Research Drift: UFƟ DARK SKIES _ O% illumination
Research Collaboratory: Do you want to collaborate and share your perspectives, apply via the open call. We are also inviting with special guests.
Click here at Luma to sign up for the session as part of the online audience
UFƟ centres phenomena because it seeks to engage directly with the unknown and the experiential processes that shape our realities. We treat these encounters not as mysteries to solve, but as opportunities to rethink how we perceive, relate, and design within an interconnected world. Through initiating drifts - whether online or situated - we resist predetermined outcomes and allow our events and gatherings to explore environments, ideas, and relations with openness. By drifting, we create space for playful and provocative encounters and embodied learning, transforming research into an act of attunement rather than constraint.
🌑 UFƟ DARK SKIES _ O% illumination
This gathering is for people who are curious to join our online UFO talks, unpack ways of seeing and practice and stay connected through two connected sessions of this UFO Dark Skies drift, a space to share back practice, engage with place-based perspectives, and connect with others around the world.
19 January 2026, new moon, 0% illumination. On this day, the moon positions itself between the sun and our planet, creating a deep, enclosing night. It marks a new lunar cycle, a moment of darkness at its fullest. UFƟ DARK SKIES coincides with Blue Monday, often called the most depressing day of the year. Rather than framing this day as one of gloom, we invite a different perspective: a conscious encounter with darkness as a living, vital space.
We live in a moment when darkness is disappearing, from our skies, cities, knowledge and even our imaginations. Many of the old stories about darkness, its myths, its lessons and rituals, slip from our cultural memory. We are losing our understanding of how darkness is important for the living rhythm of our planet and its species. Nocturnal life is a central part of the balance in which our world grows.
Darkness is framed as absence or danger. Yet darkness is also a space of aliveness, where other rhythms, voices, and realities emerge. By portraying darkness as ‘bad,’ we risk excluding a vital part of our biological, ecological, cultural, and social understanding, the understanding that connects us to place, species, and the larger web of life.
We need to reframe, relearn, and unpack the phenomena that are key to our existence. It’s a call to see the new stories forming: seeing the new patterns from ecological disturbance, cycles disrupted and light pollution.
UFƟ DARK SKIES seeks an opening to let the darkness tell its stories and show how it informs our lives. In this drift we will take time to pause, share and practice. Creating spaces for the emerging of other rhythms, voices, and imaginations.
During UFƟ DARK SKIES, we invite multiple perspectives to explore how dark skies are not merely a backdrop, but an active, living field:
Ecological: the role of darkness in sustaining biodiversity and nocturnal ecologies
Cultural: myths, rituals, and traditions that honour or fear the dark.
Physiological: how darkness influences human health, connection and sensory perception.
Biological: evolutionary adaptations to the dark and the interplay between light and life.
Futures narratives: speculative practices reframing darkness
Place-based narratives: local stories tied to landscapes.
🌑 If this call speaks to you, we invite you to apply with short proposal (300 words) and introduction to your practice. Deadline 5 January _ sent email to info@unidentifiedfacility.org
