On Thursday, 2 April 2020 tranzit.sk was supposed to open the new exhibition entitled Ecologies of the Ghost Landscape, The Word for World is Forest curated by Borbála Soós. The exhibition reflects on the state of a world suffering climate crisis, deforestation and mass-extinction, in which the memories of lost or near-extinct species and sensations linger.
In the meantime, in response to the spread of COVID-19, the streets of our cities have turned into ghost landscapes themselves and many of us are searching the refuge in the countryside and yes, in the forests. This sudden urgency surprised us but we hope that the particular time of common isolation will paradoxically help us to recognize our mutual interdependencies and explore new formats of solidarity. A part of the exhibition project will thus move online and will consist of reading groups, textual and audiovisual contributions curated by Borbála Soós and participating artists.
Please follow tranzit.sk on Facebook or Instagram for online research materials, information about the reading groups and other updates. More info on exhibition here.
The first online event will be a reading group led by Borbála Soós on Thursday, 9 April, 5 – 6.30 pm (GMT+1). Led by curator Borbála Soós, during this meeting we will trace how seemingly opposing notions of the forests and city, nature and culture are entangled and mutually contingent ideas throughout human history. We will discuss the problematics encoded in deforestation and monoculture plantations as violent actions that severe these complex entanglements and among other issues increase the frequency of zoonotic transfer of viruses. We will discuss the future management of nature through further financialisation such as carbolonialism. Within this framework, we will come to understand the forest and its ecologies as a web of relations including human and more-than-human beings, as well as the social and cultural practices, cultivation, tensions, politics, financial pressures and wars it entails.
Please email to application.tranzit.sk@gmail.com for access to the readings and a link to Zoom video conferencing. The number of participants is limited to 20.
