Posthuman Pedagogies in Practice

Thursday afternoon 30 November
Time: 14:00-16:30
Location: Gebouw 50

With: Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko, Martine van Lubeek and Phebe Kloos, Wouter Engelbart, Master Critical Fashion Practices: Alia Mascia, Lejla Vala Verheus, Ingeborg Iona Isla Kvalnes and Chet Bugter.

Programme Posthuman Pedagogies in Practice

In the first hour, you can join one of the workshops where you can participate in these pedagogical practices. The second hour is dedicated to a collective session in which our invited guests will share their experiences of introducing and developing these pedagogies at ArtEZ University of Arts.

Go to the ArtEZ Studium Generale Agenda to register directly for this workshop programme on Thursday afternoon 30 November.

Register for Thursday afternoon

WORKSHOPS
by Alia Mascia, Lejla Vala Verheus, Ingeborg Iona Isla Kvalnes, Chet Bugter / Workshop / English


At Critical Fashion Practices we critically explore alternative, non-industrial modes and frameworks for making, doing, seeing, and experiencing fashion and clothes. For this, we make use of a distributed network, our Learning Community, inspired by one of the most mysterious occurrences in nature: the mycorrhizal network. This underground network of mycorrhizal fungi connects the roots of trees and plants in forests, and the symbiotic relationship between the tree roots and the fungal threads surrounding them represents the open and horizontal knowledge exchange within our Learning Community. By sharing experiences, questions, and ideas, we spark conversations and collective explorations of a wide range of research methods, design principles, and creative strategies, and aim to move away from the idea of “genius” that is so prevalent in the fashion industry.

Alia, Lejla, and Ingeborg will weave together their different practices, ranging from artistic research as a method to hack traditional research methods, to exploring different ways of teaching and sharing knowledge about craft practices, and weaving together disparate fields—such as weaving practices and programming—through a feminist lens to unveil hidden narratives and overlooked connections. The resulting woven network will show a clear perspective on the current state of fashion as a discipline, as well as add to the critical discourse on fashion’s educational system from the “eyes of the student”.

Making-with-becoming-with-composing-with water
by Martine van Lubeek and Phebe Kloos / Workshop / English

In these precarious times of crises, ecological downfall and fast-changing landscapes, the world asks - or maybe even screams - for new pedagogies. Reflecting on our own learning experiences, we - anthropologist Phebe Kloos and artistic researcher Martine van Lubeek - realised that our most impactful learning experiences took place outside the traditional classroom, at the shores of rivers, lakes, and streams, in the woods and on the paved streets of Arnhem and were influenced by bodies of water, mosses, trees, plants and many other non-humans situated within these places; situated learning by doing, feeling and making kin with our surroundings. Biologist and philosopher Donna Harraway highlights the importance of making kin in these anthropocentric times: “who and whatever we are, we need to make-with-become-with-compose-with” for she believes this is the only way for humans to ‘survive’ the Anthropocene and acknowledge the multispecies stories of the world.

In the workshop, we will put Haraway's multispecies theory into action by engaging with the bodies of water within the workshop room. Departing from your own body of water, we invite you to engage with their watery senses to construct the multispecies stories of the bodies of water present. We will share some of our intimate encounters with water that have shaped our belief in possible social-ecological futures, we will engage in two embodied watery exercises, and we will collectively map a variety of waters through a multispecies ethnography. We will end the workshop together by reflecting on our learnings. 

A Bestiary Guide from BIOMATTERs Diary – Affect as Contamination book talk
by Dr. Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko / Workshop / English

Within the Art Academy I teach, there is a deep rooted ideology that art is autonomous. It derives from a cultural belief and value of an importance of art to stand alone, to not be influenced by governments, society and politics. Nevertheless, to start to declare art as autonomous first, can make art appear as a fixed phenomenon, giving it a sense of indifference and immutability within changing societies and cultures. When taking autonomy as a first condition and defining moment of action, regardless of living bodies and their environments, it becomes a word that shields against all, namely constrains but also accountability. In my practice as a teacher and researcher thus, I struggle to overcome the disciplinary belief in autonomy, that derives from the longing for purity (Shotwell) and imperial imagination of control (Singh). Instead, I learn how to teach risk and uncertainty that emerges from being uncomfortable because not knowing when working with more than human bodies.  
 
In this way, I will elaborate on my philosophical development and pedagogical practice of the notion of contamination as a way of attentive encounter with bodies. This presentation of research through my book Affect as Contamination. Embodiment in Bioart and Biotechnology (Bloomsbury 2023) and pedagogical practice will discuss possibility of thinking and practicing contamination that resist what Isabell Lorey defined as precarization. The form of the talk will have theoretical and personal tone, woven by the mutating personas of a witch, a ghost, and a demon – they will navigate contaminating and mutating character of the problems encountered and yet to come.

Future Art School in the Symbiocene
by Wouter Engelbart / Workshop / English

We need to overcome our ego-oriented and human centered way of living. When we take care for reciprocal processes live will be fun for everyone as well as the planet.

In this workshop you will meet the holobiont (what?) and co-develop a symbiotic farm. This farm is an analogy for the Future Art School. We make a move to the field of food production to re-learn art practices and community building.