m of care – nov 14 24
pedagogies of care series part 5 – [https://museum.care/events/pedagogies-of-care-the-swamp-school/]:
Pedagogies of Care: The Swamp School
The next encounter of ‘Pedagogies of Care’ series’ be on 14th of November, we will host Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas from MIT. In conversation with Andris Brinkmanis, they will present their interdisciplinary artistic practice, focusing in particular on their ongoing project The Swamp School.
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas are artists, educators, researchers, and co-founders of the Urbonas Studio, an interdisciplinary research practice that facilitates exchange amongst diverse nodes of knowledge production and artistic practice in pursuit of projects that transform civic spaces and collective imaginaries. They also collaborate with experts in different cultural fields to develop practice-based artistic research models that allow participants—including their students—to pursue projects that merge urbanism, new media, social sciences and pedagogy to critically address the transformation of civic space and ecology.
Gediminas Urbonas is artist, researcher, and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s program in Art, Culture, and Technology. As a co-founders of the Urbonas Studio (together with Nomeda Urbonas), they developing interdisciplinary research practice that facilitates exchange amongst diverse nodes of knowledge production and artistic practice in pursuit of projects that transform civic spaces and collective imaginaries. Urbonas taught and lectured extensively internationally. Full-time teaching positions include NTNU – Norwegian University for Science and Technology (2005-2009). In adition to MIT where they opened a new research program focusing on Climate Visions, they are also Visiting Professors at VDU – Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, and NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arte in Milano.
Urbonas have exhibited internationally including the São Paulo (twice), Berlin, Moscow (twice), Lyon, Gwangju, Busan, Taipei and Helsinki Biennales, Folkestone Triennial – and Manifesta and Documenta exhibitions – among numerous other international shows, including a solo show at the Venice Biennale, MACBA in Barcelona and National Gallery of Art in Vilnius. Their work was awarded a number of high level grants and residency awards, including the Lithuanian National Prize (2007); a Prize for the Best International Artist at the Gwangju Biennale (2006) and the Prize for the best national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2007). Urbonas are co-founders of the JUTEMPUS interdisciplinary art program (1993), the first independent artist-led initiative in Lithuania; Vilnius Interdisciplinary Lab for Media Art (VILMA); the VOICE, a net based publication on media culture (www.balsas.cc); they are co-founders of the Transaction Archive and co-directors of the Pro-test Lab Archive. *Their writing on artistic research as form of intervention into social and political crisis was published in the books Devices for Action (2008) by MACBA Press, Barcelona and Villa Lituania (2008) by Sternberg Press. Urbonas co-edited Public Space? Lost and Found (MIT Press, 2017) that brings together artists, planners, theorists and art historians in an **examination of the complex inter-relations between the creation and uses of public space and the roles that public art plays therein. Urbonas 5 year-long research project on Zooetics exploring the potential to connect with the noetics and poetics of non-human life in the context of the planetary ecological imbalance, concluded in 2018 with the symposium at MIT and opened a new research program focusing on Climate Visions. Urbonases curated the Swamp School – future learning environment at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale 2018. Their co-edited volume Swamps and the New Imagination: On the Future of Cohabitation in Art, Architecture and Philosophy published by Sternberg Press and distributed by MIT Press, is forthcoming in 2024.
*art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
**need to let go of examination ness and research ness and history ness.. and trust/try the unconditional part of left to own devices ness if we want to see the dance dance..
Urbonas are currently working on several large scale commissions and research projects that investigate movement in artistic practice towards less tangible and more complex spaces of public/private contestation and shifts toward new environmentalism in public space discourse and contemporary understandings of nature.
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
Their work is included in the collections of Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona – MACBA, FRAC – Nord-Pas de Calais in Dunkerque, Helsinki Art Museum, Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Schwerin State Museum of Art in Germany, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Italy, National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, and MO museum in Lithuania among others.
via email day before event: It is a project by Urbonas, that similarly to “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow, attempts at re-interpreting the present and rewriting the past while providing ideas for the future, departing from such an uncommon place as the swamp – a place that has been frequently represented as hostile, unproductive, superfluous – destined to be drained and cultured.
As Urbonas claim: “In a time marked by radical instability and threats of total war and environmental collapse, our project illuminates the vital urgency of human cohabitation with other forms of life. The swamp gives an opportunity to test the idea of “sympoiesis”—making and becoming together in order to find a new ethos of coexistence, a direction that stems from the act of recognising the poetical power of the ecologies surrounding us. Through a series of experiments with hybridity, it interrogates the entangled systems of “nature” and plays with the notion of human and nonhuman agency stretched between historical strata and possible scenarios of the future. *Our technological engagement, based on the fluxes of information, may find inspiration from the swamp’s organisational structure—a viable system to meet the demands of survival in a changing environment”.
