Programma del 10 agosto qui / Program 10. avgusta tukaj / August 10th program here
with Johanna Gratzer ✼ Renata Gelosi ✼ Elliott Cost ✼ Jessie Martin ✼ Jip van Steenis ✼ Maike Statz ✼ Paola Granato ✼ Chiara Pavolucci ✼ Rebeca Pérez Gerónimo ✼ Aliki van der Kruijs ✼ Jennifer Carniel ✼ Heike Renée de Wit ✼ Teo Giovanni Poggi ✼ Francesca Lucchitta ✼ Kirsten Algera ✼ Chiara Spadaro ✼ Enrico Malatesta ✼ Robida
Introduction: about the Academy of Margins
Robida is welcoming everyone to the 2024 program of the Academy of Margins.
The Academy of Margins is a long-term project started by Robida in 2022: it is conceived as a learning platform that stimulates collaborative and discursive learning and is based on intimacy and rootedness where the margins are not only the site but also the widely intended content of the Academy itself.
The Academy of Margins transforms Topolò into a learning site, where one can put in relation different knowledges brought to the village by researchers, professors, activists, artists who encounter the place and the landscape and are transformed by them. Contents are situated in the place, adapting to it, changing through it: the context ceases to be the scenery of learning, and becomes a participant to the development of reflections, questions and knowledge articulations.
The topic: Situated Publishing
How to turn landscape into a publication?
The Academy of Margins Summer School will explore what we tentatively call situated publishing, meaning publishing practices that hold, host, are informed by and reflect places. The week of collective learning will be guided by the following questions: how can publishing formats and methods reflect places? Is there a difference between publishing from a city or a rural environment? How do places enter publications – beyond the usual formality of being mentioned in colophons? Can publishing—whose main goal is to be dispersed, distributed widely and circulating—be also situated, localised, grounded and site-informed?
The simplest question could be: what role does place have in publishing practices? The city where a publication is printed is usually the only localised information we find in printed publications, which is always more frequently detached from the place where publications are edited, assembled and designed since publishers tend to opt to print in countries where labour and materials are cheaper – it’s quite common in fact to read in colophons that books are produced in Estonia, Lithuania or sometimes even in China. And even not including this merely technical geographical information and considering that many collective publishing efforts are born from online collaborations and are even not printed anymore, is placeness at all a fertile question to dig into? In a time of translocality, do locality and hyper-locality hold the potential to be explored as concepts? Placeness does not open only reflections on geographical locations but includes questions about communities, (cultural) contexts, temporalities, rhythms, and (shared) ways of living.
We borrowed the term "situated" from Donna Haraway’s essay "Situated Knowledges: the Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective" (1988). The term then made us reflect upon the concrete and everyday partial perspective we developed while living and working from Topolò, a mountain village of 25 people on the border between Italy and Slovenia, where some of the members of our collective live. Our situated magazine is held, hosted, supported and informed by this specific place and the view we have to the world from here, which doesn't necessarily mean that the content of our publication speaks about this locality. It is maybe situated because its reason to be is deeply grounded in our specific context. It is maybe situated because the cyclical change of seasons, which we are immersed in, impacts how we work, how we stay together, and what we think. The village and its landscape host our walks during the pauses while designing the magazine and from the walks we bring back traces that graphically enter the magazine and our memories.
Modalities: Learning-With
In last year's Summer School of the Academy of Margins, we decided to try to develop and put into action the concept of learning-with, the concept first proposed to us by our friend and colleague Michael Marder.
This with has multiple interpretations. Firstly, it is the antonym of the proposition without, which is so characteristic of the standard pedagogical process. The sterile classroom is only one of its withouts: it puts the one who learns out of the context of everyday life, in which — so it seems — learning does not and cannot take place. As if learning is one of the multiple modes of our being in which a human subject can put itself into, modes which are strictly separated from one another. But learning-with “is not a predominantly mental function, but a ‘movement’ of life, involving the human subject as a whole and in relation to the various environments that constitute the ecological world,” wrote authors Carvalho, Steil and Gonzaga in their article Learning from a more-than-human perspective. Plants as Teachers (2020).
