Emerging from programs that already took place at the natureculture learning site of the Floating University Berlin, the dialogue “The Future of Environmental Pedagogies” wishes to dismantle artificial divisions between forms of practice. At this talk I will share from my ‘Thinking through the web of life with sponges’ research:
Sharing stories about sponges, is an invitation to rethink the frames defining how and what we are learning about the world we live in. While getting to know sponges, we might meet our ancestors or even ourselves.
Sina Ribak
• 17th of October 2021 SUNDAY 20:00, “Bureau for Hybridising Encounters” at the ICC as part of “The Sun Machine Is Coming Down”, a project by Berliner Festspiele
• The Future of Environmental Pedagogies, with: Katherine Ball, Ignacio Farias, Sandra Jasper, Sina Ribak and Ela Spalding
Conceived of as a “Bureau for Hybridising Encounters” the Floating University Berlin brings into the ICC 10 days of conversations, views and materials from three years of activities and, through various discursive formats, reflect on the ideas at the heart of our work: multi-species co-habitation in urban environments and the hybridising of urban infrastructure with cultural activity.
An intervention by Floating e.V.: Markus Bader, Sarah Bovelett, Teresa Huppertz, Gilly Karjevsky, Roman Karrer, Sabine Zahn, Rosario Talevi, Felix Wierschbitzki, Benoît Verjat, Alexis de Raphelis, Together with Zoë Claire Miller & Marco Schmitt.
• Image: Drawing by Erwin Heerich, Lebensbaummotiv, 1957, in: Blömeke C (Ed.) Museum Insel Hombroich – Die begehbaren Skulpturen Erwin Heerichs. Hantje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 2009, p.68.
• Credits: The sponge research was sparked by Filipa César and Sónia Vaz Borges, commissioners of ‘Learning in the Mangrove School’. In response, the LEARNING WITH THE MORE THAN HUMAN research group with Alen Ksoll, Jamie Allan, Ko-Fan Lin, Sina Ribak assembled. Through collective research, this group is untangling and reconnecting histories, politics, and struggles by paying attention to human, fungi, mosses, porifera and other worlds by layering histories, politics, and struggles from the authors’ contexts.