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UNWRITING "NATURE": A Writing Workshop | The Center for Arts, Design + Social Research

Deadline November 21, 2019

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UNWRITING “NATURE:" A WRITING WORKSHOP is open to writers, artists, and researchers who are intent on re-signifying "nature," including restating the relationship between humans, and between humans and planetary resources. Building on the Center’s workshops held in 2019–including Indigenous Planetary Ways of Knowing (Mérida, Mexico) and De Rerum Natura: Country vs. City in a Time of General Crisis (Spoleto, Italy)–Unwriting “Nature” will seek to create a hospitable space for revitalizing and reconnecting the human and more than human. We will continue a comparative conversation with systems of consciousness and representation in the context of East Africa, including questions such as: What are the ways that “nature” can be understood and represented, now? What languages, images, objects, and codes help us to renew and revitalize our connections to water, land, sky, and the other beings with whom we share planet Earth, including each other? What do we need to learn, re-learn, and unlearn?

Accepted applicants for this workshop will spend one-week writing and engaging in intensive dialogue at a retreat center near Nairobi, Kenya, January 11 - 17, 2020. Joining us as Faculty Fellows will be renowned writers Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Neo Musangi, and Jodi Rave Spotted Bear. All participants will present their own work as well as respond to each others' projects. The workshop is organized in collaboration with CAD+SR Senior Research Fellow Syowia Kyambi.