FO.R.E.ST - Forum for Radical Ecology Studies
Calling For Participants For The Opening Season
6th March - 17th April 2022
MASSIA, in Estonia.
FO.R.E.ST is an experiment in learning together outside the educational industrial complex, self-organized by an urgent need for socio-environmental transformation. It seeks to expand environmental studies with modes of activism and social practices that acknowledge the capacity of all of us to agitate for transformation with our participation in the world.
What is the politics in the knowledge we develop about co-existence with/in Nature?
How are we to ‘conspire’ – i.e. join forces and act together – to set up an experiment in studying, researching, living and working together in which we consider collaborative survival on a damaged planet?*
There are no lecturers, students, or staff. Study and practice are driven by the participants who come together for 6 weeks at a time (a ‘season’) to study, live, and practice an alternative lifeworld. The participants shape the program centered on several critical concerns and points of inquiry, along the intersections of environmental degradation, colonial and extractive capitalism, sexism, racism, imperialism, more-than-human relationality and the domination of nature.**
FOREST takes place in MASSIA, PAF's sister residency located in a former primary school in the village of Massiaru, which lies at the border between Estonia and Latvia. The environment is ideal for social exploration of its integrated and diverse ecosystem, abundant with forests, bogs, fields and the shores of the Baltic Sea. Adjacent to the house is a garden invested in herbal medicine and engagement with gardening as critical practice***. Thus, the experiment is inextricably entangled with the living surroundings of which it takes place in.
‘Conspiring’ in FO.R.E.ST means living together as a research community that investigates the potentials and pitfalls of production and reproduction on multiple registers: social, environmental, domestic, pedagogic, and ‘professional’. Furthermore, FO.R.E.ST is an invitation to question and reconfigure the ways we come to know, how we embody what we know, how we participate in the world, and what realities we produce and reproduce on a daily basis.
If you want to know more, visit www.forest-forest.org, or read on for details about spring at FO.R.E.ST.
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For spring 2022 we are looking for 12 participants. The call is both for the upcoming season and possibly an ongoing engagement with FO.R.E.ST.
Who should get in touch?
Anybody interested in expanded and critical understandings of ecology and socio-environmental struggles, who wants to co-cultivate a long-term collective learning situation.
When?
1st season: 6th March - 17th April, 6 weeks
2nd season: 1st July - 12th August, 6 weeks
3rd season: 10th October - 21 November, 6 weeks
And continuing this rhythm going forward.
Cost:
125 euro/week (750 euro/6 weeks) covers accommodation and the presence of Co-conspirators and Complotters, and excludes food (ca. 30 euro/week).
Funding:
Fund-raising is in progress. If you need support in accessing funding for your participation, please get in touch with us. Likewise, if you have ideas or opportunities to support FO.R.E.ST financially, do not hesitate to add your proposals.
How to apply?
Please write an email to info@forest-forest.org and share about yourself, what resonates with you, what you would bring to the situation, and whatever else you feel relevant in the context of FO.R.E.ST. We will organise video calls with people who signal their interest, during which time we can give additional context and get a sense for one another.
Where?
MASSIA, Estonia (www.massia.ee)
Contact:
info@forest-forest.org
www.forest-forest.org
www.facebook.com/ForumForRadicalEcologyStudies
Who we think with in this email:
* Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, eds., Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
** Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology. The Search for a Livable World; TJ Demos, Beyond The World's End. Arts of Living at the Crossing; Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought
*** https://info.criticalgardeningcollective.net