Category: Uncategorized

Ελληνικά πιο κάτω

workshop with Chrystalleni Loizidou & Hülya Dede
at Phytorio, Visual Artists Association
4 November, 18 November, 2 December | 10:30am- 12:30pm

In the beginning there is flow. There is being in the rhythms of nature, a sense of belonging, with uninterrupted and unobserved experimentation and creativity. There is the feeling of the elements and the seasons, the observing and the doing. There is running and climbing and picking fruit and making shelter. And getting dirt between your toes. There is the joy of life and gratitude for the gifts of nature. Until the care-work that allows being in the rhythms of nature becomes imprisoned by practices of imposed education and productivity that disconnect us from flow and from our natural rhythms. Being, feeling and doing are turned into work and people into things. Thus the world is crazy and revolts are practices of rediscovering connection and rhythm. For this, we wish to share, remember, and develop with you customs of mindful presence and connection and belonging, by bringing together elements from Waldorf Steiner education which focuses on artistic rituals of skill development and transmission, from the Forest School movement and its emphasis on free learning in the forest, along with rescued traditions of premodern Cypriot upbringing.

This series of workshops is a collaboration between Είμαστε and Eğitim Sanatı Derneği / Association for the Art of Education, and have been previously hosted by the Connective Artistic Practices Symposium 2022 (Fontys University, Tilburg Netherlands) and the Deep Commons Conference (Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork, Ireland in association with Le Terre Institute for Community and Ecology, Mississippi, USA. The latest piece authored by the group is entitled “Connective practices towards a radical politics of community-integrated learning and care across the divisions of Cyprus: Some learning points around making kin, cooperative pedagogy, and freedom-respecting technologies” part of the forthcoming SUNI Press publication “Deep Commons: Cultivating ecologies of solidarity and care beyond capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and the state”.

Participation: 60€ (20€ x 3)
This workshop is addressed to parents and children, educators and individuals who share an interest in education as the cultivation of ways of being and working in harmonious co-presence with children and other adults in a spirit of play and creativity. It includes elements of speculative experimentation, handicraft, play through movement, song, and the co-creation of environments for free-play. Facilitation languages: Greek, Turkish, English.

For more information: 99586369

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εργαστήρι με Χρυσταλλένη Λοϊζίδου & Hülya Dede
Oίκημα Φυτωρίου Εικαστικής Δημιουργείας
4 Νοεμβρίου, 18 Νοεμβρίου, 2 Δεκεμβρίου | 10:30 π.μ. – 12:30 μ.μ.

Στην αρχή υπάρχει ροή. Η ύπαρξη στους ρυθμούς της φύσης, η αίσθηση του ανήκειν, με αδιάκοπο απαρατήρητο πειραματισμό και δημιουργικότητα, η εμπειρία των στοιχείων και των εποχών, η παρατήρηση και η πράξη. Το τρέξιμο, το σκαρφάλωμα, το μάζεμα φρούτων, η κατασκευή καταφυγίων και η άμμος ανάμεσα στα δάχτυλα των ποδιών μας. Η συνύπαρξη μέσα στη χαρά ζωής και την ευγνωμοσύνη για τα δώρα της φύσης.

Μέχρι που η φροντίδα-εργασία που επιτρέπει την ύπαρξη σε φυσικούς ρυθμούς φυλακίζεται από πρακτικες επιβεβλημενης εκπαίδευσης και παραγωγικότητας που μας αποσπούν από τη ροή και από τους φυσικούς μας ρυθμούς. Η ύπαρξη, η αίσθηση και η πράξη μετατρέπονται σε δουλειά και οι άνθρωποι σε πράγματα. Για αυτό, η επανάσταση ενάντια στην αποξένωση είναι η φροντίδα και η μετάδοση πρακτικών ανάκτησης σύνδεσης και ρυθμού. Επιθυμούμε να μοιραστούμε έθιμα συνειδητής παρουσίας, σύνδεσης και ενίσχυσης της αίσθησης του ανήκειν, ανακαλώντας μια διευρυμένη έννοια της ευγνωμοσύνης-συγκομιδής και των τραγουδιών, χορών, παραμυθιών, και τελετουργιών της.
Προηγούμενες μορφές αυτής της εργασίας-φροντίδας υποστηρίχθηκαν από το Συμπόσιο Artistic Connective Practices (Fontys University, Tilburg Netherlands 2022) και το Deep Commons Conference (Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork, Ireland σε συνεργασία με το Le Terre Institute for Community and Ecology, Mississippi, USA). Η ομάδα (www.eimaste.net) συμμετέχει με το κεφάλαιο “Connective practices towards a radical politics of community-integrated learning and care across the divisions of Cyprus: Some learning points around making kin, cooperative pedagogy, and freedom-respecting technologies” στο επερχόμενο βιβλίο του SUNI Press “Deep Commons: Cultivating ecologies of solidarity and care beyond capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and the state”.

