Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life
Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life
The experimental course Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life (November 2023 - May 2024) celebrates as its starting point the anniversary of 50 years since the publication of Tools for Conviviality, considering that Ivan Illich’s call is as relevant as ever.
Modernization is an all-conquering force, yet it is never enough. The climate crisis looms large, while extractivism and the war against life are pressing on. Illich called for a “multidimensional balance of human life”, for finding a balanced scale to the growth of anything, and for identifying the convivial tools needed to rethink technology and the relation to the world. Relying on convivial tools would enable communities and societies to exit the trap of the paradigm of infinite accumulation, to develop self-sufficiency outside globalization, and to regain an ethical life outside extractivism, exploitation and impoverishment.
The course also responds to the new articulations of hope that have been woven more recently in the Global South, in particular through the surge of indigenous knowledges and of a new generation of congenial practitioners from all over the world.
The freestanding course is hosted by The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, in the village of Siliştea Snagovului, Romania, and challenges a growing community of diverse practitioners to observe the forces of modern destitution, to re-orient sensibilities by relating to indigenous philosophies of the good life, to engage in a process of grounding thought in a relational world, and to develop practices of renewal.
The coursants – artists, students, professionals - are invited to give themselves the time of slow growth and re-orientation of sensibilities which tends to be forbidden by the rhythm of productivity of the school, the university, the gallery, and the modern work. Each session goes through a process of collective reading in voice, and of receiving and offering tasks outside the space of the course, while keeping a diary of the encounters and a vernacular vocabulary of the learnings.
Online sessions alternate with in-person encounters, which are events that are gradually gaining in complexity.
Five encounters have already taken place in 2023, with a participation ranging around twenty people each: 11 November, Distance and Conviviality, in person meeting at the Experimental Station; followed by 4 online meetings, on: 18 November, Indifference and Conviviality;
25 November, Wetiko and Conviviality; 8 December, Displacement and Conviviality; and 17 December, Groups and Conviviality.
Each of the sessions has created a collective space in which the coursants are discussing the forces of separation that are standing in the way of conviviality according to their own life experience and historical observations, while learning about practices of communal and ecological restoration from Abya Yala.
The 6th encounter, Adaptation and Conviviality, took place on 12-14 January 2024, at tranzit.ro/Iasi, Romania. The encounter started with a mottto from Ivan Illich: "Only the person who imagines a bygone reality as something real and possible, is also able to confront the present as a distinct period in history".
The event brought coursants and participants from Iaşi, Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara, Urziceni, Chisinau, London and Vienna to the city of Iaşi. The first day was dedicated to a multi-civilizational guided tour of Iaşi, including a trip to an archeological site of the Cucuteni culture, a visit to the University museum of the Cucuteni culture, and to medieval-to-modern landmarks such as the fortified monastery Cetăţuia, site of the first printing press and a refuge for the scholars of the day who were connecting Iaşi to Venice and Jerusalem.
The second day was dedicated to the practice of collective reading in voice, further contextualizing the relationship to the predecessors of other historical times, and connecting to indigenous climate studies focused on the current dystopia and concrete adaptation efforts. It was also the first longer gathering of the group, including traveling together from Bucharest to Iasi, socializing for dinners and exchanging impressions, with a third of the group having been for the first time in Iasi on this occasion.
The course continued with three online sessions Three Sisters and Conviviality (January 26), The South-East and Conviviality (February 21), and Conviviality and the War Against Life (February 24). In the latter we welcomed external speaker Valiana Aguilar, Maya educator and activist, founder of Collectivo Suumil Móokt’aan, from Sinanché, Yucatan, with whom we reflected on our relations to ancestral food and to farming and the kitchen as sites and tools of resistance.
With the tenth online session, Social Nature and Conviviality (March 10), we switched the re-orientation of sensibilities from Abya Yala to the Kurdistan and Rojava, examining the possibilities of building nothing less but an alternative democratic civilization. On March 23 we welcomed artist Hiwa K for our eleventh session, in person, Conviviality and Everyday Knowledge. Hiwa K cooked a recipe from his mother and we had a deep conversation on ways of obtaining knowledge from everyday experiences and appreciating it, democratizing the international system of arts.
For the next session, Demodernity ad Conviviality (April 13), we welcomed Charles Esche at The Station, as well as to a visit at the artist common space Atelierele Malmaison. Charles talked about the efforts undertaken to change the relation to modernity of an exemplary institution of modernity, the museum, and about Soils, a recent collective curatorial project which is looking at the relation of different peoples to the land and to the soil, including indigenous from Abya Yala, Indonesia, Australia and Europe, as different point of departure and communion.
The thirteenth session, online, Conviviality and Sangams (April 28), continued the process of shifting the geography of reason by looking at social movements for alternatives from a few regions from India.
On May 18 we welcomed Rolando Vazquez to The Station, for our last meeting in person, Conviviality and the Call of the Earth. We visited the surroundings of The Station in Snagov (the lake and the monastery), cooked and had a four-hour conversation on the challenges of decoloniality. The next day we visited Muzeul Țăranului Român to see the exhibition on Vida Geza and Mihai Olos.
Six dispatches from the course have been published on L’Internationale Online, thanks to Adelina Luft, Ana Kun, Raluca Popa, Catherine Morland, Ana Barbu, Irina Botea and Jon Dean.
The last and fifteenth session, Conviviality and the Fifth (June 3), was dedicated to a democratic discussion on the principles of the course and on the personal choices of the coursants of adding their own fifth principle to follow on this journey of the re-orientation of sensibilities.
By popular request, we agreed to continue this trajectory with the second year of Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life. In the meantime, a continuation will take place in September 2024 in Chişinău: the forum and exhibition Images of the Good Life in the East!
NON-WESTERN TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE GOOD LIFE
Freestanding Course at the Experimental Station For Research on Art and Life, Siliștea Snagovului, and in other places, Romania, 2023-2024.
Course leader: Ovidiu Tichindeleanu
The course pursues an ongoing collaboration with Weaving Pluriversities (Aldo Ramos and Yu Chen) and the Maria Lugones Decolonial Summer School at Van AbbeMuseum Eindhoven. The course takes place within the Museum of the Commons project of the confederation L’Internationale (www.internationaleonline.org) and is open to exchanges of experience with the partners from the confederation.
Museum of the Commons is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Erste Foundation is the main partner of tranzit.ro.
