School of Complex Past: Environment – three-day intensive program
October 17-19
CSN Lab’s annual alternative education program – School of Complex Past has returned, expanding its geography. Remaining committed to its purpose of critically questioning the past and analysing its impact on the present, this year’s theme is the environment – natural landscapes and cities, green and blue (water) spaces, social and climate justice.
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, and both the region and Armenia are particularly vulnerable to its extreme impacts – especially floods, droughts, heat stress, and landslides, which are becoming increasingly evident across the country year after year.
In the context of intensifying environmental challenges; including climate change, gentrification of natural landscapes, degradation and pollution, public perception still tends to frame environmental issues and concerns exclusively as ecological challenges. Their cultural, political, social, and gendered dimensions are often left out of both public and, at times, professional/expert discourse. As a result, our relation with the natural landscape continues to be shaped by the complex legacy of colonial pasts, inequality, and violence, which in turn become the foundation for neo-colonial perspectives and processes.
By intersecting urbanism, architecture, anthropology, feminist theories, art and culture, and by analyzing the tangible and intangible heritage of the complex past along with individual and collective memory, this year’s School of Complex Past provides an opportunity to critically reflect on our relation with the natural landscape while also envisioning alternative futures.
Within the framework of the three-day intensive school, participants will engage in dialogue with Armenian, regional, and international experts from different fields. The interdisciplinary program is rich with diverse formats:
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Thematic lectures and discussions
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Workshops
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Presentations of multimedia research projects
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Open-mic format discussions
Participants may include cultural practitioners, researchers, artists, education experts, environmentalists, civil society actors, media professionals, and students.
The language of the school is Armenian and English.
The School of Complex Past will take place in Woods Center, Yerevan. To participate, please fill out the application form.
The selected participants will be notified on October 10.
The program School of Complex Past: Environment, is organized by Cultural and Social Narratives Laboratory (CSN Lab) with the support of the Danish Cultural Institute’s New Democracy Fund (NDF) project and the Women’s Fund Armenia (WFA).