Nottingham Contemporary

This three day school draws from Felix Guattari's notion of The Three Ecologies, which locates a political understanding of ecology at the nexus of environmental, social and mental concerns. The School will look at theories and struggles at the juncture of these areas and play with practices of vernacular cartography, lay research, auto-didacticism and self-organised education. The programme links academic and non-academic researchers, a cross-section of interests and disciplines, asking what such an approach lends to the creation of new alliances for producing critical knowledge, organisation and practices of survival.

Why?

As society crawls deeper and deeper into the austerity landscape, many find themselves in anxious and toxic atmospheres, burrowing holes of protection around the edges of institutions and movements, acting out symptoms of disappointment, desperation, exhaustion, nonetheless trying to imagine a path towards the possible. This burrowing is not the absurd crusade towards happiness and positivity that is demanded of us and excessively measured by current policy frameworks, politicians and representational technologies. It is a contradictory movement - between the creation of new solidarities and futures - and retreats into the self, solitudes of planning and movements towards personal gain. What do people working along these edges: in education, health care, ecological and social movements, as workers, users, learners have to teach each other about how to make something of this burrowing, to examine the edges on which we find ourselves, to act in their fray?

See full programme in pdf below.

In collaboration with Centre for Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham.