#Instituting: Workshops & Public Program
Friday, June 25
10am–1pm CEST (Berlin)
Workshop in Park Hasenheide, Berlin, fully booked
Feminist Instituting for Ecological Futures
With Berit Fischer
In today's dystopian times of capitalist, extractivist, dichotomous and separationist logics, questions about alternative imaginaries for liveable futures and co-existence with the “more-than-human” world are more urgent than ever. Acknowledging “instituting” as a social ecology, as a collective agreement and cooperation, this affective encounter invites to engender a feminist ontology of “instituting” that exceeds the anthropocentric view towards an inter-connectivity with the natural living world. Moving beyond a critique that occurs on the level of representation, this collective experience draws on legacies of feminist and radical pedagogies, and consciousness raising techniques to radical attentiveness practices. It forwards and experiments with a transformative practice of re-activating the psycho-cognitive apparatus through intent forms of situated listening. Participants will explore a feminist “instituting” that embraces ambiguity, nurtures an embodied and collective thinking and mobilizes philosophical speculation.
The encounter takes place in Berlin. Comfortable clothes, a mat or blanket to lie on and something to drink are recommended.
10am–1pm EEST (Athens)
Workshop in Athens, with registration
Eight Collective, Politechniou 8, Athens
To Listen Is to Preserve, the Transmission Yet to Come
with SAVVY Contemporary (Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock, Sagal Farah, Kelly Krugman)
How can we imagine a collective space of conviviality, not determined by structural barriers, but rather shaped by the personal and political urgencies of coalescing bodies? Tracing the etymology of “parainstitution” and the Greek prefix “para”, παρά means both beside and beyond. “institution” stems from the act of establishing or founding. The Berlin art space SAVVY Contemporary, embodying this concept, institutes by inciting. Rather than follow rigid and sterile models of institution building, its process is in a constant state of becoming. Offering a springboard of co-learning and collaboration, SAVVY’s existence as an art space, interdisciplinary discursive platform, place of hospitality, performativity and plural genealogies is the workshop’s point of departure. It will bring together two pillars of the space, SAVVYZAAR radio and its documentation centre SAVVY.doc. By means of somatic and sonic methods, reading exercises and corporeal activations, the group will convene through the potencies of epistemological diversity. The participants will energize the entanglements of solidarity with the sensuous and archival body as a site of discourse: subjective, multiple, split, and joined – all part of a continuum.
3.30–7pm EEST (Athens) / 2.30–6pm CEST (Berlin)
Online workshops fully booked, participation in Athens is possible with registration
Practices of Attunement
With Simon Fleury, Moritz Gansen, Sam Nightingale, Gala Rexer, Chara Stergiou, Aslı Uludağ
This workshop is a proposition that takes “instituting” as a nonfinite verb, a call to collective action: a never-ending form of speculation, adopting attentiveness, receptivity and movement as its constituent elements. The workshop conveners seek to extend Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s notion of “study”: an encounter “where you allow yourself to be possessed by others,” instituting a mode of counter-maintenance, generating and maintaining felicitous conditions for encounters. Over the past nine months, Practices of Attunement (PoA) have been meeting bi-weekly to undertake an ongoing process of study(ing) together. For New Alphabet School #Instituting, PoA invites participants to join in extended sessions that focus on maintaining, triggering or establishing the conditions for study via remote(ly) collective practices of attunement occuring (a)synchronously across multiple sites. In the unfolding space of study – being together and apart – PoA propose to encounter and attempt to attune to different, overlapping, inconsistent, unevenly distributed, (in)tangible and (un)bounded ecospheric entanglements.
The workshop will take place across a two-week period, where participants meet online twice in preliminary sessions prior to the event on June 25. The purpose of part 1 is to think through conditions and practices for attunement. Based on the participants’ experiences, part 2 will discuss possibilities to institute counter-institutional modes of study with an extended group of participants.
Participants need to be able to commit to all three gatherings.
- Part 1 – Field-Studies
Friday, June 11 and June 18, 12 noon–2pm EEST (Athens) / 11am–1pm CEST (Berlin) Preliminary online workshops - Part 2 – Practices for Deep-Hanging Out
Friday, June 25
3.30–5pm EEST (Athens) / 2.30pm–4pm CEST Online workshop for people who have attended the preliminary workshops on June 11 and 18.
5.30–7pm EEST (Athens) Participation on site in Athens is possible for new interested persons. (Eight Collective, Politechneiou 8, Athina 104 33, 5–8pm EST).
7.30 pm EEST (Athens)
Eight Collective, Politechniou 8, Athens
Exhibition opening: Systems, Organisms, Symbiosis, launch of the fanzines Urban Ecologies, Alegal Fields, Entangled Resistances, performative interventions
In preparation for the edition of #Instituting, Eight/Tο Οχτώ collective initiated three research gatherings in Athens as moments of collective study. These open-ended workshops concluded in three collective fanzines. This is a public sharing of these research publications and an occasion for informal discussions with some of the participants.
Exhibition with contributions by: Arbit City Group, Nikos Arvanitis, Zoe Hatziyannaki, Forensic Architecture, Eva Giannakopoulou, Andreas Kassapis, Yorgia Karydi, Theodora Malamou, Angela Melitopoulos & Angela Anderson, Foteini Palpana, Leda Papakonstantinou, Kostas Roussakis, Myrto Stampoulou, Katerina Stefanidaki & Zafos Xagoraris, Eleni Tzirtzilaki, VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis), Paky Vlassopoulou, Kostis Velonis, Mary Zygouri.
Fanzines with contributions by: Nikos Anastassopoulos, Dimitra Andritsou, Balkan Can Kino, Julia Chrissostalis, Eirini Efstathiou, Sofia Dona, Christos Giovannopoulos, Iris Lykourioti, Mariela Nestora, Murto Stampoulou, Constantina Theodorou, Steriani Tsintziloni, Hypatia Vourloumis, Christos Vrettos.