SG - The Meaning of Bats
In short
Lecture- 12 May 2026
- 20.00h
- Impulse Wageningen Campus
- Speaker: Laura Cramwinckel (Museum Tot Zover, Amsterdam)
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
We look into the eyes of a dog and imagine we know what the dog feels and how he or she shows it. The dog feels close to us: we live together, we sleep together, take long walks, and it is also a mammal, like us. The bat is a mammal too, but maybe the one that differs the most from our way of being in the world. At the same time we seem intrigued by this difference in how they orient themselves in the dark, their wings between the fingers, upside down sleeping and often matriarchal social structures.
In this series we try to get closer to the bat looking at how we capture them in our cultures, in our knowledge and in our art. And we look back on the famous article of Thomas Nagel ‘What is it like to be a bat?’.
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The Meaning of Bats
Bats capture the imagination—both positively and negatively. Since time immemorial, they have been a source of phobias, folklore, and the subject of socio-cultural beliefs surrounding “good and evil.” Why is that, and how is this reflected in visual culture? Being the only mammals capable of flight, they hold an elusive and mythical status in many cultures. Active at night, in the West they are often associated with evil spirits, vampires, or as harbingers of death. Don’t mistake this for innocent fluttering around the hour of death, for in Christian iconography, the devil appears in the form of a bat... However, not all cultures view bats as harbingers of doom. In the Asia-Pacific region, for instance, the bat symbolises luck, prosperity, and hope. This visually rich exploration shows, in the flight of a bat, how perceptions and beliefs vary in context and are capable of change over time. Join museum professional and religion scientist Laura Cramwinckel in her fascination with bats in general and, in particular, their role in funerary art.
About Laura Cramwinckel
Laura Cramwinckel is a curator and program developer at Tot Zover, the museum of life and death in Amsterdam. She has a fascination with bats and, in particular, their role in funerary art.
Laura is a graduate designer in Man & Public Space from the Design Academy Eindhoven (2001) and a religious studies scholar. As part of her MA Humanities studies at Tilburg University, she primarily conducted research into funeral-related topics. Her thesis (2012) focused on recent developments in crematorium architecture. She has been working for Tot Zover since 2014.
Date
20:00 - 22:00