Architect of Aarhus
Stephen Willacy is the City Architect of Aarhus. He is educated in England, but has been living in Aarhus for the last 33 years – being the top authority of the municipality, in all matters regarding the architecture of the city, since 2012. Stephen has been working for several Danish architecture firms, teaching and doing research at Aarhus School of Architecture, and running his own architect practice. To Stephen, three elements are making Aarhus special; the culture, the education and the nature. International cultural institutions like ARoS and Moesgaard, the large number of students, and the beaches and forests within small distance, are all factors distinguishing the city from others.
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Tinna C. Nielsen
Anthropologist and Global Change Maker
Tinna C. Nielsen is an anthropologist and Global Change Maker, pioneering innovative approaches for practitioners to accelerate inclusiveness, equality, and gender parity in their sphere of influence. She is Founder of the non-profit change-organisation Move the Elephant for Inclusiveness, Co-Founder of the non-profit Global Inclusion Nudges Initiative, and Co-Author of the Annual Inclusion Nudges Guidebook. Furthermore she is former Global Head of Inclusion & Diversity in a multinational corporation.
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Miranda Kane
Writer. Comedian. Raconteuse.
Miranda Kane is a comedian, and was a plus-size sex-worker in London for seven years. She wrote and performed her first show in 2012 which went on to receive 5 star reviews and has sold out in theatres across the UK and Australia. Since then, she has written and recorded the sitcom ‘Slaving Away’ for audible.com, based upon her ‘utterly mundane life as a dominatrix’. She is currently a sex-blogger for The Metro. Miranda has also taken part in debates and public speaking events to promote the decriminalisation of sex-workers at Cambridge University and Trinity College, Dublin. She hopes that through comedy and storytelling she can help change the publics opinion of sex-workers to allow them to work in safety and without fear of persecution.
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Mozhdeh Ghasemiyani
Child Psychologist
Mozhdeh Ghasemiyani is an experienced psychologist with specialist expertise in trauma, refugees and crises. She has worked in both government, local government and NGO’s in Denmark, the UK and the US to improve the treatment of refugees, especially children. Mozhdeh’s work for refugees has been both on the political level aiming at educating the media and population at large, and on the human level seeking to alleviate the suffering of individual refugees. Mozhdeh is currently a crisis psychologist for Doctors without Borders and the Danish Institute against Torture. She has written the Red Cross’ handbook, and also managed a project for the NGO Freedom from Torture in London, where she developed best-practices for work with unaccompanied minors who had survived torture.
Pelle Tejsner
Anthropologist and Arctic Explorer
Pelle Tejsner is an adjunct professor at the Arctic Research Centre at Aarhus University. He is educated as an anthropologist at the University of Aberdeen, and works in the humanistic branch of the studies of climate change at the Arctic Research Centre. Pelle’s research is focused on climate change in Greenland, and on how it affects indigenous people living there. Furthermore, he has worked as a consultant for the WWF (World Wildlife Foundation), helping them understand the socio-cultural and socio-economic implications of climate change in the Arctic.
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Jan Hellesøe
Hypnotist and TV Host
Jan Hellesøe is a hypnotist and psychological manipulator, known from the Danish hit tv-show “Fuckr med dn hjrne”. Initially, Jan was drawn to magic as a shy teenager who realized he could get people’s attention without having to talk too much. Today he is focusing mainly on manipulation and hypnosis. To Jan, the human mind is an interesting place. Overall his work has taught him that people actually want to be deceived. He is using techniques that everybody can learn – even if he has, of course, become increasingly skilled – but people want to believe that there’s something supernatural going on. Personally, Jan is skeptical towards the supernatural. He emphasizes the importance of taking a critical stance towards e.g. clairvoyance, which, to him, is just other ways of manipulation.
Anatomecha & TOPBANANAS
A new language of artistic expression will unfold in this motion driven visual art performance – envisioning new ways to translate motion into digital imagery projected in real time, portraying an explorer’s journey into the wild… Watch their performance now!
Johanne Andersson & Sandro Masai
Cello player and member of the string ensemble ‘Who Killed Bambi’ Johanne Andersson and dancer Sandro Masai interpreting “Into the Wild”… Watch their performance now!