Nelly Ben Hayoun- Stépanian

Ben Hayoun- Stépanian Ph.D (she/they) works with leading scientists and engineers, to devise subversive events and experiences. An advocate for plurality, they document and build platforms that (...) support freedom of thinking, the creation of organised communities and public events, expeditions and projects with socio-political impacts. She previously collaborated with Kid Cudi, The Avalanches, Beck, Bobby Womack, Sigur Ros, Damon Albarn, Maywa Denki, The Prodigy, Sigur Ros, Bruce Sterling and more in a musical collaboration that took music into space. In 2012 she established the International Space Orchestra - the world first orchestra of NASA scientists. Nelly is a senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and she chairs international sessions with diplomats on the needs for the demilitarisation and decolonisation of outer space. Her artwork has flown in the International Space Station a few times and she chairs international sessions with diplomats on the needs for the demilitarisation and decolonisation of outer space. She is the founder of the tuition-free university University of the Underground, which includes board members and activists like Prof. Noam Chomsky, Pussy Riot and Prof. Arjun Appadurai. This tuition-free educative and cultural program is supporting plurality of thinking, free and transnational teaching and unconventional practices in the basement of nightclubs since 2017. Ben Hayoun- stépanian is the author of five feature documentary investigating topics such as the origins of knowledge and totalitarian regimes but also the next phase of humanity in space, her films work to platform diasporic and queer ecofeminist visions: THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE ORCHESTRA (2013), premiered at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. Their documentary DISASTER PLAYGROUND (2015) premiered at SXSW. Their documentary I AM (NOT) A MONSTER (2019) premiered at the London Film Festival and was nominated for a Grierson Award, featuring Noam Chomsky and Pussy Riot, it seeks to find the origins of knowledge, it is currently on NETFLIX EMEA. Their latest feature documentary DOPPELGÄNGERS³ (73min, SXSW 2024, Vision category), is a freewheeling filmic essay/ documentary which takes questions of genders, history and free thinking to the frontiers of space exploration; it will have its UK premiere in June 2025, it was commissioned by the Sundance Institute, Sandbox film grant, and the BFI Doc Society feature fund. Nelly programmes for the London Short Film Festival and have collaborated with the Armenian Film Festival London, FRAMELINE, CPH DOX to name a few. Nelly has led and created multiple large scale scientific and cultural expeditions, trained special forces such as FEMA (The Federal Emergency Management Agency) in the USA or the United Nations on space disasters such as near earth objects and asteroid impacts. In 2023, she was principal Investigator and Analogue Astronaut at Astroland Agency where she led an expedition to an analog lunar site set in an isolated, confined and extreme environment in a cave in Spain. This mission brought together a group of pluridisciplinary international experts in the field of genetics and epigenetics, collective trauma and space exploration to answer the following question: 'Is collective trauma influencing the definition of our futures in the diasporic population?'. This mission led to the publication of the first paper on Intergenerational Trauma and Decolonial Futures in Space Exploration. Nelly also 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.