About the Forest university
Sprung from the land of Fruška Gora, inhabited by a multitude of beings and ways of being that nurture each other, the Forest University is here to whisper to us that life is much more boisterous, intertwined and magical than we were taught. Forest university unlearns us from learned, dominant ways, and invites us to experiment with thinking, feeling and living otherwise. Forest university emerges in their own way, wriggles with expectations, and loves subversive-nurturing teachings.
The processes at the Forest University are based on critical, decolonial and eco-pedagogy. The Forest University reflects and experiments with the recognition of creation and knowledge sharing by more-than-human actors. Some of the forms of creating and sharing knowledge are collective reading and discussion sessions through moba, individual and collective residencies, monthly summer meetings in search of answers to a specific question that concerns us, podcast and samizdat. Common to all these forms is that creating and sharing knowledge is not just cognitive, but bodily and affective, and comes from specific seasonal work practices and exposure to all living actors of this space.
The Forest University is neither a university nor a forest, in the classical understanding and practice of those words. FU is an alternative to the anthropocentric-capitalist university framework of creation and sharing knowledge. FU is an openlearning place, a place where learning and more intertwined understanding of life happens driven by curiosity and the desire for transformations. It is a learning place without selected teachers, diplomas and school fees. A school that is a habitat, but also a school that connects with other places and beings who wonder and search. It is located in the liminal place which is the meeting place of the protected forests of the Fruška gora National Park with the land that was an orchard, and a cottage from the socialist period, and today a place of permanent residence on the outskirts of Novi Sad – a place much more complicated than idealized ideas about forests.
O Šumskom univerzitetu
Iznikao iz zemlje Fruške gore, nastanjen mnoštvom bića i načina bivanja koji uspevaju da se po-drže i druže, Šumski univerzitet je tu da nam šapne da je život mnogo vrcaviji, isprepletaniji i magičniji nego što su nas učili. Šumski nas odučava od naučenih, dominantnih načina, i poziva da otvorenih srca tragamo, maštamo i isprobavamo drugačija razumevanja, osećanja i življenja. Šumski nastaje svojim tokom, migolji se očekivanjima, i voli subverzivno-negujuća učenja.
