Article that mentions ISSA by Brian Sholis, writer and editor based in Toronto, published in the Frontier Magazine under the title “Way Out There – and Everywhere”

I’m always seeking examples of self-organized and non-accredited educational initiatives. Two recent initiatives have caught my eye, both independently and for how their core ideas simultaneously align and diverge.

Last weekend, on Vis, a small Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, Italian philosopher Franco Berardi helped inaugurate the Island School of Social Autonomy with a lecture titled “How Will We Live?” I’ve been following along as the school’s co-founders painstakingly renovate an old stone house in the hills above Komiža and reading with interest as they publish essays that cite many of the culture and education critics I most admire. I’m also intrigued because its list of cofounders includes not only philosophers, theorists, artists, and poets, but also actor-activists like Gael García Bernal and Pamela Anderson. That kind of support—both in visibility and funding—can give experiments like this one the momentum it needs to stay afloat.

The founders make the distinction between education and learning, noting, correctly, that learning mostly happens outside the formal institutions we have for education—and that the kinds of things taught in school may not serve us well for an “age of extinction.” So the ISSA should be “a place that imagines, experiments with, and cultivates forms of knowledge production and sharing that go beyond traditional notions of education and its purpose.” Its principles include “no curriculum,” “no quantification,” “play,” “hospitality,” and, “Pomalo!”

On Vis, that last term, they suggest, “is both a greeting meaning ‘take it slow’ and an island philosophy of how things can get properly done or how to react in utter crisis.” They’ve chosen to locate the project on the island in part for that attitude, how it refuses the orthodoxy “time is money,” and for the island’s antifascist and other histories. “Similar to ISSA itself, the island of Vis embodies an essential dialectic relationship between autonomy and dependency, nature and society, local and global. For ISSA, it is not an either-or situation.”

And what about that goal, social autonomy? “We perceive social autonomy as the ability of individuals to function as cooperative group members, engaging in communal self-governance while being aware of the interconnectedness and interdependence of communities within broader networks (or archipelagoes) of human and non-human life-organization.”

ISSA (..) is a model of rigor and camaraderie, a beacon shining from the (quite literal) hills.”

CARPA8 combines colloquium and laboratory, by bringing together two processual activities and keeping them in motion: dramaturgy and artistic research. The event, dynamic in form and content, aims to combine embodied artistic practice with timely conceptualisation and theorisation to enquire what happens to artistic research when it takes a dramaturgical twist. We will assemble artists and practitioners from the performing arts field with innovators, researchers and theorists to explore, experiment and discuss how expanded notions of dramaturgy and artistic research cross-fertilise each other and expand into other fields.

Dramaturgy and artistic research are fields that evolve through critical processual activities that question how ideas, words, materials, humans, plants, animals, actions, interactions, activities, data and performances materialise. They both disrupt the taken for granted, linger in liminalities, embrace not knowing and ambivalence. They both oscillate at the edge of experiments where repeated actions and techniques continually expand upon the known and unknown. They both extend what dramaturgy and artistic research are and do. Simultaneously they create new settings, situations, and places in which they occur, both within and beyond the performing arts and academia, and address key issues of broader social, cultural, economic, technological and environmental contexts.

Solvitur ambulando, solved by moving, asserted St Augustin to argue that practical demonstration can prove a theoretical problem. There are many levels on which our complementary fields, dramaturgy and artistic research, can relate to this dictum. One of them is the engagement of action and movement as a way of furthering various knowledges. Motion activates shape, place and space and informs our thinking. It invigorates our perception, awareness, action and ways of knowing.

