Date: Saturday, 15 November 2025
Time: 14:00-17:00 CET
Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)

Horta in the Dark is a speculative writing workshop inspired by the Star Trek episode Devil in the Dark. Together with Marjolein van der Loo, we’ll explore how empathy and imagination can bridge encounters with the non-human. Starting from the story of the Horta—a creature first seen as monstrous but later understood as intelligent and caring—we’ll experiment with physical and writing exercises that invite us to inhabit other perspectives. How might the Horta tell her own story? What other monsters would we love to love? The session ends with conversation, reflection, and a pizza in honour of the Horta herself.

Horta in the Dark is part of the B(r)oilerplates for Fictionality series that explores and tests fictionality in the broadest sense as an artistic method to tell alternative stories, and to question the often oppositional positioning of fact vs fiction.

Marjolein van der Loo is a Dutch curator, researcher, and artist exploring ecological relationships, collective learning, and embodied knowledge. As Curator of Contemporary Art and Heritage at Museum Het Nieuwe Domein and Associate Curator at Onomatopee, she develops collaborative projects engaging with plants, landscapes, language, and feminist and decolonial thought. Through storytelling, sensory experience, and critical reflection, her work fosters care, reciprocity, and alternative ways of relating to the more-than-human world.

This event falls within Varia’s Homebrewing Seed research thread, and is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.