Apply to Attend Unwriting “Nature," a Residency and Workshop for Artists and Writers in Nairobi, Kenya

Apply to Attend Unwriting “Nature,” a Residency and Workshop for Artists and Writers in Nairobi, Kenya

The residency and workshop will be facilitated by renowned writers Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Neo Musangi, and Jodi Rave Spotted Bear, and is co-organized by artist and writer Syowia Kyambi, and will take place from January 11 – 17, 2020.

Kaspale Archive Intrusion Series, Syowia Kyambi. 2020. ©MARKK

Unwriting “Nature” is open to accomplished writers, artists, and researchers who are intent on re-signifying “nature,” including restating the relationship between humans, and between humans and planetary resources. Participants will spend one-week writing and engaging in intensive dialogue at a beautiful retreat center near Nairobi. Unwriting “Nature” will create a hospitable space for revitalizing and reconnecting the human and more than human. We will engage in a comparative conversation with systems of consciousness and representation in the context of East Africa, including the questions: What are the ways that “nature” can be understood and represented, now? What are the languages, images, objects and codes that renew our connections to water, land, sky, and the other beings with whom we share planet Earth? What should be learned, re-learned, and unlearned? The Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research will curate and publish an independent book of the works produced.

This workshop builds on the Center’s workshops, Indigenous Planetary Ways of Knowing (Mérida, Mexico) and De Rerum Natura: Country vs. City in a Time of General Crisis (Spoleto, Italy). CAD+SR is an independent, international non-profit arts-based research center that supports the social practices of artists, scholars, and researchers through workshops, fellowships, residencies, exhibitions, and publications. The Center’s research commitments, including climate change and indigenous planetary knowledges, drive our programming, especially as they are relevant to specific locales and transdisciplinary/transnational inquiry. Workshops emphasize dialogue, horizontality and experimentation.

Applications accepted on a rolling basis. Apply at http://bit.ly/UNWRITINGNATURE.

For more information about CAD+SR: http://centerartsdesign.org