But the with also opposes the proposition from, as in learning-from, the method which clearly assumes that there is an essential opposition between the student and the teacher, the opposition which perpetuates the power relations imposed on subjects by the standard pedagogical process. Learning-with, on the other hand, means — as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney write in their The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (2013) — to be “committed to the idea that study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice. […] The point of calling it ‘study’ is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present.” There is no call to order in learning-with, no interpellation into teachers and students, activity and passivity, spaces of study and spaces of mere being.
At the third edition of Robida’s Summer School, we continue to propose making the participants into students and teachers at the same time. But learning-with is not only a simple gesture of dismantling this binary opposition, but a context, that provides a way of forming a new possible subjectivity, which is open to contaminations from outside — other participants, the environment, the landscape and its human and non-human inhabitants; it is a context, as famously wrote Moten and Harney, “where people sort of take turns doing things for each other or for the others, and where you allow yourself to be possessed by others as they do something.” Being possessed by others, their otherness and particular personalities, everyday practices, eating habits, choice of words, ticks, even — this is what we call learning-with.
Programme
Monday 05.08.2024
Morning: Binding and Printing
curated by Robida
Afternoon: Presentation of Robida and the concept of Situating Publishing
presentation by Vida Rucli
Evening: Presentations of the participants
Tuesday 06.08.2024
Early morning: Weeding and Reading
curated by Robida
Morning: Stroll, Walk, Listen, Write / Situating the Landscape of Topolò
curated by Johanna Gratzer
"Based on Lucius Burckhardt's concept of promenadology, which views walking as a method for engaging with and understanding the environment, I propose a sonic walking experience that perceives the landscape of Topolò as an educational asset. The workshop will begin with a creative writing exercise, where participants will respond to selected texts using various techniques such as constrained writing, automatic writing, and "cut-up" writing. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros' notion of deep listening, exemplified in her prompt, “Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears" from Sonic Meditations, the group will participate in a guided walk through Topolò, during which participants will focus on capturing sounds and visual observations, which serves as a basis for an in-situ writing session. The workshop will lead in a collaborative exercise where individual writings are shared, fragmented, and reassembled, resulting in a collective piece that synthesizes the group’s insights and reflections on the landscape of Topolò."
– Johanna
Afternoon: File Life
curated by Elliott Cost
"I would like to ask participants to bring one file with them to Topolò that relates to the place they are traveling from. During the summer school, we will write metadata files about our files. The metadata file (.txt) can contain any bits of text (weather, emotions, senses, memories) reflecting on the file we have carried to Robida. We will exchange the file and metadata so that everyone has a copy of each other’s files. I will also create an index of our metadata writing to be hosted on an Ultralight Computer (provided by Benjamin Earl). In case the file or metadata is lost in the future, anyone can contact any of the other participants to restore it—a network of dependence."
– Elliott
Afternoon: Fermentation as Metaphor
curated by Rebeca Pérez Gerónimo
"The group will be invited to start the week with a fermentation session trying to use simple, locally available ingredients. The ferments will begin early in the week, allowing them to develop and bubble throughout the residency. Toward the end of the stay, there will be a celebration with a collective dinner featuring the fermented experiments and locally foraged weeds. In parallel, texts that I have re-read for my own practice over the years will be shared to explore fermentation as a metaphor, expanding the understanding of this ancient practice.
Additionally, there will be opportunities to receive feedback on any writing projects participants may be working on, with private reading sessions available for those interested. This blend of hands-on fermentation and literary discussion aims to create a rich, interactive experience, merging practical skills with theoretical exploration. This approach is looking to foster a collaborative and caring environment for anyone who wants to be part of the fermentation / hands on session and also reading / writing collectively. "
– Rebeca
Evening: Drawing Shadows
curated by Robida
Wednesday 07.08.2024
Morning: Withless
curated by Renata Gelosi
"Can the landscape adhere to matter?
