THINKING TOGETHER

July 31 – August 9, 2014

abstract

«thinking together» is a transdisciplinary platform for political imagination: political because it is concerned with the way in which we organise the resources, spaces, practices and lives that we share, locally as well as globally; imagination because it is aimed at forming new ideas and imaginaries about how to do so. The main theory-related format of the Osthang Project is thus concerned with rethinking future modes of living together in a pluricentric world.

The project is set up as a public forum composed of informal seminars, lectures, discussions, film screenings, artistic projects and cooking. International guests from the fields of political theory, economics, social sciences, philosophy, management studies, computer science as well as activism, architecture, arts and design are invited to connect their different knowledges and practices towards future Imaginaries of Living Together.
The project sets out from the growing sense of crisis and degradation spreading in diverse parts of globalised societies. No matter where we look, in Europe or beyond, we encounter symptoms of policies and mindsets unfit to meet the challenges of the future: economic crises, ecological disasters, increasing inequality, precarity and arbitrary power, the subjugation of life to market rules and finance, pervasive political hypocrisy, boundless surveillance, the disappearance of the public sphere – all such phenomena massively impact our living together, on a daily basis, locally and globally. Meanwhile the coordinates of the world as we knew it are shifting. Global power relations, centuries old and naturalised by force, are transforming towards a state of post-hegemonic dispersion and complexity. Unknown scales of global interconnectedness – and with it interdependency – are challenging established geographical and political notions such as ‘local‘ and ‘global‘, ‘private‘, ‘public‘ and ‘common‘, ‘sovereignty‘, ‘autonomy‘ and ‘freedom‘. Prevailing economic and financial policies are failing and give rise to a multiplicity of toxic consequences for individuals, societies, cultures and the environment. The horizon of peaking natural resources and climate change eventually imposes factual limits onto a number of delusive developmental prospects. – The whistle is blown on the unsustainable promises of modernity.

«thinking together» wants to pay due attention to these shifts and symptoms: acknowledge them, question them, think with them, understand and learn from them, in order to build on future-oriented imaginaries, practices and strategies. The project is a response to the prevalent sense of stalemate in face of overpowering complexities that seem to arrest our capacity to imagine different ways of organising life and togetherness. Against this individual powerlessness, thinking together wants to create a common space for unbound political imagination, reflection, and doing.
Living together, locally and globally, marks the concrete field of relations where the complex forces of our present manifest. It is the shared space and time where the abstract coagulates into concretion and where the political unfolds – and it is the concrete space where new practices can be and need to be forged.

The format tries to set up the necessary conditions to support such common endeavour, following the conviction that what it needs is time, space, concentration, generosity, disobedience, experimentation and care. The temporary architecture of the Osthang Project, designed and built on the basis of the same concerns, will provide the framework within which invited guests, local and international audiences can spend time thinking together.

Program

July 31, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Neoliberal (Un)Reason: Politico-economic Ideologies of the Present
Hosted by Susan George (US/FR) with Damian Cahill (AUS) et al.

July 31, 2014 | 20:00
» Opening Thinking Together & Preview Lecture Susan George
With Guests and Residents of Thinking Together | Afterwards Open Dinner & Film Program

August 1, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Neoliberal (Un)Reason: Politico-economic Ideologies of the Present
Hosted by Susan George (US/FR)

» Download Program Neoliberal (Un)Reason

August 1, 2014 | 20:00
» Decolonial Perspectives on the Artists’ Colony
Lectures and Discussion with Madina Tlostanova (RU), Ruth Sacks (SA) et al. | Afterwards Film Program

August 2, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Decoloniality and Border Thinking: Perspectives on a Pluricentric World
Hosted by Madina Tlostanova (RU) with Walter Mignolo (AR/US) and Catherine Walsh (EC)

» Download Program Decoloniality and Border Thinking

August 2, 2014 | 20:00
» Preview Lecture Bernard Lietaer (BE)
Afterwards Film Program

August 3, 2014 | 11:00–19:00
» Rethinking Currency
With Bernard Lietaer (BE), Jan Ritsema (NL/F), Stefano Harney (SG), Red Vaughan Tremmel (US) & members of the Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik (Network for Pluralist Economics, DE)

August 3, 2014 | 20:00
» Some Use for Your Broken Clay Pots
Performance Christophe Meierhans | Afterwards Film Program

August 4, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Mediated Politics and Politicized Technologies
Hosted by Seda Gürses (TR/US), with Miriyam Aouragh (NL) and Femke Snelting (BE)

August 4, 2014 | 20:00
» Preview Lecture Ranabir Samaddar (IN)
Afterwards Film Program

August 5, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Dialogues, Contentions and Thinking Together: Post-Colonial Experiences
Hosted by Ranabir Samaddar (IN)

» Download Program Dialogues, Contentions and Thinking Together

August 5, 2014 | 20:00
» Open Dinner & Film Program
With Guests and Residents of Thinking Together

August 6, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Poetry and Finance After the Uprising
Hosted by Franco Berardi (IT)

August 6, 2014 | 20:00
» Preview Lecture Julian Reid: Imaginary Publics
Afterwards Film Program

August 7, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Life of the Imagination
Hosted by Julian Reid (UK/FI) with Michael Dillon (UK)

August 7, 2014 | 20:00
» Lecture For Every One
Lecture-Presentation by Sarah Vanhee (BE) | Afterwards Film Program

August 8, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Everything for Everyone and Yet There is No Planet B
Hosted by Ayreen Anastas (PS/US) and Rene Gabri (IR/US)

August 8, 2014 | 20:00
» Connecting the Bubbles
Presentation Mauricio Corbalán (AR) | Afterwards Film Program

August 9, 2014 | 13:00–19:00
» Open Day
Interventions by Guests and Residents of Thinking Together

August 9, 2014 | 20:00
» Open Dinner & Film Program
With Guests and Residents of Thinking Together

ARTISTIC PROJECTS & RESIDENTS

In the framework of Thinking Together, artists from South Africa, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, and the UK will be present at the Osthang campus, showing their work and freely engaging in discussions and research related to future modes of living together.

Get detailed information about » artistic projects