This Earthlings edition, from 21st of July to 2nd of august 2024 was focused on symbiotic dwellings. We have practiced, sensed and explored how can we inhabit with care, inhabit without colonising the place we live within. This question has been one of the central questions for us who inhabit this place at the hillside of Fruška gora, as well as for the creation of the Forest University.
Symbiotic dwellings asked us to see and feel connections, and nurture them. They called us to become aware of interdependencies and mutual aid we are providing across beings, elements and spaces. This has lead us to design a gathering in the way that we took care of all essential life-nurturing processes by ourselves, together. We had changing daily teams responsible for all crucial elements: cooking and fruit harvesting, cleaning toilets and showers, dishwashing and watering and gardening (because plans and garden cannot wait for our programmes to finish). The result was a very healthy, vegan, low waste, local food freshly made everyday, starting with oatmeal breakfasts, over fruit based snacks, to an explosion of culinary delights for lunches (burgers, empanadas, curries…), ending with soothing dinners and tasty sweets (someone said baklava, no problem!). We are also very proud that we have discarded little over two small sized trash bags after 14 people ate very well for 13 days.
They invited us to consider how we can repair what we have inherited, while having ourselves open for the needs of current moment and the dreams of the future that might come. In symbiotic dwellings we look for cooperation instead of separation, co-living instead of exclusion, life-nurturing instead of destruction. Following that, our central part of everyday practice was working with clay, sand, straw and wood in building and refurbishing an old brick house to serve as future art studio, library and maker space of the Forest university.
A learning place that cherishes symbiotic dwellings is also a place of symbiotic learnings and symbiotic pedagogies. This is why we aimed at no strictly prescribed programs, no big names we fly over to teach us, no students and teachers. In symbiotic pedagogies we are each others co-learners, all of us that come together and inhabit a place for a certain period.
Our program was curated together in situ. The collective programing took place on the second day, after the grounding and the tour of the Forest University, but was flexible enough to allow for us as a group to make changes and slide the schedule when we felt needed. Instead of being colonised by the programmes and our past selves, we were able to embrace what is coming and how we felt at the moment. Programme included: morning yoga routines, patterns in nature art workshop, earthwork – vector walk, forest walk & meditation, class with non-humans, repoliticising mental health – intro to process work and psycho-systemic, ecstatic dance party and many other, including of course, every day siesta resistencia!
Take a look at the detailed programme below:
Participants of this year programme were:
Aida Šaric, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Emily Bevan, UK
Goran Tomka, Serbia
Irina Sardarova, Russia, Montenegro
Igor Polsky, Russia, Montenegro
Maja Krishna Devi, Croatia
Marko Milutinović, Serbia
Melissa Magdaly Macareno Martinez, Mexico
Miljana Marković, Serbia
Milton Fournier, Uruguay
Mirjana Grabovac, Croatia
Miroslava Nikolić, Serbia
Morana Trenta, Croatia
Višnja Kisić, Serbia
Concept and organisation:
Višnja Kisić and Goran Tomka, Forest University
FU host team:
Emily Bevan, Milton Fournier, Goran Tomka and Višnja Kisić
Forest University, Fruška Gora