*we need tech to listen/detox to us.. not give us more info.. if we want to be legit free.. if we desire to be in the unconditional conditions of an undisturbed ecosystem.. we need that nonjudgmental expo labeling tech can facil (while we humans can’t seem to let go of judging ness.. of all the forms of m\a\p).. otherwise we won’t get to the the unconditional part of left to own devices ness.. the dance
Merging the pioneering botanical study of the Aukštumala swamp in Lithuania (1902) with the bio-computing visions of British cybernetician Stafford Beer (1962), the project embraces a swamp as an evocative form of primordial technology. The swamp is conceived as a perfect milieu to learn, understand, and resist with other species, forces, and ecosystems that have been silenced and downgraded by anthropocentric hegemony.
we need to listen to what is already on each heart for that dance
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
As Thoreau was outlining: “my temple is the swamp… When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum… *I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place…far away from human society. What’s the need of visiting far-off mountains and bogs, if a half-hour’s walk will carry me into such wildness and novelty.”
*the human heart – itch-in-the-soul – is that wild place.. and accessible to all today..
more from
notes/quotes from meeting:
slidedeck (148 slides) titled: amphibian pedagogy – a theory, a school, a design
andris: intro: project is community based.. one of first was protest lab.. all have social/political dimension.. collab’d on disobedience during occupy boston.. why presenting here.. interdisciplinary, wide, open ended,
andris: 2018 – gediminas presented swamp school..places regarded as non productive.. a place to drain.. to be afraid of.. they showed how swamps could be metaphor in these hard times.. so presenting the swamp school.. then will connect to their and david graeber’s practices.. how did arrive at this project.. why do you always have community dimension
gediminas: why always standing in mud..
nomeda: we work together for decades.. 1993 estab’d artist run initiative in baltic countries.. already then interested in collective forms of art.. in contest of social/political transformation.. and eco movements.. civic/environ collapse.. also war in afghanistan.. so w/in context developed our practice.. considering art as infra to sustain ecology and maybe even democracy.. today focus on swamps.. and try to unfold amphibian pedagogy
gediminas: (not going to add stuff i already have in swamp school notes.. that’s what’s going on now).. art/design must embrace swamps hybridity to decolonize..
nomeda: swamp stands out for irritant subject vs marsh, bog, et al.. embedded in project of fascism and rhetorics of modernity..
gediminas: dealing w more than metaphor signifying an org’d mud.. library of diverse cultural.. mutlifaceted lens in which can view interdependencies.. discover complexity of our symbiotic planet.. but assemblage of collectives.. for thinking/acting in present.. via stewart mckeen
nomeda: swamp hybridity chart (have in swamp school notes).. sensorial, emergent, embodied learning..
gediminas: theories of radical pedagogy .. we added amphibian..
rad?.. root?.. if still pedagogy
gediminas: (more repeats) -field trip and lesson on instability..
gediminas: book by dr c a weber – as bible.. interdependency of vegetation.. study of slow growth of plants, queer shaped trees, et al.. (3 ch’s ness repeats)
nomeda: using manual at mit.. w short essays about pedagogy of the practice..
gediminas: (ch1 – hybrid radio repeats)
nomeda: diff form of exhibition.. swamp as site.. ie: (swamp ponchos repeat) et al
gediminas: on (inviting children repeat)
nomeda: interstructure of school as playground.. pipes used to transfer sounds.. opening free space for swamp meditation
gediminas: taks 1000s of yrs for swamps to form.. diff forms of knowledge: organic and tech
nomeda: 300 participants in swamp school.. sharing ie’s of projects
all great projects.. but irrelevant to rad root ness.. so cancerous distraction ie: we spend our days listening to the stories/ie’s.. and then trying to ‘copy’ them in some way.. which is just what we’ve been doing since forever.. we need a legit nother way.. ie: a sabbatical ish transition.. so that everyone can just jump in .. and do their thing/art
art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
gediminas: showing online swamp game they developed.. ie: to become the other you have to be eaten
nomeda: game lured you in
gediminas: to find new ethos of coexistence.. what draws us to the swamp.. to recognize this poetic and political power
nomeda: (futura island repeats)
gediminas: amphibian songs et al
andris: diff strategies you put into play: art, carnival, media, .. fundamental – today more than ever lack of imaginary.. where to go next.. whenever we collab.. you always managed to hack that desperate situation and open up new ways of looking at things
gediminas: last ch during pandemic.. rad disruption on planetary school.. plus have to very vividly embrace care.. also political motivation in engaging children.. dabil kharms on engaging children in terrible moment.. connect pragmatics and fiction .. something that goes beyond root of rationality of the world.. not precise as to where find energy to invent.. but finding inspiration in some estrangement of reality.. 3rd pt as a culture filter.. so kharms is a filter.. comes from unrelateds as a cultural lens.. to think about the process as a form.. not the final product.. ie: form in formlessness of mud
nika: how to get involved
nomeda: swamp school had an open call – in lithuania.. depends on project.. but yes.. sometimes we have open calls..
gediminas: open for collabs w schools open to this.. also working on role playing game.. thriving in wetlands.. kind of like diplomacy game.. how wetland can be managed.. participants had to agree on form of management.. then use it
andris: maybe will do project in st vincent.. to test diff pedagogical strategies
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be you. 