Dr. Nelly Ben Hayoun- Stépanian

Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian, Ph.D. (she/they), is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, designer of experiences and cultural activist. An advocate for plurality, she documents and builds platforms (...) that promote freedom of thought, the creation of organised communities, and public events, expeditions, and projects with socio-political impact at the intersection of space science, politics, the arts and moving images. Drawn to the most unexpected collaborations so to platform alternative & experimental creations, she has worked with activists and musicians such as Pussy Riot, Massive Attack, Kid Cudi, Maywa Denki, Sigur ros, The Prodigy, Savages and The Avalanches; political thinkers like Noam Chomsky and Uday Mehta; nail artists like Texto Dallas; underground noise artists such as Mirrored Fatality and Asmodessa; together with Nobel Prize-winning physicists and astronomers; she is known for creating collative and participative subversive large scale public events, films, and platforms that champion plurality, free thought, countercultures, inclusivity, accessibility and activate radical imagination. Her work has been presented at institutions such as MoMA, the V&A, the MET, the National Museum of China, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and La Gaîté Lyrique, and she has collaborated with NASA, the United Nations, and underground communities around the world. Nelly is the founder of the University of the Underground, a tuition-free educational and cultural institution based in the basements of nightclubs offering a transnational platform for radical pedagogy, unconventional practices, and pluralistic futures since 2017. She founded NASA’s International Space Orchestra and is the director of five feature films, one of directors selected globally for Berlinale Talents 2025. Since 2018, Nelly has been a senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, where she works to support freedom of thought and combat totalitarianism across borders. She is also the founder of the Decolonial Practices in Space session at the International Astronautical Congress, advocating for the demilitarisation and decolonisation of outer space. Her artwork have flown aboard the International Space Station, where she continues to develop decolonial cultural initiatives. Her films examine diasporic and queer ecofeminist futures through an experimental lens, they have screened at festivals including SXSW, Munich Film Festival, Frameline, and the BFI London Film Festival. Her feature documentaries include: • The International Space Orchestra (2013) – IFFR Rotterdam • Disaster Playground (2015) – SXSW • I Am (Not) A Monster (2019) – London Film Festival, Grierson Award nominee, BAFTA nominated, streaming on Netflix EMEA • Tour de Moon (2023) – British Urban Film Festival • Doppelgängers³ (2024) – SXSW Vision section, supported by Sundance Institute, Sandbox Films, and BFI Doc Society, interrogates gender, history, and freedom of thought through a speculative journey to the frontiers of space. In 2023, she led a lunar analogue mission in Spain exploring intergenerational trauma and space futures, resulting in the first academic paper on Intergenerational Trauma and Decolonial Futures in Space Exploration, offering a bold new framework that combines neuropsychology, epigenetics, and critical theory to challenge dominant oppressive narratives of space colonisation. Recent projects include Art of London’s takeover of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, culminating in Piccadilly Un:Plugged—a world-first event that broadcast human heartbeats and unreleased tracks by Massive Attack and Pussy Riot to the moon and back. The programme ended with another global first: a 25-minute screening of Nelly’s film From The Void To The Full on the Piccadilly Lights—a surreal, collage-based journey from the ocean’s depths to the edges of space, exploring humanity’s quest for discovery through fire and electricity. They work from an artist collective- the Village Underground- based in a train carriage on top of a nightclub in London. She has two doppelgangers who work with her to appear at multiple places at the same time,a Barbie doll and a Lego made of herself.