Arch.Uth Postgraduate Course Postgraduate Course Postgraduate Course Postgraduate Course Arch.Uth UTH.gr Ελληνικά
Symposium and Festival: DEVISINGS_ HOW WE WILL LIVE
29/05/2023

DEVISINGS_ HOW WE WILL LIVE

Symposium and Local Festival of the “OPEN UP” Creative Europe Program

Place: Building of Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly - Polytechnic School Campus

Time: Monday, May 29, and Thursday, June 1, 2023

The History, Theory and Conceptual Design Laboratory of the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly participate in the Symposium organization.

Thematic:
The convergence of impasses on a planetary scale, from climate catastrophe and the adverse dynamics of the Anthropocene to the crisis caused by state competition and international social inequalities, raises a question of the responsibility of the broadly understood creative subjects of today and their practices, the way they locally think and act in their daily lives, at work, in the community, and at home.

Life Co-shaping
Life organization, from the proximate domain of the private sphere to the spatial domain of various symbioses and the immaterial domain of planetary networking represent the focal point. Work, health, extended kinship or love, the relationship with each other’s field of residence, and the multiple interaction practices constitute the collective subject through relations of care and support, both between human and non-human subjects (more than human). Interest turns to Planetary Care, along with survival at the proximate scale of related bodies with a local reference. Through this "program", we inquire about creative subjects jurisdictions, responsibilities, desires, and shortcomings. Creative subjects are not defined only by their knowledge baggage and professional responsibilities but form an extended social entity sharing responsibility towards a destructive world fighting itself and mortgaging its future. Nothing is given anymore, at the same time that the facts remain suffocatingly much: How will life be constantly devised through the practices of those who live it and co-shape it?

Devisings and Creative Practices
The "Devisings of Life" Symposium intends to disturb already performed practices of responsibility from the new subjectivities and agencies of creation in architecture, art, and poetic practices. Poetic-creative practices do not refer therefore much to the already defined institutional fields of art - like museums - or the corresponding fields of the professional practice of architecture - such as architectural offices -. They refer, as generic as it may be, to planning, curating, and the act of life itself. Namely, poetic-creative practices refer to the constitution of everyday life, to the material and virtual experience of residence, to the new forms of life that emerge violently, somewhere between the digital workplace, the ground we tread on, the water we drink, the proximate and the distant bodies, the mechanisms and techniques, the nutritional values we metabolize. What is the modern subject, how is its residence resiliently constituted and how does this define, together with others, the field of its conjunction with what we call life or life-with-others?

Local Open Up Festival: Field of Speech and Action
The Devisings Symposium will be hosted for two days, within the Local Festival of "Open Up".
It will be a week of “poetic” acting and presentations around life issues and practices, concerning water, crops, and nutrition, assembly techniques of our intimate space, materials reuse as well as a poetry readings performance by the group of the FRMK magazine. During the two-year "Open Up" program in Thessaly, and with the participation of a multinational group of contributors, there had been corresponding actions for household objects construction through the assemblage method, development of cultivation practices at home or in public spaces, and collective food practices. In addition to their presentation, they will continue and be completed with the actions of the Local Festival. The prime responsibility for this activation will have the community members of the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly. The external space for the Symposium and Activities will be the Campus of the Polytechnic School. Symposium files together with the Festival Activities documentation will be assembled into a digital catalog and corresponding publication.

Thematic Sections of the Symposium
The Symposium participants will be able to include their presentations-lectures-performances in one of the following thematic areas:
A. All in One_New Domesticity
B. Nature/Culture Agencies
C. Resilient and Creative Subjects
D. Curatorial and Care Practices

Download the poster.