An exercise in observing the passage of time. An inkless and chemical-free printing activity using sunlight on ordinary paper. A practice on exposure<>protection.
What are the almost imperceptible everyday gestures that leave a mark on us? How does the body bow to things?"
– Renata
Morning: Haunting Topolo’s Houses Between Fiction and Reality
curated by Paola Granato
"The proposal for this activity stems from a fascination that is also an obsession and a research theme that I have been pursuing in recent times in an independent form. The focus of this interest is the domestic space and the house both at the level of representation (think of what houses are in horror films and gothic tales) and at the level of living (a controversial topic that carries political implications). After a short visit to Topolò, I was very impressed by the houses, which are also the undisputed protagonists of stories about the place and its inhabitants. The structure of the houses typical of the area creates an interesting relationship between inside and outside, the threshold is constantly inhabited and thus poses a question between domestic and external space, between private and public.
The proposed activity is divided into two parts: an introduction where I will give some brief theoretical hints on the subject, also mentioning performative practices that inspired this research, and where we will tell (together with one of Robida's people) the story of the Topolò houses.
We will choose two houses to work on in order to make a writing experiment that moves between fiction and reality. Each of us will prepare questions to ask the house, which will be answered starting from suggestions that the house itself will submit to us: a detail, a smell, a creak. Through the construction of an interview and, indirectly, of a biography of the house, we will also be able to bring into our writings our experience of being in Topolo what has been stratified in our eyes, belly, head of that temporary dwelling.
Next, I would like to experiment with how I can bring these interviews onto the page in a way that restores the architecture and three-dimensionality of the places we encounter on the page. I interpreted Robida's question about situated publication in this sense; dealing with the performing arts I always look at the editorial object as a complex layering of dimensions rather than as a landing on a horizontal surface."
– Paola
Afternoon: Researching in Movements Across Spaces: Attempts to Re-Articulate Spatial Imaginaries of Power
curated by Jessie Martin
"How can research methods reflect places? Is there a difference between publishing from a city or a rural environment? How do places enter publications? I take these questions as starting points for a presentation on what it means to develop transdisplinary, creative research methods in response to newly inhabited and remote landscapes. I will present the methodological approach of my recently started PhD project, interweaving theory, readings, research and visual practice with a narrative of my own experience moving from city to a small town. My project investigates how industrial capitalism works through nature to produce spaces which defy binary categorisations of ‘nature’ or ‘urban’. Using methods of world ecology, my aim is to re-articulate how nature, capital, and global power can be understood in relation to present landscapes. I will discuss how empirical methods can be carved out of historical and theoretical texts, through situated movement and remote exploration. The Transalpine oil pipeline which splits in my new home town, begins in the region of Friuli Venezia Giulia; I question how being situated in rural Topolò can enhance understandings of this remotely connected global network. The presentation will be followed by group discussion of these ideas and the questions regarding situatedness which are posed."
– Jessie
Afternoon: Pulsing Anima
curated by Aliki van der Kruijs
"The activity/fieldclass 'pulsing anima’ that I would like to share is an act to draw or move one’s own connection and relation to one or multiple trees being present, significant, attractive to the fellow participants. I will share some tools supporting to draw/write/feel/connect/move/return to a sense that makes the participant ‘read’ a tree."
– Aliki
Thursday 08.08.2024
Early morning: Weeding and Reading
curated by Robida
Morning: The Stone Who is Thrown
curated by Heike Renée de Wit
"What worlds do words bear? What does each hear, and what is imbued in our various languages and understanding? Interested in de-centering English while using it as our common language for communication, I am curious about entering into further layers of understanding through our different languages their etymologies, as well as our translating capabilities across (humand and non-human) perspectives. This workshop builds from two readers I edited regarding language as shaped by locations, associations and relations, and storytelling practices which emerge from particular materials and media. Two texts that we visit together from them are Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1979) and Gloria Anzaldúa’s “(Un)natural Bridges, (Un)safe Spaces” (2009) as they deal with meaningfully connecting across difference. Focusing on the languages and memories of the people attending the workshop, we consider a material from the place(s) we grew up as our starting point. How did it came to be there and what did it witness? What happens when we translate these experiences back to English?"
