Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian

Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian is a London-based designer, artist and filmmaker of Armenian and Algerian descent.

She serves on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and is the designer of experiences at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute).

She is also an exhibitor and keynote speaker who has worked with museums and design centres across the world.

Ben Hayoun-Stépanian collaborated with Kid Cudi, The Avalanches, Sigur Rós, Savages, The Prodigy, Beck, Bobby Womack, Damon Albarn, Maywa Denki, Bruce Sterling and Penguin Café in a musical collaboration that took music into space.

Since 1955, the award has recognized women 'who have made a significant achievement' and 'are being recognised for their strides in making the world a better place'.

The International Space Orchestra is a project she created and assembled over the summer of 2012.

It is composed of a team of space scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center, SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Life), Singularity University, and the International Space University.

Launched from a Japanese launch pad in August 2013, she assembled the International Space Orchestra (ISO)—the worlds first orchestra of space scientists from NASA Ames Research Center, Singularity University, International Space University and the SETI Institute.

In 2013, Icon Magazine nominated Ben Hayoun-Stépanian as one of the 50 international designers “shaping the future”.

Ben Hayoun was appointed Designer of Experiences at the SETI Institute under the supervision of David Morrison, Jill Tarter, Franck Marchis and Frank Drake in May 2013.

Her work at SETI focuses on extending outreach activities and design in terms of scope, scale, and methods of engagement towards architecture, installations, environments, social system, performances, experiences and narratives, as events.

Ben Hayoun speaks about the value of ‘extreme’ fieldwork which she considers an essential part of designer training.

For Ben Hayoun, designing experiences implies tangibility, hence fieldwork, and working collaboratively with experts.

Ben Hayoun’s design practice brought her investigation to the empty lands of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and the Large Hadron Collider, CERN situated 100m below ground.

She has also collided atoms at SLAC, trapped herself in a Soyuz rocket capsule in Baikonur Cosmodrome, and experienced a sonic Booum in the neutrino Observatory Super Kamiokande in Japan.

About her practice she said: "My working method is to go in situ in scientists’ research centres and design events that radically change and adapt their attitudes to their research to a non-scientific audience’s creative needs. Design should be embedded in a physical experience, it should be something you remember like seeing a painting and remembering the tone of it."

Alongside her role as designer of experiences at the SETI Institute, Ben Hayoun is directing the International Space Orchestra.

In January 2013, the International Space Orchestra feature film had its world premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival where it was acclaimed as a "masterpiece" by the Independent Cinema Office (ICO), a "real achievement" (DOMUS), "as thrilling as watching a rocket launch" and "Spine Tingling" (The Guardian).

In 2014, Wired Magazine awarded her a WIRED Innovation fellowship for her work and for its potential to make a “significant impact on the world”.

In 2015, she was nominated for a Women of the Year Achievement Award.

Also in 2015, she released her feature film Disaster Playground, based on an investigation of emergency procedures for disasters such as earth-bound rogue asteroids.

In 2016, she began work on her next project, a feature film, digital platform and exhibition entitled “The Life, the Sea and the Space Viking”.

She was a senior a lecturer and researcher at Central Saint Martins where she won the CSM University of the Arts Teaching Award in 2016.

Ben Hayoun is a contributing writer at Domus and Design Indaba and guest writer at We Make Money Not Art, Blueprint and Bruce Sterling’s blog "Beyond the Beyond" on Wired.

Ben Hayoun initially trained in painting then Textile Design at Olivier de Serres National College of Art and Design in Paris and then graduated from Design Interactions (MA) at the Royal College of Art.

She holds a PhD in Human Geography and Political Philosophy from Royal Holloway, University of London, UK under the supervision of Professor Harriet Hawkins.

In 2017, Ben Hayoun launched the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate university providing a Master in Design of Experiences degree, and based in underground urban spaces in London and Amsterdam.

Supporting unconventional and pluralistic research practices, it is a free, pluralistic and transnational university based in the basements of nightclubs.

It actively works with institutions and nightlife to modify power structures through events, engineering situations and experiences from within, whilst supporting and empowering countercultures long-term.

For this, Ben Hayoun-Stépanian was appointed "Ambassador for the Underground" by the independent self-declared artist republic Užupis in 2019.

In 2019, Ben Hayoun-Stépanian released her feature film I am (not) a Monster where, armed with puppets and dressed as Hannah Arendt, she teases great thinkers of our age whilst challenging them to an impossible pursuit: to find the origins of knowledge.

For the film, and for advocating pluralistic thinking and thinking in action, she was appointed a fellow of the Hannah Arendt center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.

In 2020, Ben Hayoun-Stépanian became a grantee of the Sundance Institute with Red Moon, her new documentary currently in production.

Through role-play, magic and doppelgängers, it offers an experimental vision and template for future diasporas beyond Earth.

Set in Algeria, Armenia and France, the film asks, "How will human inhabitants of the moon understand origin, borders and nations?"

Ben Hayoun-Stépanian also investigates her family origins in Algeria and Armenia, which led to the start of Nelly Boum Show, her radio show on underground radio's Worldwide FM. Every month, the show explores a theme in a multiverse of possible new futures, touching on economy, politics, and other systems through music and conversation, including a focus on North African and caucasian music and experts.

In 2020, Ben Hayoun took the artist name Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian.

She is now represented by former MET Museum curator Beatrice Galilee.

Ben Hayoun is a member of the International Astronautical Federation and the Space Outreach and Education committee, and is vice-chair of the Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space (ITACCUS) at the International Astronautical Federation.

Ben Hayoun is a visiting professor at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (Unknown Fields Division) and the Royal College of Art.