Call for Applications: FIELD SCHOOL: JOHANNESBURG. Urban Commons (Part 1)
Call for Applications
FIELD SCHOOL: JOHANNESBURG – URBAN COMMONS (PART 1)
07.10. – 13.10.2024
University of Johannesburg
A collaboration between the Labor für Kunst und Forschung at the Department of Art and Music, Faculty of the Human Sciences, University of Cologne and the Department of Visual Art, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA), University of Johannesburg.
Field School: Urban Commons focuses on how we can conceive the complex fabric of contemporary cities as a commons. Departing from ideas for inclusivity, accessibility, and democracy in urban spaces, the Field School aims to widen our perspective on the city’s organization of human social life towards everything that contributes to it and is present in the city: not only buildings, streets and transportation but also plants, ground, water, air, pebbles, rocks, and animals. By understanding ourselves as part of the cities’ fabric, alongside all these fellow temporary and long-term inhabitants, we will think through our entanglements in the city with what appears unintentional and unplanned in the original urban order.
The Field School will address questions of how we can learn from each other through making connections and offering a framework for research methodologies, workshops, lectures and process-based practice-based experiments. It invites reflections on how we understand the locations we visit and inhabit against the backdrop of two vastly different cities, cultural socio-political situations and histories. It will include the student’s personal perspectives and narratives of the respective cities in form of (local) student-led explorative walks which will be framed by curated workshops and lectures of invited practitioners, as well as visits to local art initiatives, institutions and museums.
Field School: Cologne – Urban Commons (Part 2) will take place from May 5 to 10, 2025 with students from Johannesburg. Participating in both parts is recommended and welcomed.
The Field School: Johannesburg is generously supported by the International Office of the University of Cologne as part of Cologne Summer Schools and includes a travel grant of 1.300 Euros per participating student.
If you are interested to participate, please send a motivation letter (max. 400 words) to Mareen Müller: mareen.mueller(at)uni-koeln.de by May 31, 2024.
For questions, please join our information session on May 10, 2024 at 5.45 pm via Zoom. Please contact Mareen Müller mareen.mueller(at)uni-koeln.de for the invite link and meeting password.