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Never-never school is a unique space for community learning and research about cities. We, collective Spolka, invite you to Košice, Slovakia to join us for an experiment in co-creation centred on mapping, collective visioning and exploration of urban in-betweenness.

Never-never focuses on peer-to-peer exchange and transdisciplinarity in order to create a rich learning space for all participants. In the course of the summer school, collaborative learning models and a variety of formats are tested and developed in order to foster collaboration beyond the school’s frame.

In the current urban discourse we tend to envision cities as constantly growing structures, where “development as usual” is the answer to everything from unemployment to tackling climate change. Even in the “shrinking” or stagnating post-socialist European cities we dream of large developments to fill in the “empty” spaces of the many brownfields. Alternative proposals to those of the commodified real estate market are non-existent or quickly hushed away.

During this year’s summer school we will take a closer look at one such site stretched along the river Hornád and the city centre of Košice, Slovakia. Trapped in a permanent limbo state between utopian desire of future city district and stagnating reality, there is a peculiar quality to its in-betweenness. We want to consider the site not as a blank void soon to be filled but as an already existing network of dynamic human and non-human relationships that could be the starting point for degrowth utopias beyond the anthropocentric present.

Through different methods of mapping, ethnography, phenomenological research and dramatical storytelling we want to give voice to various present and future actors of the in-between space and thus smoothly move between now and then.

The summer school is open foremost to students and recent graduates from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, geography and sociology, but we welcome anyone interested in the topics of space and urban transformation; may you be artists, photographers, designers, biologists, ecologists, lawyers, writers, illustrators, planners or simply urban enthusiasts.

WE ASK JUST FOR TWO THINGS:

1. you must be comfortable communicating in English and

2. must be able to participate in the whole programme during 28. 8.–6. 9. 2019.

Due to limited capacity we will select up to 20 participants to create a group with varied skills and interests. We ask you therefore to fill out this form at tiny.cc/nn19 and submit the following:

• a short CV concerning your background, interests and field of work (cca 1 A4-page)

• a mapping/sketch of a specific “in-between” space near you. The recommended formats and lengths are image (cca 1 A3 page), text (cca 1 A4 page), or video (cca 1 min) – let there be no limit to your imagination!

Send us your application by May 20th 2019.

We will communicate the selection results to everyone via email by May 30th.

DATES:

28. 8.–6. 9. 2019

LOCATION:

Košice, Slovakia

The official program of the summer school starts on Wednesday 26th of August on 9AM and finishes on Friday 6th on 9PM.

VENUES

Our main working venue will be Tabačka Kulturfabrik and of course Hornad’s riverside.

Accomodation for people outside of Košice is provided in a hostel nearby the work spaces.

COST:

250 Eur

Lectures, accommodation (for non-Košice residents), food (breakfasts, lunches, dinners), internet connection, studio space and printing costs are included in the fee.

Please note that the participants must provide themselves for visas, travel expenses to and from the summer school as well as for their own insurance. All participants should also bring their own laptops.

TRAVEL

Participants arrange the travel themselves.

Travel by train via Vienna, Prague, Budapest.

Nearest airports: Košice, Budapest, Bratislava.

Summer school participants will receive 3 ECTS credit points.

Please contact us for any further information.

nevernever@spolka.cc

Visit also Never-never school 2018

Mapping artist Diana Lucas-Drogan will be one of our expert guests at this year’s Never-never School.

“The spaces we inhabit are structured by power structures and rules. In this dependency, our body, performances, and the way we navigate urban space interlink. In her works Diana Lucas-Drogan (re)draws and performs the cultural codes in Counter Mappings and reflects on methods of representing the research field. Working as a freelance architect and artist, she is part of the collective metroZones and teaches currently at the Technical University in Berlin and Brunswick.”

Michaela Zakuťanská is considered to be an author with original style and non-compromising, humorous look at the contemporary world in its social contests. She co-founded the Prešov National Theater in 2013 and currently works on theater and radio drama. Liveliness of Prešov spirit, etheric intellectual punk and contemporary language (live and dramatic) creates unique generational confessions.

Ján Solčáni (Skupina) Skupina is a collective of actors which interest lies in phenomena of our culture that are perceivable and expressable with sound. Skupina considers events, occuring in audio dimension or convertable to this dimension, to be objects – via listening, sound work, sociological imagination, recording, reinterpretation, oral and audio history and acoustic ecology. Through the process of materialization and dematerialization of the original statements, it attempts to – in abstract as well as material level – look for and deconstruct the borders of possible metamorphoses of the researched phenomena in our living reality. skupina.bandcamp.com

Kateřina Sidiropulu Janků is ethnographic sociologist with focus on everyday life and biographical research in urban settings and across ethnic and social boundaries, wondering about the nature and dynamics of social marginalization, and in recent years being more and more interested in interdisciplinary research. Her Ph.D. in sociology focused on everyday life and habitual strategies of Canadian Czech Roma families. She was assistant professor at the Department of Human Geography and Regional Development at University of Ostrava and at the Department of Sociology at Masaryk University. At the moment she works as researcher and research assistants on three interdisciplinary projects that focus on inclusive education, recognition, technologic innovations and public space and at the same time studies Ph.D. program at Czech technical university in Prague, focusing on the theory of inbuilt public space in small cities and role of poetics in the inclusive urban solutions.

Petrică Mogoș & Laura Naum are the editors and founders of Kajet, a journal of Eastern European encounters. The journal proposes an internationalist understanding of Eastern Europe, a reclamation of this space in times of anxiety, by merging contemporary art, documentary photography, and daring writing. The Bucharest-based publication is printed biannually; its next issue—On Struggle—is out in the summer of 2019.