Histories of Resistance

About the Summer School:

The summer school Histories of resistance: remembering and archiving political and environmental conflicts offers an international and interdisciplinary exchange on political and environmental conflicts. It takes Colombia, a country of rich biodiversity and a long history of numerous violent conflicts that have affected both the cities and the rural regions, as a starting point to reflect upon conflicting memory cultures in the global present past.

Conflicts cause long-lasting traumas and material and immaterial wounds in living ecosystems and social ecologies. While some past events become part of the historical memory and are remembered in local, regional or national cultural forms and practices , e.g. of music, performances, art, or literature, others remain engraved as damages within the diverse ecosystems, and are still invisibilized. The summer school seeks to foreground practices of remembering and archiving as forms that resist forgetfulness, and help claim both political participation and historical and cultural recognition. Following this, the soil is conceived as an archive of violence and displacements through which the cultural relations between people and ecosystems have been permanently disrupted. The focus lies on the peace process in Colombia, in which the role of memory and archive in coming to terms with the multi-layered conflicts on the Colombian territory are explored. Special attention is given to the artistic forms and aesthetic practices that resist forgetting and are used as an integral part of the peace process. The summer school seeks to identify new speculative propositions and creative responses and to acknowledge these forms and practices as histories of resistance.

The thematic threads of the summer school will address local and collective ecologies and knowledges, tangible and intangible forms of resistance to forgetfulness, emergent institutional and non-institutional archives of civil society, foregrounding the critical and creative capacity of the arts and aesthetic articulations of healing, reparation, restitution and peacemaking. In workshops, seminars, and public events the summer school aims to address the following perspectives:

• Linguistic and cultural patterns of historical conflicts, their narrativizations and contemporary effects.
• Contested memories of conflict in soil, urban and rural spaces, museums & collections.
• The performance of human and non-human rights in aesthetic forms and practices.
• Circulation and negotiation of memory in Latin American literature from a global perspective.
• Memorial sites and artifacts as renegotiations of public space and historical memory.

The summer school welcomes participants from the following academic and artistic fields:Literature, cultural studies , linguistics, history and visual/environmental history, the arts, art history, humanitarian and environmental law, human geography, performances studies, architecture and urban planning, anthropology and ethnology, peace studies, philosophy.

Dates of the program:

• Arrival date in Bogotá: Sunday, September 3
• Starting date: Monday, September 4
• Finishing date: Sunday, September 15

Costs:

• The summer school is free of charge.
• Participants will need to cover travel, accommodation and living expenses during the days of the summer school.
• No scholarships for travel, accommodation and living expenses are available. Selected participants may ask for letters of invitation for individual application to other funding bodies.

Relevant information about the course:

• The language of the summer school is Spanish.
• The summer school will be realized in various formats, including project presentations, thematic workshops, scholars in conversation, and public keynote lectures.
• Academic certificates will be granted.

Application and procedure
We invite applications from students, artists, and others engaging in projects related to the aforementioned themes and fields.

Deadline to apply: Tuesday, March 7th, 2023, 22:00 GMT
Application Form

The following information will be required:

• Name(s), surname(s).
• Personal address.
• Academic or artistic affiliation.
• Personal profile (100 words max.);
• A brief motivation text that describes how participating in the summer school can enhance your own work and activities (300 words max.).
• Please prepare one document with the following content (10 MB max.):
  • Please also include your trajectory or your CV.
  • If applicable, please include your portfolio (max. 10 relevant projects).

Notes:

• Applications can be submitted in Spanish or English, but bear in mind that the course will be offered in Spanish.
• If you have a specific question or particular need in relation to language, access, etc. please include it in your motivation letter.
• Selected participants are responsible for all relevant insurances as well as organization of travel and accommodation.

A Q&A session on the application process will be held on Tuesday, February 28, 2023 at 15:00 GMT.

Link to the virtual session:
https://uni-kassel.zoom.us/j/91614221681?pwd=aVY5QkFXazgrSEh2NnJucWZLQmo1UT09

Applicants will be notified whether they have been selected latest in April 2023.

Organizing committee:
Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez, Prof. Dr. Angela Schrott, Mateo Chacón Pino, Sabrina Herrmann (University of Kassel / documenta Institut, CELA), Prof. Dr. Stefan Peters (CAPAZ), Prof. PhD. Sebastián Vargas Álvarez (Universidad del Rosario), Laura Florez (Graduate Institute Geneva).

For more information please write to: chacon-pino[at]documenta-institut[dot]de

The International Summer School: Histories of Resistance: remembering and archiving political and environmental conflicts is organized by the University of Kassel, documenta Institut, CELA and Universidad del Rosario with the support of CAPAZ - German-Colombian Peace Institute. This initiative is financed by DAAD - German Academic Exchange Service with funds from the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt).

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