Collective Conversations
The territory is first of all an experience. The experience begins as a modest radius around our dwelling, an inhabited area we can traverse on foot. It extends through wheeled transport to a much larger range of familiar trajectories, punctuated by known places. It links the country to the city, it encompasses the water source from which one drinks, the air one breathes, the weather that passes through – and it usually includes at least remnants of natural features, such as forests, rivers, lakes, swamps or prairies. It’s a space of freedom and constraint, of work and politics as well as sustenance and recreation. We collectively constitute the territory every day; it is an outcome of our perceptions, our imagination and our actions. Generally we constitute it in an unconscious fashion, following contemporary norms that encourage us not to think of it all; but when we stop to study the territory and ourselves within its mesh, we realize that we have agency in its emergence.
This Saturday at Watershed reflects on territorial experience in the Anthropocene, gathering elements from the previous days. We begin with a dialogical experiment. We move through the neighborhood for lunch at a cooperative garden. We reconvene in the gallery for a session of embodied mapping. Then we enter the imaginary territories of role-playing games. Finally, with dinner, dance and pulsing light, we turn the entire building into an intensified territory of experience.
10 AM
Coffee / Introduction
10:30 PM
Talking Territories
For this workshop, we split into groups of three or four at stations scattered throughout the building. Designated participants bring an image or artifact to help them narrate the urban/rural territory of Greater Chicagoland. Others respond with an image or artifact brought from their own region, or a narrative evoked by the discussion. After 20 minutes we all rotate and do it again. The goal: expand our collective awareness of the territories w live in, and how to act within them.
12 PM
Walk to the River / Lunch
At noon we leave Watershed to walk through the Pilsen neighborhood to the heavily industrialized Chicago River. Lunch in El Paseo Community Garden on the way back. Please register for the day if you want that lunch!
2 PM
Mining Conversations Chicago
A situated iteration of the ongoing series Mining Conversations… dedicated to how knowledge practices on local and planetary scales shape the energy landscapes we see today, whether influenced by past or present extraction practices. Each session connects different perspectives to better understand the social, material, technological, and environmental forces at play. The series provides space for cross-practice, international and reflective conversations about mining among artists, academics, activists, and other persons interested in mining.
In this collective information session, participants come ready to describe new mining and infrastructure projects in the Great Lakes/Mississippi watershed regions and locate them on a gigantic, room-sized map. Will the failing “green energy transition” still result in an explosion of mineral grabs? What future does the AI-driven economy hold for the rivers, wetlands, prairies, forests and lakes of the region?
4 PM
Role-Playing the Brave New World
How to reimagine society and oneself in a different world? In this session we split into groups to play out fictional scenarios of adversity, solidarity, transformation and change. Chaos and invention guaranteed!
6 PM
Dinner – better register for this!
8 PM
Dance Party – Ecstasy and release in the Anthropocene