And What Does the Background Say?
Call for applications /
An ecocritical and ecofeminist workshop led by Zsuzsa Selyem and Anna Zilahi
June 18–21
hypha_etc campsite, Câmpu Cetății/Vármező, Mureș county, Romania
Application deadline: June 10, 22:00 EET
Over four days we treat ecocriticism as a way of sensing, thinking, and moving together with a more than human world under capitalism. Language is our main medium, but it is never abstract: we will work with how words have weight, how they mark and police living bodies, and how attention can be trained to stay with the material and political conditions of speaking and writing.
In the middle of a forested landscape, our sessions will be literally situated in the environment rather than just about it. Ecocritical discussions will decenter canonical human protagonists and redirect focus toward the so called background: plants, animals, elements, infrastructures, and terrains that usually only stage the human plot, or are treated as resources, property, or scenery. We will ask what happens to a story when these become agents instead of backdrop, when the setting starts to speak.
Walks and excursions will be spaces for interspecies encounters and experiments in presence that resist touristic consumption of nature. We will listen, touch, taste, and get lost a little, using these experiences as raw material for writing that takes seriously the beings we cross paths with. Transmedial practices – from cyanotypes to sonic experiments – will help us push beyond strictly logocentric, human centered habits and let other forces (silence, noise, movements, emotions, weather, infrastructure) into the work.
The workshop encourages meditative attention, but also plays with deliberate intensity: there will be quiet observational practices, but also moments of being unapologetically loud. Stargazing is non negotiable – both as an exercise in scale and as a reminder that any green we interact with is caught up in wider planetary crises, just as we are.
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CRITICAL PEDAGOGY, DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION, SELF-ORGANIZATION
String of workshops + panel on critical pedagogy /
30th May & 20th June 2019
Our series of events will try to explore the topics of pedagogy and representation within two workshops and a panel discussion: on the 30th May during the reading seminar conducted by the Save As group (Mentés Másként) we can learn the basics of critical pedagogy, which will be used for the activities (on the 20th June) of the Deviszont Community Space (Deviszont Közösségi Tér) for high school students. The series of workshops will be followed by an open panel discussion with the members of the Deviszont Community Space and the Save As group.
Invitees:
Save As: Jakab Villő Hanga, Gegő Virág (Cluj Napoca)
Deviszont Community Space: Szarka Alexandra, Fernengel Ágnes (Budapest)
Moderator: Gegő Virág
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Urban Reconversion. From Collective Imaginary to Spatial Planning
International workshop /
Cluj, 11-15 June 2018
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Workshop #3: “Housing - right or commodity. What is to be done?”
25 May 2017, 6 pm
tranzit.ro/ Cluj,
Brassai Samuel Street, no 5
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Workshop #2: “Housing - right or commodity. What is to be done?”
18 May 2017, 6 pm
tranzit.ro/ Cluj,
Brassai Samuel Street, no 5
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Housing - right or commodity. What is to be done?
19 April 2017, 6 pm
tranzit.ro/ Cluj,
Str. Brassai Sámuel, nr. 5
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Housing - right or commodity. What is to be done?
First workshop: Thursday, 16th of March 2017, 6 pm
tranzit.ro/ Cluj,
Str. Brassai Sámuel, nr. 5
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