Warm welcome to the fourth Re-emergence/Emergency Walk in Alnarp! Read more about the series of walks under the title “The Ecology of Life and Death: Learning about Radical Softness to Imagine a New Now” here.
February 15, 1:30-3:15 pm:
To Love the Marigold: The Politics of Imagination
Who: Everyone! Bring your neighbours, colleagues, friends to spark our academic bubble!
Where: The walk will start outside of Alnarp’s castle (front side), Slottsvägen 5, where we will have a short introduction. We will then walk through Alnarpsparken, discuss and share, and conclude again at the castle. If fika is something that makes you feel safe and warm while walking, feel free to bring just that. Also: We will meet in all weather, so remember to dress accordingly and maybe bring an umbrella, too.
Registration: No registration needed, just be there a couple of minutes before we walk from Slottsvägen 5.
Picture by Stanford University Photo/Monica Lopez and Stuart Goodman: As human stem cells are known for surviving for about two weeks after we have died, they show how we live on on this planet.
Questions and framing
Can you spare a minute? Do you mind to travel with me for some time? You do not need to bring anything. It is best to leave everything behind – all that which is well known, familiar, close, maybe even covered in dust. Lay down your armor of knowledge and norms, all that which might have brought us far but nowhere particularly good. Are you ready to go and see something new emerge? Something that can hold us all, a new fabric of existence where mutual care prevails?
Embarking on such a journey to ask for the seemingly impossible, we might be accused of ridicule. And yet this, now might be the time to question everything; to let fear, discomfort, curiosity and desire take us on a new path. Let us walk it, stripped off of our troubled minds so we are no longer bound by our humanness but set free to imagine the radically new here and now.
Will you step in and engage to co-create the unthinkable? Will you open yourself up to the politics of imagination to explore new modes of being and becoming in this world? Then come and join for the last Re-emergence/Emergency Walk in Alnarp – a walk to resist, co-exist and dream together.
Background material
Background reading, watching and inspiration is available here.
CEMUS invites you to a series of Re-emergence/Emergency Walks at SLU Alnarp’s campus to explore issues, questions and unknowns central to our ability to re-imagine and re-shape human societies and culture.
in months.
I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper,
pondering the riddle of power
and the reasons for obedience.
I’ve watched sunsets
(crimson, anxious),
I’ve heard the birds grow quiet
and night’s muteness.
I’ve seen sunflowers dangling
their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman
had gone strolling through the gardens.
September’s sweet dust gathered
on the windowsill and lizards
hid in the bends of walls.
I’ve taken long walks,
craving one thing only:
lightning,
transformation,
you.
'Transformation' by Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh)
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 (but don’t have to) watch a background-video or read some texts that aim to provoke and inspire some initial thoughts, feeling on the topic being discussed. Then we gather in Alnarpsparken in front of the castle, walk through the park; engage in dialogue, disagreement, discussion two and two; find a space to gather again and switch our conversation partners; then walk back and have a conversation with someone new before we close with a final round of shared reflections.