In CARPA8 we consider movement a gestus, a gesture as social comment and commitment that aims at eliminating borders and limitations. Moving across thresholds allows us to diversify the paths we trod. This inspires us to ask: how can dramaturgical thinking and artistic research actively engage in a motion that contributes meaningfully to timely art practices that address the burning issues of our societies? With CARPA8 we are interested in expanded and process-oriented concepts of dramaturgy and artistic research.

a salute to the extraordinary journey we undertook, a sojourn that set us sailing upon the anti-tourist tide. it was to the azores we ventured, those storied isles scattered like emerald fragments in the great expanse of the north atlantic.

there we were, seeking not a leisurely dalliance but rather immersion in our experimental publication project, chasing the shadowy spectre of the tax evasion industry, through the lens of offshore tour operators. eyes, minds and hearts tuned to a different frequency, one that the average wanderer may scarcely comprehend.

and what serendipity it was to uncover those elusive threads on the very pathways we wandered! like a mystery novel unravelling itself page by page, we found our clues scattered across the rugged terrain of ilha de sao miguel. one by one, they revealed themselves to us.

i am pleased to share with you the insights and observations gathered from our recent trip to the azores, where we adopted an ‘anti-tourist’ perspective to examine the locale in a fresh manner, exploring the azores beyond its popular tourist appeal and delve into the less-known facet of its offshore business, specifically related to the tax evasion industry.

as part of our ongoing experimental publication project, we sought to engage with the off-shore operators. despite a thorough examination of leaked documents for local contacts, only three entities are to be found on the island of sao miguel linked to the offshore industry, which we unexpectedly encountered near our day trip destinations.

1) on our way to the arts centre, one can come across the name ‘urrutia servicios generales’.
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/85043307
2) while visiting the abandoned hotel, the name ‘jose romao leite braz’ surfaced.
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/56098526
3) during our trip to the university, one can find ‘jose manuel almeida braz’.
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/56094919

interestingly, these three names appear to constitute all of sao miguel’s involvement in the offshore industry, a far cry from the proliferation of such businesses in many other parts of europe. the absence of a significant offshore industry in the azores, suggests that the tax evasion industry has not fully infiltrated these islands.

we must, however, be cognizant of the changing global landscape regarding tax havens and offshore industries. increasing regulatory pressure from international organizations such as the eu and the oecd could significantly influence the development or curtailment of offshore activities in this region in the future.

while our excursion provided valuable insights, it also highlighted the necessity for ongoing monitoring of the azores’ economic and regulatory landscape. this will ensure that we remain abreast of changes that may impact our research, and potentially reshape the offshore industry on these islands.

indeed, it seems the offshore industry has yet to reach its tendrils into the azores, an island untouched by the usual financial whirlwinds. yet, our venture taught us that even the seemingly untouched islands can be woven into the complex fabric of our investigations.

as we reflect upon our voyage, let us remember our journey not as mere sightseers but as curious explorers unearthing a different narrative. we’ve walked the less travelled paths, painting each step with the colours of intrigue, inquiry, and insight. we’ve exchanged the typical postcards and souvenirs for a richer bounty of knowledge and understanding, a testament to the true essence of our anti-tourist ethos.

so, here’s to the roads less travelled, to the untold tales of the azores, and to us, the wanderers who dare to peer behind the veil of the ordinary. as we turn the page to our next chapter, may our spirits remain unquenched and our curiosity forever untamed.

In the Sustainable Futures Camp (04.06. – 09.06.) local groups from Croatia, Germany,Greece, Finland, Malta and Poland will get together in a rural one-week camp near Berlin. Therewe will have nature experiences and explorations and reconnect to indigenous wisdom.Furthermore, partakers will form groups of 4 people and ideate and accelerate their concepts tospread knowledge about positive futures supporting the convivial conversation and neededsocio-ecological transformation.

Although millions of people around the world are demanding climate protection andsustainability, the speed of the necessary adaptation and mitigation is completely inadequate.Many people recognize that planetary boundaries, the climate and biodiversity crisis, theunregulated globalised financial system, and the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth thatendangers peace as a whole poses existential problems for human societies. They are ready toquestion the world and critically reflect the way they have lived up to now, and search forsolutions. At the same time, however, existing solutions seem partly unknown, unclear orcontradictory or difficult to imagine. Climate change is proven to be the most urgent andconsequential issue humankind has ever faced. How content producers address it in the nexttwo decades might determine the kind of world current and future generations will live in. In thebook “The Future We Choose” by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac (they lednegotiations for the UN’s Paris Agreement of 2015) two possible scenarios for planet Earth areoutlined. One describes what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if Paris climate targets will befailed. The other one refers to a carbon neutral, regenerative world, and how head-on optimismcan fend off the occurring disasters.