– Heike
Afternoon: Postcards Ain’t Ephemeral & How to Frame Topolò as Such
curated by Jip van Steenis
"I’m inspired by Robida's question: “How do places enter publications?", and I find this question specifically challenging in today’s translocality in which most artists and researchers move in. In a workshop, I will share my historical and anthropological research of postcards, and I will bring a selection of postcards of mountainous areas from the Ansichten Club archive to fuel our conversations. I would like to think collectively, about how we could publish postcards for the Topolò village (preferably co-informed by its residents), and what it means to be able to send these postcards to different ends of the world. Questions for this workshop will be: What does it mean to “frame” Topolò? What contains Topolò in one image, and what is left out? Is the postcard ephemeral, or what meaning could it reflect on Topolò? I hope the workshop can be a catalyst for conversations about situated publishing."
– Jip
Afternoon: Gaze, Relationships and Images
curated by Chiara Pavolucci
"Our gaze is influenced by the images we are used to observing. The voracity with which photographs are produced alters the relationship we have with our surroundings: “ photographs alter and expand our notions of what is worth looking and what we have the right to observe. Thery are a grammar and, more importantly, an ethics of vision. “ (S.Sontag, On photography)
Focusing on the role that images can play in the story of a place and in the reading of a landscape can help us understand the relationship we establish with it: for the summer school I would like to propose an informal moment of discussion in which we will browse together a selection of photography books to share suggestions and thoughts on how images act in the restitution of a place. Then we will try a group proposal by interacting with the space and trying to transform the gaze and the intention of reading the place into a text. Putting into words a process that is very often intuitive or instinctive can be useful to become aware of it."
– Chiara
Friday 09.08.2024
Morning: Place-Making, Place-Deleting, and Everything in Between
curated by Jennifer Carniel
"Scale is all in all an unstable parameter, transformative and in transformation. It's an agreement between parts, a container that frames a certain slice of reality while freezing its attributes in time and space, size, magnitude and density. It's a mirror of the ideals, beliefs and objectives of those who establish it.
Inspired by the paper "Human geography without scale" which recalls for a radical flat ontology, an abolition of the concept of scale in its most traditional sense, the lecture questions the intrinsic notion of place from a geographical and representational perspective. It unfolds two case studies I've been researching through my practice: the creation of place in the context of space exploration and the elimination of one, in the example of the nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the US. The sense of place results to be performatively crafted and designed by means of projected territories and projected scenarios, image-making apparatus, and imagination.
What role does scale eventually play in altering what is mapped and measured? Can we tangibly expose it? The presentation will lead to an open discussion in relation to design practices and sensitivities. In such a context, can they be a narrative tool to help us restructure our relationship with scales? To adjust their hierarchy or to erase it altogether?"
– Jennifer
Afternoon: Writing Out of Place
curated by Maike Statz
"Guided by the text “Selvedges/Self-Edges” by Jane Rendell (with others) the group will explore situated feminist writing practices in the context of Topolò. “Selvedges/Self-Edges” is a collectively written reflection on writing, and edges/borders/boundaries of the self and space. The activity will involve a presentation, workshop and discussion spread across the week and the site. During the presentation I will introduce selected writing methods, such as site-writing, the history behind them and share examples. The workshop will consist of a series of writing prompts, to try out these methods in Topolò. The group will be invited to write themselves into the site and construct new spaces through writing. We will then record fragments of these texts to create an archive - a collectively written site. An additional aim of the activity is to reflect on how such writing practices could not only influence the content of publications but also the processes they engage and their final form. This could include phases such as conceptualization, invitation of contributors, editorial work, design development and communication of the publication."
