All Things Urban

(Re)configuring Territories research programme continues as a week-long Spring School on June 13 – 19, 2022. This year’s programme explores the politics of collective imagination in the midst of the socio-political and technological upheavals we currently face. How do the changing perceptions of territorial relationships, the experiences of belonging to a place, the multiple spatial layers of history, and their connection to human and non-human agencies shape abilities to imagine futures? What are the possible roles and structures of educational institutions that could develop the necessary skills and knowledge of political imagination? The Spring School will consist of three overlapping workshops which together form a School for Speculative Environmental Education. Seeds, Pollen, Future workshop led by Linda Boļšakova will explore the thermodynamic reincarnation in which we have been configured from that which has come “before” us and reconfigured into future beings. Participants will gather pollen and share seeds, flesh out speculative stories, predict the future and engage in intimate connection-building practices of contact improvisation and ecosexual prompts. In the the Tactics for Freedom of Speech workshop led by journalist Ingrid Svanfeldt, we will look at freedom of speech and the role of media as an infrastructure forming societies and constructing inter-territorial roles and positions. In the workshop, we will learn and draft practices that can be used in conditions where freedom of expression is limited. The workshop will focus on examples from Belarus, also looking at the challenges journalists and media face elsewhere, like in Narva. In the Modelling Urban Degrowth workshop led by METASITU, we will work on a collective model to express notions of urban degrowth for which we -as of yet- lack words. Departing from the Degrowth Manual’s three chapters – Cartography, Memory, Future – we will explore the material aspects of each layer taking as the city of Narva as the focus of the discussion. Each of the three workshops can host 5 participants. Spring School registration fee, 50€, covers a workshop, vegan meals, and dormitory-style accommodation at the residency. The due date for the Spring School applications is April 25, 23:59 (EEST), 2022. The final selection is announced by May 1st.

(Re)configuring Territories aims to initiate conversations between architects, artists, design anthropologists, political geographers, theory-fiction writers and other practitioners whose work deals with urban spaces, borders and spatiality. The spring school is meant for both students and emerging practitioners as well as for the locals in Narva.