In an era of global crisis — ecological and economic; sanitary and socio-political — symbiosis is a notion that allows us to explore the metamorphosis afoot and to imagine possible futures. This symposium offers an experimentation incubator where artists, designers, scientists, and other thinkers will exchange and debate on processes and practices, exhibiting innovating projects along the way.

Symbiosis is a cornerstone of life itself — no organism, nor any species more widely, could survive isolated and without exchanges . This applies as much to human societies as to the relations of those societies with their environments. More than a simple co-existence, symbiosis involve interdependence. It can be positive, neutral, or negative, varying according to the dynamic between the relations between the parties. We must, then, choose our symbiotic models wisely. This is the thematic orientation of this year’s conference.

Symbiosis — at once object, subject, and pre-condition for this international gathering.

ISEA2023 SYMBIOSIS is a symbiotic event: trans-disciplinary (including visual arts, theater, music, design, cinema, sociology, philosophy, economics, engineering, mathematics, biology, physics , …) and inter-sectorial, concerning the arts, creatives industries, research, and citizenship more widely.

Farfara2031, referring to an island that appeared sporadically on maps of the 16th century, is a project and research process, using the procedure of bidding with this fictional island for the title of European Capital of Culture (ECoC). Designed as an artistic experimental platform Farfara2031 aims to push the boundaries in thinking, practising and experiencing what an ECoC may be if virtuality is considered as a new form of cultural ‘physicality’. Farfara2031 takes the model of ECoC as a working template for investigating innovative structures and improved relations of creative and systemic thinking to develop models of collaboration, common curation and hybrid / blended models of training, capacity building, informal education and artistic production with participants and audiences at the heart of the work done.The project believes that arts programming and producing art in the digital realm should go beyond a process of digitisation of an analogue format. However this requires a shift in creative practice and, in particular, thinking and conceptualisation. Within the context of a European Capital of Culture – created in a pre-digital world – we need to examine how the knowledge transfer from current trends in arts programming and production within the digital space can be extended to an ECoC digital programme and subsequently serve as a point of departure for digital culture. The project aims to contribute to a European vision beyond the usual or known parameters, terminologies and factual argumentations, or rhetoric of competitions of “The City in the Age of Touristic Reproduction” (Boris Groys). It attempts to explore new modes of digital and analogue learning and sharing, and takes Farfara – this mythical Maltese island – as a potential host, model or test-bed of a new way of approaching the intense activity surrounding the conferring, programming and managing of an ECoC.In a broader context, the project will implement the first step of a longer-term project (Comino-Farfara2031) by looking specifically into the mysterious island of Farfara, to critically examine how virtuality can create a different understanding of creative activity within a non-physical space, and through the framework of the ECoC programme, itself made up of three key elements; ‘European’, ‘Capital’ and ‘Culture’. By using this framework, and the three key elements which refer to many-layered elements, such as identity, history, religions, conviviality, economics, and geographies, the project proposes a rethinking of the process of cultural experimentation. Thus, in this context, Farfara highlights the speculative components of futuring the three terms as a dynamic field of perspectives, and asks what potentials can be found by looking closely at concepts of place, community or identity through the lens of programming an ECoC for a space that simply does not exist – in other words, what does a cultural programme for digital communities which goes beyond spatial thinking look like?Ultimately, the project’s research question is: How can virtuality – understood here as a new form of urban and cultural ‘physicality’ – shape a more radical understanding of what European Capital of Cultures should achieve, by planning a cultural programme for a non-physical place?This research question will be explored through the project’s planned programme of field research, a series of online forums with a broad circle of collaborators, several workshops with experts in various related fields, and a residency programme through an open call to artists and researchers. The project will conclude with a fictional online bid for the title of Farfara2031.