– Maike
Afternoon: Roundtable on Situated Publishing
curated by Robida
Saturday 10.08.2024 – public day
Morning: The Life of Things
on MacGuffin magazine
by Kirsten Algera, editor-in-chief and art direction
"There are two men sitting in a train going to Scotland. One man says to the other: “Excuse me Sir, what’s that parcel you have up there in the luggage rack?” “Oh”, says the other, “that’s a MacGuffin”. “Well,” says the first man, “what is a MacGuffin?” The other answers, “It’s an apparatus for trapping mountain lions in the Scottish Highlands”. “But”, says the first man, “there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands!” “Well,” says the other, “then that’s no MacGuffin!"
— Hitchcock to Truffaut, 1962
With each issue based around a single object, MacGuffin magazine is a platform for fans of inspiring, personal, unexpected, highly familiar or utterly disregarded things. Widely recognized as a fabulously designed and immaculately researched design & crafts biannual, it is an indispensable resource for all those who want backstage information about the life of things.
Afternoon: L’arcipelago delle api. Microcosmi lagunari nell’era della crisi climatica
book presentation
by Chiara Spadaro
The importance of pollinating insects in the reproductive cycle and the alarm over their dramatic reduction in natural and man-made environments are well-known topics in the public domain. Less well known are the often irreversible environmental and human consequences of this loss. Through the stories of the beekeepers of the Lagoon and the city of Venice, this book tells the metamorphosis of the lagoon landscape, the impact of human activities, and the consequences of industrial agriculture and its long supply chains, suggesting a broader reflection on the food systems of the future.
Rethinking the ways in which we relate to the environment and the importance of weaving new intra- and interspecies alliances become necessities that can no longer be avoided. Apis mellifera thus becomes a spokesperson for universal issues such as global warming, the transformation of natural environments and the loss of biodiversity, inviting us to take a stand.
Later: Presentation of Robida 10: Correspondences – Korespondence – Corrispondenze (2024)
by Robida
The tenth issue of Robida magazine, which celebrated its tenth year of existence, is made of correspondences, conversations, interviews and letter exchanges where the magazine becomes the pretext to establish new relationships or deepen existing ones. While writing and other creative activities can often be solitary endeavours, this year, Robida’s core purpose was decidedly tangible and hands-on: to go out there and talk, discuss, meet, write to each other, organise and create — together.
Evening: Collective aperitivo
After dinner: Occam Ocean – Occam XXVI
concert
by Enrico Malatesta, percussionist
Occam Ocean - Occam XXVI is the result of collaboration between Eliane Radigue, French composer, pioneer of the exclusive use of continuous sounds, and Italian percussionist, Enrico Malatesta.
Night: Farewell party
Sunday 11.08.2024
Morning: Feedback session
curated by Robida
Partner / Partnerji / Partners
Associazione/Društvo Topolò-Topolove
Diffrakt
Dvojezična večstopenjska šola P. Petričič
Biotehniška Fakulteta
Oddelek za Krajinsko Arhitekturo (Uni LJ)
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile Edile e Ambientale dell'Università La Sapienza
Cittadellarte
In collaborazione con / V sodelovanju z / In collaboration with
Associazione/Društvo Topolò-Topoluove per l'utilizzo della Juljova hiša
Topolò, i suoi abitanti e i suoi boschi
La summer school dell'Accademia dei margini è un progetto di Robida supportato da Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia e Ufficio per gli sloveni nel mondo e oltreconfine del governo sloveno.
Poletna šola Akademije margin je del projekta Akademija margin za leto 2024, ki nastaja ob finančni podpori Dežele Furlanije - Julijske krajine in Urada Vlade republike Slovenije za Slovence v zamejstvu in po svetu.
The Summer School of the Academy of Margins is part of the Academy of Margins project for 2024, which is being created with the financial support of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region and the Office of the Government Office for Slovenians Abroad.