Συμμετοχή: 60€  (20€ x 3εργαστήρια)
Το εργαστήρι, δομημένο σε τρεις δύωρες συναντήσεις, απευθύνεται σε γονείς, εκπαιδευτικούς ή άτομα που ενδιαφέρονται για την εκπαίδευση ως καλλιέργεια συντροφικότητας στην μαθησιακή πορεία των άλλων, αρμονικής συνύπαρξης και συνεργασίας με παιδιά και άλλους ενήλικες, μέσω παιχνιδιού και δημιουργικότητας προς μια ανθρώπινη μελλοντική κοινωνία. Συμπεριλαμβάνει εργασία με πηλό, τραγούδι, ελεύθερο παιχνίδι, προετοιμασία απλού γευματος, συνειδητή συνδημιουργία περιβάλλοντος για ελεύθερο παιχνίδι, ζωγραφική και χειροτεχνία. Γλώσσες εμψύχωσης: Ελληνικά, Τούρκικα, Αγγλικά

Πληροφορίες: 99586369

Written for “Deep Commons: Cultivating ecologies of solidarity and care beyond capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and the state” [forthcoming, SUNI Press, 2024]

by Chrystalleni Loizidou in community with Hülya Dede, Sylvia Hadjigeorgiou, Konstantina Kasina, Livia Moura, Christina Tsene, George Biskos, and the Eimaste Parents Cooperative

A spell: from practice to theory

In the beginning there is flow. There is the “being in the rhythms of nature”, the “being in social connection”, with uninterrupted experimentation and creativity, the feeling of the elements and the seasons, the observing and the doing, the running and climbing and picking fruit and making shelter. And getting dirt between your toes. There is the joy and gratitude of harvest. But then the care-work that reproduces “being in the rhythms of nature” is imprisoned by top-down notions of education and productivity. These impositions dominate the doing and life, so they separate us from flow and from our rhythms. Being and doing are turned into work and people into things. Thus the world is crazy, and revolts are practices of rediscovering connection and rhythm.  [Excerpt from the Eimaste Connective Practices Toolkit for Community Flow Between Families in Transition; inspired by Massimo de Angelis’ editorial intro for the Commoner, 2012]

Let this piece of writing be a call to life, a call to de-projectify and radically de-institutionalise. A call to heed the advice of Brazilian indigenous leader Ailton Alves Lacerda Krenak “not to take the children out of the room” so that we stay connected to their and our needs and hold their abilities and their interests (their mess, their energy, and their openness to possibility) in our heart as we choose to occupy a present and build a future together with them. Let this be a call to start living out solutions to this systemic crisis of childhood and so, inevitably it seems, to allow ourselves to become academic “matter out of place”. Let us unapologetically allow tears and laughter to disturb conferences, exhibitions, seminars and political decision-making gatherings. Let us face and undo the fear of the mess and freedom of childhood and the alienation that has taken hold through this rampant capitalist, patriarchal and deeply discriminatory and unnatural phenomenon of institutional infantophobia. Let us undo the disconnection from our need to care that has been allowed by the exclusion of children, of the elderly and of the disabled, from most settings of supposed productivity. Let this be a call to give ourselves to the hard work of harmonious cooperative flow, embodied lived experience and care that puts the child (and the child within us) in the centre and builds life around that. A call to see childcare as commoning, to laboriously, patiently and forgivingly build local connections and circular exchange economies that may, eventually, allow us “not to park our children while we go to work.”

This piece presents the conversations and the vision of a group of people who have been coordinating closely and harmoniously to pool resources and raise children together in a spirit of freedom and creativity. We’ve only been able to bring this vision into inhabited reality as a series of exceptions, for two or three days at a time, at the end of which we eventually return to our habitual reliance on less connected arrangements and services. This chapter picks up key learning points from our stints of practising childcare commoning. Here we take elements from those days of being together in flow and invest in them, articulating our ideas for extending and normalising them. 

We wish to understand and transform the conditions that are trapping our families in cities, in increasingly expensive and difficult to maintain childcare and learning arrangements, that are depriving us of a robust and stimulating social context, that are keeping us on the bus or in the car for too long every day, or too long in front of screens, or eating too many take-aways, or despairing when we face illness or injury or depression, or the realisation that there’s no one around to help us reinforce important boundaries with our children. Our aim is to share what we have learnt so far: things we hold to be useful and hopeful practices as a way out of this mess. A way out of this global, isolating, infantophobic matrix that is feeding into what can be called the edu-war-health industrial complex, now happily aligned with an exploitative tech and media industry. A situation that has globally turned parenthood and childcare —or bonds of care-giving more generally— into predicaments.

…

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-XzCd0Dt_Oi_JIw2Q0vgJqzI1nMfnxydN73R-f9xtDE/edit?usp=drivesdk

This is where you can find the latest version of our Toolkit for Connective Practices for Community Flow and families in transition. For now this takes the form of a folder on Google Drive.

A dialogue between Livia Moura and Chrystalleni Loizidou.
This dialogue is part of a project entitled “On the Knowledge We Receive Through Our Vagina” an initiative of the Ixodos collective.

Loizidou C. and Moura L. – Nº6 VIDAS ESCONDIDAS _ “Keep the Children in the Room_” On the Biopolitics of Single Mothering in the Time of Covid

developed and facilitated by Sylvia Serena Hadjigeorgiou with the curatorial support of Chrystalleni Loizidou

Part of the Deep Commons Conference, on Saturday October 29th, 13:15pm. To take part call 99802833.

From Greek history and mythology to the myth of Genesis we explore the ripples of losing the connection of co-creating life, of losing our paradisial innocence. We heal by enhancing our Inner, outer and greater body acceptance through stripping layers of conditioning.

Continue reading “Workshop: CO-CREATORS: Paradisial nudity as fundamental for community recovery by revealing and accepting truth” →

Remember that time you sat together in front of a youtube video, with lots of your friends, taking notes about how to handle conflict in your relationships, and then talking about it?  We do this regularly. Get in touch if you’re interested.

Continue reading “Nonviolent Communication Meetups” →

Continue reading “Workshop: Connective practices in community-integrated arts, nature- and tradition-based learning and care, across the divisions of Cyprus” →

Gratitude to Andra Siibak for her excellent work, and Dimitra Milioni for the connection!

 

(Non) sharenting as an act of maternal care.mp4 from DataChildFutures on Vimeo.