Join us at the Conference and Exhibition “Ecologies of Making Worlds”

November 28 and 29, 2024
Conference place: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 3, Räume M20 und M13a
Exhibition place: University of Applied Arts Vienna, Room 306, Vordere Zollamtstrasse 7.

The conference looks at projects of world-making and their particular relationality that emerged in the form of extraction, conflict, and destruction, as well as resistance, collective mourning, solidarity, companionship, and alternative forms of kinship in very specific geographies.

As opposed to the uniformity of the world, which John Law calls a one-world world, which operates by constructing the other worlds in their own form, Ecologies of Making Worlds is marked by the acknowledgment of heterogeneity. Heterogeneity appears in the ways worlds are made as well as in the modes of their relation. However, the world-making processes and the interrelations of different worlds are not harmonious and peaceful.

The geographies and worlds the conference focuses on are the Upper Tigris region in Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey, which Kurds, Yazidis, and Assyrians inhabit. This region spans many worlds and has been subjected to many one-world world projects, such as extractivism, war, occupation, forced displacement, assimilation, or, in a nutshell, colonization. The region is named in multiple ways, and this implies that the region comprises many worlds that have been subjected to many one-world world projects, like, for example, extractivism, war, occupation, forced displacement, assimilation, or, in a nutshell, colonization.

Arazi is an assembly initiated by researchers with diverse backgrounds: artists, academics, and architects. Despite the meaning of the term arazi (territory), which in Turkish refers to an empty space, a space that has lost its status of having significance, the assembly's practice reattributes agency to the particular arazi(s) to reveal and inquire about the coloniality inscribed in them. The colonization process in the region and, thus, Arazi's matter of concern, include forced displacement, privatization, extraction, and many forms of war, as well as the consequences of the very process of colonization that range from social and ecological destruction and extinction to forms of world-making practices in the regions. Nevertheless, the conference's scope extends beyond the specific conflict-ridden world makings in the Kurdish region in Turkey.

Departing from the practice of Arazi in a particular region, the conference intends to expand the discussion towards other geographies, artistic methodologies, and ways of engagement with geographies of conflict. Ecologies of Making Worlds brings together the work of Arazi Assembly, Angela Melitopoulos (artist) and Elizabeth Povinelli (anthropologist) along with Oliver Ressler‘s film The Desert Lives, which will be exhibited at University of Applied Arts Vienna.

// The conference is organized by Önder Özengi and Ruth Sonderegger and kindly supported by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The exhibition is hosted and supported by the University of Applied Arts Vienna - Art and Communicative Practices and Transcultural Studies //

Conference Schedule

THURSDAY, November 28 (Akbild, Room M20)

13:00-13:30 Welcome and Opening by Sofia Bempeza, Nanna Heidenreich, Annette Krauss, Önder Özengi and Ruth Sonderegger.
13:30-14:00 Pelin Tan: “Landscapes as Archives: Tigris Phenomenologies”
14:00-14:30 Discussion of Pelin Tan’s Lecture moderated by Önder Özengi
BREAK
15:00-16:00 Short presentations by the Arazi Assembly members Mezra Önerm “Conflict Urbanism” and Mazlum Örmek, “In the Shadow of History: Forced Migration and Lost Memory in Sur, Diyarbakır”.
16:00-17:00 Discussion of the presentations by Mezra Öner and Mazlum Örmek moderated by Pelin Tan

18:00 Opening of the Exhibition “Ecologies of Making Worlds” with a presentation of Arazi Assembly’s recent publication by Andrew Hebert (editor), at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Room 306, Vordere Zollamtstrasse 7.

FRIDAY, November 29 (Akbild, Room M20 from 10-15:00, Room M13a 15:00-17:45)

10:00-10:45 Short presentations by Leyla Keskin and Yelta Köm (Arazi Assembly members)
Leyla Keskin: “Ecological-Mourning” , Yelta Köm: “Resisting Against Ecocide: Remapping Hasankeyf and Tigris”

11:00-11:15 Film screening, Oliver Ressler, “The Desert Lives”
11:15-11:45 Oliver Ressler, Talk: “Resisting Perdition in the Critical Transition”
11:45-12:15 Panel Discussion with Leyla Keskin, Yelta Köm and Oliver Ressler, moderated by Önder Özengi
13:15-14:30 Film Screening: “Gilgamesh: She Who Saw the Deep,” by Anton Vidokle and Pelin Tan and Q&A moderated by Önder Özengi
BREAK
15:00-15:30 Angela Melitopoulos: “Cine(so)matrix” (Keynote Lecture via zoom), and discussion moderated by Sofia Bempeza
16:00-17:00 Elizabeth Povinelli: Geontopower After Late Liberalism (Keynote Lecture via zoom) and discussion moderated by Ruth Sonderegger
17:00 – 17:15 Short presentation by Özge Çelikaslan from Arazi Assembly (via zoom)
17:15 –17:45 General discussion with Elizabeth Povinelli, Angela Melitopoulos and Arazi Assembly, moderated by Önder Özengi and Ruth Sonderegger


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Dirty Pink Waters of Collectivity: The lectures and workshops address questions of collectivity in the arts and education, which empower intersectional and post-migrant positions. Art education becomes world-making, when it leaves space for relationality, unlearning, and the condition of unknowing, for conflicting, meshing and fluid identities, and for the contamination of the dominant language(s).

Best wishes!

Sofia and Annette (KKP)







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