Welcome to the first Re-emergence/emergency walk this autumn! Read more about all the walks this autumn here: www.cemus.uu.se/emerg-walks
September 14 kl. 14.15-16.00: Mushroom and Human Worlds at the End of the World – Emerging life and living growing out of ruins
Where: The walk will start outside of CEMUS, Villavägen 16, see map here: https://bit.ly/336Zxma. We will walk to Stadsskogen, then along the winding paths in Stadsskogen to Valltjärn where we will light a fire. Bring your own fika, something to warm over the fire, mushrooms? A thermos with a hot drink might also be a good idea. And remember to wear warm clothes and warm shoes if weather is chilly, windy.
Registration: No registration, just be there a couple of minutes before we walk from Villavägen 16.
Photo: Dorothea Oldani
Questions and framing
For this walk we enter the tasty, mysterious and amazing world of mushrooms! In Stadsskogen and in our minds and bodies. How can mushrooms become allies and contributors in trying to build better and good human worlds? And how do we as humans create conditions for life to thrive and grow in the local worlds nearest us while living in ecological, climate and societal breakdowns on a global scale? What kind life forms and ways of living has to potential grow strong out today’s and future ruins?
Background material
Background reading, watching is available here: http://www.cemus.uu.se/background-sep-14-2022/
CEMUS invites you to a series of re-emergence, emergency walks to explore issues, questions and unknowns central to our ability to re-imagine and re-shape human societies and culture.
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. And as you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.<span class="su-quote-cite">Part Two XXIX Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy p. 135)</span>
We as human beings, educators, researchers and universities are failing in bringing about meaningful and radical (to the root causes) change – systemic changes of systems that are destroying human and more-than-human worlds.
We need to explore and rediscover old ideas and ways of organising resistance, and build new spaces that can survive the present-future destruction and madness.
The idea is also built on and inspired by the botanical walks – Herbationes Upsalienses – that Linnaeus did around Uppsala during the 18th century, read more here: The Linnaeus Trails.
The concept is simple: before the actual walking discussion you can watch a background-video or presentation or movie/audio that aims to provoke and inspire some initial thoughts, feeling on the topic being discussed. Then we gather, walk somewhere out of the city or to a certain destination; engage in dialogue, disagreement, discussion two and two; find a space for fika and further discussion (sometimes around a fire); then walk back and have a conversation with someone new.