#Commonings: Workshops

10 am–1 pm
The Commoning Virus: a Common-Place of Unlearning, Part 2
Workshop in Conference room 2
With Ahmad Borham, Simon Fleury and Chara Stergiou
In English

The common(place) sets out to unlearn fixed and conditioned notions of invisibilizing hierarchical and individualized authorship as a driving force in current knowledge economies. Instead, this two part workshop strives for collective (un)authorship. How can a commoning virus be activated in place? The living virus of the digital Miro board will mutate into physical space through a set of collective un-learning exercises/activities based on processes of occupation, appropriation and negotiation.

For the first part of this workshop, participants will navigate the city as if the digital Miro board is a map for it. Putting commoning in action, the route of the walk will emerge out of the collective locations the whole group chooses. For the second part (Friday, September 16th, 10am – 1pm), participants will reflect on their collective walk and add to the Miro board that originally informed their route. The aim is to reflect on the commoning practices that took place and how they contributed to the conceptual body of the Miro board.

10.30 am–1 pm
The Body as an Archive
Workshop in the Assembly, Hirschfeld Bar
With Carolina Mendonça
In English

The boundaries beyond performances, workshops, collective meetings, as well as writing, listening and reading sessions are fertile ground to think and study collectively. In this workshop, participants will investigate the possibilities of such expansions. In Mendonça’s artistic practice, she focuses on what she calls Impossible Practices as a way to move beyond these formats and investigates telepathy, levitation, invisibility, hypnoses, among other practices. Impossible Practices is not interested in the virtuosity of reaching the impossible, but in what happens when a group of people try, together. How does addressing the impossible pave ways to imagine other realities?

Investigating the ways in which bodies are affected by different forms of violence, this workshop will share this research in a performatic gathering where participants will engage in practices of perception and collective modes of conversations. Participants will speculate together how to imagine and rehearse different forms of fighting through a feminist perspective on violence. What histories, stories, narratives and perspectives are stuck to one’s flesh? How can participants get in touch with the weight they carry in their bodies? Can the training of imagination be a political work? What kind of traces does such conversations leave behind?

10 am–1 pm
Radical Empathy Lab
Workshop in Conference room 1
With Berit Fischer
In English

How can new forms of being together allow for reflection and re-feeling? Radical Empathy Lab seeks to activate the affective inter-space of relationalities in the process of commoning. It is an experimental lab that calls to imagine social and ecological relationality otherwise and tries to undo a reactionary an-aesthesia (Greek: an-aesthēsis: without sensation) that is often incited by neoliberal capitalism and by dominant, separationist logics and systemic structures. It practices how to activate a critical consciousness towards interconnectedness and what Brazilian theorist Suely Rolnik calls an “active micropolitics.” Inspired by Deep Listening, radical and feminist pedagogies, it challenges the metric-driven notion of a laboratory in that it activates holistic knowledge production. Radical Empathy Lab invites the participants to an affective encounter that embraces a relational –versus informational– learning and that in-corpo-rates the sensing body through transdisciplinary holistic advances.

10.30 am–1 pm
Martian Regenerative Development Goals
Workshop in the Conference room lobby
With Catherine Sarah Young
In English

How can people work towards a planetary commons? The Martian Regenerative Development Goals is a proposal to criticize and revise the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) by juxtaposing these with our long-term ambitions of using Mars as another habitat. In this space/philosophy workshop, participants will strive to become a unified human species as they attempt to land on the Red Planet and create their own Mars Regenerative Development Goals (Mars RDGs).

12 noon–5 pm
Migro, Ergo Sum , Part 2
Two-Day Interdisciplinary Performing Workshop in the Lecture hall
With Marinho Pina, Sérgio Carlitos Pereira, David Shongo and Susana Ferreira
In English and Portuguese

“Our bodies are older than borders.” – Susana Ferreira

Migrating is a common practice; those that dream and hope are driven to dislocate themselves to new landscapes. Today, migration in all its forms is not only a socioeconomic phenomenon – a matter of geography – but mostly a political one.

The participants of this workshop will explore several variations of migration through forms of storytelling to find common ground. The aim is to diminish the tension created by migrations, its departures, arrivals and belonging, even its non-belonging and spaces in between. Believing that this understanding is possible having fun and sharing love, this workshop will be a playground to address serious issues like religion, creed, gender and race to find some sort of safe space where everybody can use their own voice and languages to promote togetherness.

On the first day of the workshop, participants will discuss migration employing the medium of drawing, writing and filming. On the second day, they will use instruments to produce a musical take on migration. The outcome of the workshop will be presented as a live jam session in the public assembly.

3–5 pm
Could the journey sometimes be more important than the destination?
Reading Group in the Resting Place in Conference room 1
With Júlia Ayerbe
In English

How do people usually get to the destinations they have to? What details do they have to pay attention to in the journeys of everyday life? What kind of impact has the journey had on the experience of the destination? These questions emerge from considerations about the strategies disabled bodies and other so-called “minorities” create to reach their destinations through routes designed and inhabited by normative bodies. This reading group aims to collectively investigate ideas and feelings around the experiences of the journey. This session will be held in the Resting Space, where participants can be comfortable and safe after their journey

3–6 pm
Quilting Maps and Constellations Part 2
Workshop in the Conference room lobby
With Wangũi wa Kamonji, Nikolay Oleynikov and Alessandra Pomarico
In English

What are the joys and obstacles that arise when people engage in community? Inspired by traditions of collective quilting used to map symbols, constellations and directions towards freedom, this workshop is an invitation to engage in collective listening, witnessing and create emerging narratives of disconnection and interconnection.

During the five days of the Commonings program, a “tela,” an art piece on fabric, will be created resulting from a process of collaborative, multivocal and embodied inquiry. The process hopes to excavate what is ghosted or shadowed in oneself and to hold space to compost through conversations and embodied creativity, experimenting with shifts that may occur in the moment.

Participants are invited to bring a story to share of a time when working together to make the world more beautiful was met with obstacles. Everyone who is moved to do so can bring a piece of fabric that has a story or significance attached to it. During the workshop, these textiles can become part of the common (permanent) piece or added to a temporary altar installation where these fabrics can be taken to at the end.