Dispatch: Harvesting Non-Western Epistemologies (ongoing)
This is the first in a series of dispatches from Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life (2023–24), a freestanding course at The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, Siliștea Snagovului, Romania. The course explores how we might rethink technology in relation to the world, via convivial tools and towards self-sufficiency outside the paradigm of globalisation. It combines readings, gatherings and offerings between the group’s participants and invited guests.
Aligning with documenta fifteen’s harvesting practice of recording discussions and meetings through the subjective eye of the “harvester”, I transfer here my notes of some of the reading materials shared in the course Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life.
My notes are made on paper dividers used for categorizing expense accounts for Romanian bulky grant reports. These interconnected, non-linear reflections – part of an ongoing series of dispatches – are based on selected texts by authors including Blair Stonechild, Ivan Illich, Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu, Clint Carroll, Marija Gimbutas, Kyle Whyte, the Zapatistas, Valiana Aguilar, and Leanne Simpson.
Related contributions and publications
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Decolonial aesthesis: weaving each other
Charles Esche, Rolando Vázquez, Teresa Cos RebolloLand RelationsClimate -
Climate Forum I – Readings
Nkule MabasoEN esLand RelationsClimateHDK-Valand -
…and the Earth along. Tales about the making, remaking and unmaking of the world.
Martin PogačarLand RelationsClimatePast in the Present -
Art for Radical Ecologies Manifesto
Institute of Radical ImaginationLand RelationsClimateInstitute of Radical Imagination -
Pollution as a Weapon of War
Svitlana MatviyenkoClimate -
Ecologising Museums
Land Relations
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–tranzit.ro
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.
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HDK-Valand
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–Van Abbemuseum
The Soils Project
‘The Soils Project’ is part of an eponymous, long-term research initiative involving TarraWarra Museum of Art (Wurundjeri Country, Australia), the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Netherlands) and Struggles for Sovereignty, a collective based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It works through specific and situated practices that consider soil, as both metaphor and matter.
Seeking and facilitating opportunities to listen to diverse voices and perspectives around notions of caring for land, soil and sovereign territories, the project has been in development since 2018. An international collaboration between three organisations, and several artists, curators, writers and activists, it has manifested in various iterations over several years. The group exhibition ‘Soils’ at the Van Abbemuseum is part of Museum of the Commons. -
–MACBA
Where are the Oases?
PEI OBERT seminar
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The Studies Center of Museo Reina Sofía will publish an open call for four residencies of artistic practice for projects that address the emergencies and challenges derived from the climate crisis such as food sovereignty, architecture and sustainability, communal practices, diasporas and exiles or ecological and political sustainability, among others.