(NUACA, Teryan 105, Yerevan)**
***Click here to register before July 15 /*** Contact: [email protected]
The proposed program for the Summer School 2024 involves artists, curators, designers, and philosophers. It will offer insights into contemporary topics regarding life (as discussed by Huneman), relationships between living beings and non-living materials (Pisters), and situated artistic practices in response to environmental crises (Pestiaux). Furthermore, it will explore the ecological consequences of genocidal politics (Yildirim) and the political implications of addressing the scars of landscapes (Moujaes). In essence, each speaker will delve into current issues surrounding our connection to and responsibility for the Earth. Environmental humanities encompass diverse approaches. The Summer School will feature speakers from different disciplines. Artists will share insights on engaging with the environment through their work. Philosophers, art historians, anthropologists, urban designers, and media and literary scholars will discuss human and environmental interactions. The Summer School on contemporary issues in environmental arts and humanities offers an interdisciplinary platform to discuss challenges related to the Earth. It explores our sense of belonging, relationships with non-human actors, and sustainable resources use. Over three days, participants engage in philosophical discussions, artistic explorations, and social experiences, delving into recent debates in environmental philosophy and issues at the intersection of philosophy, arts, and material culture. Armenia faces a significant ecological crisis, necessitating awareness and action, especially through engaging with arts and human sciences. Sustainability concerns our relationship with the environment—how we perceive, respect, and shape it. Armenian society and culture must reassess its relationship with the land, reflecting on traditions and customs of care. Given its history of traumas, displacements, and dispossessions, this becomes crucial. Environmental humanities is a transdisciplinary approach that integrates human life and culture into the planet's dynamics. It reevaluates our history amid climate change and mass extinction, promoting inclusive research and bridging critical and creative fields. The Summer School aims to introduce contemporary issues in environmental humanities, from a broad perspective, through creating the Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities (CEAH).
©Razmik Amirkhanian
Organized by the ASOF task force “Environmental Arts and Humanities”
Marie-Aude Baronian (visual culture scholar, Amsterdam), Anna Barseghian (artist and curator, Geneva), Talinn Grigor (architectural historian, San Francisco), Emma Harutunyan (architecture scholar, Yerevan), Nina Hovnanian (art historian, Yerevan), Philippe Huneman (philosopher, Paris), Stefan Kristensen (philosopher, Strasbourg), Armen Marsoobian (philosopher, Connecticut, USA), Gayané Shagoyan (anthropologist, Yerevan)
Hosted by NUACA (Teryan 105, Yerevan)
Supported by ASOF (ArCH council), University of Strasbourg, CNRS Human sciences, and Utopiana
Marwan Moujaes (artist and researcher, Strasbourg) Olivier Pestiaux (artist, Brussels) Patricia Pisters (media and film scholar, Amsterdam) Umut Yildirim (anthropologist, Geneva)
To tackle the ecological crisis, it seems vital to us to put an end to the hierarchical separation between humans and the rest of the living world. Other relationships with living things are possible. Inspired by a number of recent international initiatives, artist Olivier Pestiaux has launched a unique project to give the Belgian river Sambre its own legal personality. This approach is part of an international movement around the rights of Nature. As a subject of law, the river is no longer considered as a simple thing or a ‘sewer’ but as a living element, a subject with which we have a reciprocal relationship. To achieve this objective, a transdisciplinary and international committee has been set up. This right to the living allows us to offer new narratives that enable new enthusiastic reappropriations of the territory. In the face of the ecological crisis and social and economic fragility, we urgently need to rethink our relationship with living things. What is more, this project gives art a central and political role as a generator of new enthusiasm, enabling transdisciplinary and transformative mobilisations.
Philosophy has a long-standing tie with friendship – the philos. Indeed, the history of thought can be viewed and defined as the story of friendships with worlds, concepts and words. In this workshop, we will borrow from philosophy the figure of the friend to imagine a possible tie with the earth: a philos of the land. We will understand friendship as a relationship with an inappropriable other that could be viewed as a potential proximity with the earth and its life. The aim is to explore the possibility of this friendship and to consider the narrative and artistic means by which this rather special alliance might be saved and nurtured.